Estonian Industrial Output Falls 26.8% In January

Posted on by

Well Estonia just set a new record (at least for the EU) this time round, for the sharpest year on year contraction in industrial output seen to date (although still below Ukraine’s 34.1% January year on year contraction, as Ron points out in comments). The Great Depression II is evidently now among us, and it is currently visiting Estonia.

Estonian industrial production fell the most in at least 14 years in January, a further sign that the Baltic economy’s recession may deepen.

Output adjusted for working days dropped an annual 26.8 percent, the most since 1995 when the Tallinn-based statistics office started providing the data, compared with a revised 22.4 percent slump in December, the statistics office said today on its Web site. In the month, output decreased 4.5 percent.

“The contraction of external demand coupled with extremely poor domestic demand dynamics will play a major role in pushing down all economic activities,” Danske Bank A/S said in a note ahead of the report. It forecast a decline of 22.3 percent.

Estonian industrial production fell the most in the 27- member European Union in December as the global credit freeze shut off export demand, exacerbating a slump in consumer spending that began at the start of 2008. Companies including the local unit of Elcoteq Network Oyj, a Finnish electronics manufacturer and Estonia’s biggest exporter, and AS Norma, a seatbelt maker, have been forced to cut jobs and output.

Production of building materials slumped 44 percent in January, the office said. Output of metal products dropped 40 percent and chemicals production fell 38 percent.
Bloomberg

This entry was posted in A Fistful Of Euros, Economics and demography by Edward Hugh. Bookmark the permalink.

About Edward Hugh

Edward 'the bonobo is a Catalan economist of British extraction. After being born, brought-up and educated in the United Kingdom, Edward subsequently settled in Barcelona where he has now lived for over 15 years. As a consequence Edward considers himself to be "Catalan by adoption". He has also to some extent been "adopted by Catalonia", since throughout the current economic crisis he has been a constant voice on TV, radio and in the press arguing in favor of the need for some kind of internal devaluation if Spain wants to stay inside the Euro. By inclination he is a macro economist, but his obsession with trying to understand the economic impact of demographic changes has often taken him far from home, off and away from the more tranquil and placid pastures of the dismal science, into the bracken and thicket of demography, anthropology, biology, sociology and systems theory. All of which has lead him to ask himself whether Thomas Wolfe was not in fact right when he asserted that the fact of the matter is "you can never go home again".

2 thoughts on “Estonian Industrial Output Falls 26.8% In January”

  1. Well, Estonian’s 26.8% reduction does not look so bad compared with Ukrainian’s 34.1%.
    http://nl.babelfish.yahoo.com/translate_url?doit=done&tt=url&intl=1&fr=bf-home&trurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nr2.ru%2Flvov%2F221470.html&lp=ru_en&btnTrUrl=Vertalen
    I read in the Dutch newspaper “De Pers” today, that tens of thousands Ukrainians are not allowed by their banks to make withdrawals. The banks are simply claiming they don’t have the money. Already nine banks are under special supervision from the Central Bank. It’s obvious going from bad to worse in this Eastern European country.
    Ron.

  2. Whoops, thanks for reminding me of this Ron. I even posted about this in my “Ukraine GDP contracts at a 20%” rate piece.

    I am obviously suffering from “crisis fatigue”, looking at so much bad data, and losing my way.

Comments are closed.