Editorial: waiting for neighbours to gradually recover

Photo: SCANPIX

For this year, Postimees predicts Estonian economy to grow 2.7 per cent. Which isn’t much. Should we desire, within reasonable time, to reach the European average, our economic growth ought to be five percent, minimum – in order to catch up, one does have to run faster.

On the other hand: let’s face the context. 2.7 is considerably better than the European median. Also, it is better than the 1 per cent growth in 2013. Better half an egg than an empty shell, they say. Not about to flow with milk and honey, still our economy seems to be getting better, little by little. And this is better than getting worse.

Estonia is no island. Our economic growth depends more on our neighbours than it does on our very selves. For us, the vital markets are Finland, Sweden, and Russia. Finland has spent these past six quarters in recession. In Sweden, over the same time period, economic growth has slowed down. Same with Russia; however, their economic growth has been slowing since 2012 already. Also, this market is characterised by political risk, as we were reminded over Christmas – Russia announcing export ban on Estonian daily and fish processing industries. 

Our economy is being pulled by our neighbours; even so, should we passively wait for them to recover, our dependency would only deepen. Therefore, we should carefully consider if we have used up every reasonable option to improve our economic environment and ensure growth.

As opposed to earlier years, experts are no longer warning of the danger of renewed or deepening crisis. Two things are to be kept in mind, however. Firstly: probably, re-emergence of crisis may indeed be less likely this year. Secondly: from this past crisis, everyone that has anything to do with money ought to have learnt, that nothing can be made out of nothing, and that economic growth cannot be endless.

Important herewith to recall that dark clouds are far from dispelled from over eurozone; the next banking crisis is expected to erupt in Slovenia. Ljubljana, indeed, tells us all fear is groundless; even so, euro states painfully remember like assurances by Dublin, Madrid and Athens. What happened next is history; thus, one might talk of fears materialising, but in the world of today pessimism as economic theory is more widespread than optimism.

Looks like this year will be a lot like 2013, economically. The standstill may indeed make the entrepreneurs restless and anger wage-earners, but things will not get worse either. The good news being: nothing, right now, is predicting recession over Estonia. According to many an expert, we ought rather to raise our expectations regarding next year, for then Finland and Sweden are supposed to gain strength as well.