Sweden Expands Slightly Above Forecasts in Q3

Sweden’s economy expanded more than estimated last quarter as unprecedented monetary easing helped underpin business investment even as household spending stalled.

Gross domestic product grew 0.3 percent from the second quarter, just beating a 0.2 percent median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of analysts.

“The economy continues to grow at a decent clip,” Colin Bermingham, an economist at BNP Paribas in London, said in a note. “But the slowdown in consumption expenditure is a concern, given the low level of inflation.”

While the largest Nordic economy has outgrown Europe on average since the region’s debt crisis started, Sweden has slipped into a deflationary spiral that drove the central bank last month to cut its main interest rate to zero for the first time in its history. Today’s report suggests price pressure is unlikely to come from consumer demand.

Private spending was unchanged from the second quarter while fixed investment rose 1.1 percent. Exports increased 0.7 percent.

via Bloomberg

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Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza