Bottleneck problems weigh more and more – ‘Development has gone a little under the radar’

“Economic development of late has been weaker than many expected, including us. This is probably because the effects of supply problems have been underestimated. Many have always believed that there will be an improvement soon, but instead the delivery problem has worsened. It will probably last longer and be It has bigger consequences than many expected.”

He points out that a lot of the statistics for a fairly long time came in weaker than expected. Industrial production, for example, has stagnated in many euro countries, and China is heading for the weakest growth in decades this year, with the exception of pandemic year 2020.

“We are seeing more and more evidence that bottlenecks and supply problems are now evident in the statistics,” says Andreas Wahlström.

This development is thought to have gone a bit under the radar:

“Many people seem to be looking at continued high annual rates, compared to 2020, but if you look at the development in recent months, it’s been kind of weak, especially the trade statistics,” he says.

An example is Sweden’s foreign trade, where both exports and imports have shown a downward trend since February, although there is a slight improvement in the latest statistics for September, which were released on Wednesday.

“It’s probably too much to miss, because six months ago we’ve had poor development for both exports and imports,” Andreas Wahlström says.

He adds that supply problems are now beginning to spread more in the economy.

“We also see how retail is now stagnating in many eurozone countries. More and more companies in retail are also seeing problems with deliveries. If there are no goods to sell, it will curb consumption.

All this suggests that the GDP forecast will have to be revised downward.

We went through a period of continuous upward revisions to growth, as we were surprised by the strength of the recovery and how quickly the pandemic could spread. But now I think we will probably see some downward adjustments in the future. “Compared to the consensus picture one to two months ago, the outlook looks worse now,” Andreas Wahlström says.