Finland Freezes Pay to Save Economy

The Nordic region’s only euro member is still struggling with austerity. After being stripped of its top AAA credit grade at all three major ratings companies, the government is asking Finns to tighten their belts to keep up with the Germans and the Swedes, who are more productive exporters. Failure to do so will jeopardize Finland’s path away from economic limbo and growing indebtedness, the government warns.

Prime Minister Juha Sipila, a self-made millionaire who won elections last year on pledges to reinvigorate Finland’s ailing post-Nokia economy, says exports are the key to economic success. But that requires Finns to produce more without getting more pay if the nation is to close a competitiveness gap as wide as 15% relative to its main trading partners, Bloomberg reported.

“We’re behind our main competitor countries,” Sipila said in an interview in Helsinki on Wednesday. “Our problem is that exports are lagging and that growth relies on domestic demand.” But if the economy is to recover, “exports should become the growth motor again.”

Finland has been trapped in a low-growth cycle since exiting a series of economic contractions in 2015. Its once dominant paper industry has succumbed to the advent of digital media. The poster child of its consumer technology boom, Nokia Oyj, sold its handset unit off to Microsoft in 2013 after failing to see the potential of smart phones. And the economic crisis in Russia, with whom Finland shares the EU’s longest border, has battered trade.

Finns have already waved goodbye to the prospect of pay rises. Workers agreed to a measly 0.4% this year and will get no pay increase at all in 2017. From 2018, “exporting industries will set the base” for pay talks, Sipila said.