Chamber of Commerce: Helsinki region Finland’s economic powerhouse again
Metropolitan area "doing well, but not terribly well"
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The Helsinki region is doing well economically - "but not terribly well", says Heikki J. Perälä, managing director of the Helsinki Chamber of Commerce. He says that all sectors are in moderately good shape.
Production has grown in Helsinki by slightly more than two percent over the same period last year. This is half a percentage point more than in the country as a whole.
In Perälä’s view, the economic growth in the Helsinki region is faster than expected, and the area has clearly re-established its position as the economic engine of Finland.
Growth in the Helsinki region was slower than in the rest of the country in the early years of the decade, because the IT branch was in serious trouble at the time. Now, growth in output has been twice as fast in the Helsinki region than in the rest of the country.
The volume of industrial output decreased in July-September, but construction and most fields in the service sector grew considerably.
Deputy managing director Jorma Nyrhilä says that efforts should be made to boost growth in the region as much as possible, rather than slowing it down through unnecessary regional policy measures, for instance.
Growth in employment slowed down in the Helsinki region in the third quarter. The increase in the number of people with jobs was 0.8 percent over the previous year’s figures. In the first half of this year, growth from the previous year was 1.5-2 percent. The improvement in employment figures from the beginning of this year has been about the same in Helsinki as in the rest of the country.
The number of hours worked by those with jobs has declined. In practice, this means that overtime work has decreased. Nyrhilä says that this portends a further slowdown in employment growth.
Perälä is pleased that the Helsinki region has the second-highest growth of all metropolitan areas of the European Union, right after Dublin.
If the projected growth of four percent is achieved, the Helsinki region is expected to take first place among the old EU member states. Perälä concedes that this would be quite a challenge.
However, some of the metropolitan areas of the new EU member states, including the cities of Warsaw, Prague, and Budapest, have growth rates that are nearly twice as high as those of Helsinki.
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 29.11.2005 - TODAY |
 Chamber of Commerce: Helsinki region Finland’s economic powerhouse again
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