Finland: Europe’s other sick man

Written by Linda Digby 01 Jul 2015
Finland: Europe’s other sick man

Erkki Liikanen, Finland's central bank governor, says the country will need stamina if it is to dig its way out of its ‘grave’ situation. At 64, the governor of Finland's central bank has faced a few challenges in his lifetime: first as finance minister in the years before the collapse of the Soviet Union, one of Finland's key export markets, and in his current job, where he has seen the economy go from leader to laggard in a decade. Finland is in trouble, and in the words of the central bank this week,(20 June )the situation is grave. While France has often been branded Europe's sick man and Greece's problems are well known, Finland's economy is still 5% smaller than before the financial crisis. The country will barely crawl out of a three-year recession this year, while unemployment is forecast by the OECD to grow in 2015. Faced with a bloated state, below-par growth, and prices and costs that have risen at a much faster pace than the rest of the eurozone, the medicine is a familiar one.

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