Finland Kicks Off 2020 Budget Talks Focusing on Creating Jobs
Finland Kicks Off 2020 Budget Talks Focusing on Creating Jobs
(Bloomberg) --
Finland began talks on hammering out a budget for 2020 with a key goal to boost job creation just as global growth eases.
“The biggest challenge will be creating jobs for people, that’s the number one goal,” Finance Minister Mika Lintila told reporters on Tuesday. “We need investments and productivity growth” and “we need to build trust and predictability,” he said.
Finland, a small, export-oriented nation, is forming its spending plans as a trade war between the U.S. and China is weighing on the global economy. Finland’s growth is also forecast to slow, the Finance Ministry said in June.
The ministry will hammer out the first draft of the budget during two days of talks that began Tuesday. In a few weeks’ time, the government will sit down to discuss the plan, before sending it to parliament.
“I’m worried about Finland’s competitiveness,” Lintila said, adding that Finland needs to ensure gap to rival nations doesn’t open up again after tough actions since 2015 to close it.
Unemployment in Finland has slid for most of the past four years, coming in at a seasonally adjusted 6.6% in June.
To contact the reporter on this story: Kati Pohjanpalo in Helsinki at kpohjanpalo@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Tasneem Hanfi Brögger at tbrogger@bloomberg.net, Jonas Bergman
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