Estonia's current-account deficit narrowed in the second quarter from a 14-year high as slower consumer spending and credit growth cut imports, suggesting the Baltic economy is cooling somewha. The deficit, which offers a braod measure of the evolution of trade in goods and services, fell to 8.5 billion krooni ($770 million) or 14 percent of gross domestic product in Q2 2007, from a revised 21.9 percent of GDP in the first quarter and 15.2 percent in Q2 2006, according to data released by the central bank today.
Estonians it seems spent less on imported cars, clothes and household goods last quarter as interest costs rose and stricter lending requirements by banks took their toll. Lower domestic demand also slowed manufacturing and construction growth, reducing the rate of GDP growth in Q2 to the lowest level in 2 1/2 years.
Exports of goods rose 6 percent from a year earlier, increasing slightly more rapidly than imports which rose 5 percent increase. Services exports climbed 19 percent, while imports went up 18 percent.
Latvia's current-account gap, which is the widest in the European Union, narrowed to 23.5 percent of GDP in Q2 2007 as economic growth there slowed too.
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Monday, September 24, 2007
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Estonia At A Glance January 2008
Welcome to the Baltic Economy Watch Blog. Below you will find the normal chronological blog posts. But first we would like to present some charts which provide background data and which we hope will help the first time reader better assess and get to grips with the argument being presented here. The only really big question about the EU10 economies as we enter 2008 is - among the more vulnerable ones (the Baltics, Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary) - who will be the first to go over the edge of the chasm which seems to lie out in front. Basically we have two sets of curves to look at. One set go up, and these essentially refer to prices and wages. The other set go down, and they refer to levels of domestic economic activity and consumer and producer confidence. We hope you will find the background data presented here useful in assessing the argument which we are presenting on this blog, which is basically that a key component in the emerging economic crisis which is arriving in Russia and much of Eastern Europe has its roots in the underlying demographics. Basically after years of low fertility, and in many cases out migration, there is just not the labour supply available to fuel rapid catch up growth without provoking strong inflationary pressures. We feel the evidence here is just to strong and to widespread to ignore. In the long run fertility does matter. Please click on thumbnails for better viewing.
GDP growth, which was of course strong, is now slowing, and unemployment, which has been trending steadily downwards, should really start to increase at some point. This will mean, basically, that the days when Estonia urgently needed to import migrant workers to try and avoid the huge spike in wages and prices which we have seen is now largely passed.
Private domestic consumption has almost certainly peaked, and is now in rapid decline. This is evident from the reatail sales data, and from the reducing number of notarial property contracts, which are a reasonable indication of the state of the housing market. So what happens next?
When I say that the time for fomenting rapid inward migration is now past this does not mean that in terms of longer term stability Estonia does not need to focus on raising fertility and attracting new citizens from elsewhere to compensate for those who have simply not been born: What I am getting at is that all of these issues will now take rather a back seat as the short term dynamics increasingly take over.
Unfortuantely opportunities have been lost, but there is no point in going back over old arguments. One measure of the very difficult situation Estonia will now in all probability find itself in is that the policy priority will now need to switch from attracting migrants to retaining the young workers it already has and avoiding an uptick in out migration.
The extent to which this will prove possible will depend on the level of distress which Estonia's citizen are faced with at the end of the day, and this depends on exactly how hard the hard landing turns out to be.
2008 Forecasts:Forcasts as such really go out of the window at this point, since pretty soon none of them will be worth the paper - or spreadsheet - they have been written on.
Once we see the measure of the problem we will be able to start to think about policy measures to help move forward. This is not the end of the world, but it is going to be a bumby ride and serious structural damage will be done. So all I can say is, fasten your seatbelts.
This blog will not have daily update posts on Estonia or the other Baltic countries (where the situation is not that different), until or unless events start to move at a pace which makes these desireable. There will be data updates from time to time, and extensive monthly reports, the next of which (for Estonia) will be at the start of February.
I also recommend my two recent extenisive summary posts from Claus Vistesen:
Catch Up Growth and Demographics - Evidence from Eastern Europe
Translation Risk in the Baltics and other matters on Eastern Europe
2 comments:
Estonia’s economy is still in great shape, and it will continue to be as long as they have a free market. By the way, I just ran into a website about Estonia the other day - it is a Documentary about Estonia's Singing Revolution: http://singingrevolution.com
Hello Tanvir,
"Estonia’s economy is still in great shape"
Well I'm afraid you are virtually alone in taking this view. The consensus is, like the other Baltic countries, Estonia's economy is seriously overheating, and has severe structural issues to confront.
This, unfortunately, has nothing to do with whether it has a free economy or not, but is intimately related with the demographic trajectory. Low birth rates in the past are now producing labour shortages and very high inflation in the present. This internal inflation is then taking the cost competitiveness out of the export sector due to the euro currency peg.
This is, simply put, not sustainable. But as I say, the Baltics at present cannot correct. So they are, as it were, in the waiting room, awaiting events elsewhere, which more than likely will take the form of a more general crisis across those eastern european economies who are now eveidencing this problem as the global economy slows. My guess is that the whole show will kick off in Romania, but it is only that, an educated guess.
Meantime lets follow the data as it comes in.
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