Category Archives: Estonia

10/7/20: COVID19 Update: Sweden v Nordics


Sweden has been continuing its uncontested-by-anyone-else march toward thee non-existent 'herd immunity':


And the pipeline of upcoming intensive care patients seems to be un-abating:


In the mean time, the rest of the Nordics have crushed the curve. And this is without inclusion of Iceland. 

Personally, I cannot understand how Sweden's resident are tolerating this, but... who knows... 

20/06/20: COVID19 Update: Sweden v Other Nordics


Sweden is a now a verifiable basket case amongst the Nordic countries when it comes to the country management of the COVID19 pandemic:



The two charts above show that Sweden performance in both daily cases and deaths has been truly shockingly poor, compared to all other Nordic countries combined. The same is true in country-by-country comparatives.

In fact, based on ECDC data, were Sweden to perform as all other Nordics (including Estonia), its total number of cases of COVID19 registered would currently stand at 22,890, against its actual count of 54,443, and its death toll would have been 2,113 against its actual death toll of 4,877.

29/1/16: Estonia – A Safer Bet than France?


Euromoney have a good summary article on Baltic states’ economies and sovereign risk ratings (all of which are improving).

My comment toward the end.

http://www.euromoney.com/Article/3524950/Estonia-offers-safer-ption-than-France-or-South-Korea.html



Here is my take on Baltics ratings in full:

Given macroeconomic and geopolitical environment, Estonia's credit rating by all three rating agencies clearly lags overall trends in risks evolution. The geopolitical and external macroeconomic risks these ratings reflect are consistent with early 2015 assessments and are well behind the more recent trends. In simple terms, Estonia is over-due a one notch upgrade across all agencies, as reflective of expected re-acceleration in growth from 1.9 percent estimated in 2015 to 2.6 percent forecast for 2016-2017, and improving labour markets performance and inflation outlook.

Another key driver for the upgrade is significant abatement in geopolitical risks faced by Estonia in the context of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict that has evolved into a localised and frozen conflict with no expected spillover to the broader region.

Estonia also enjoys significant improvements in its terms of trade, via Euro devaluation, which is reflected in its relatively strong current account dynamics.

As far as Latvia and Lithuania ratings go, both countries' present ratings are in line with generally weaker economic, political and social institutions and with long term structural problems at play in both economies. While geopolitical risks have abated for these two countries since the start of 2015, supportive monetary and euro devaluation-driven competitiveness tailwinds are yet to manifest themselves in terms of current account balances and gains in real  productivity.

Unlike Estonia, both Latvia and Lithuania run current account deficits in presence of significantly higher unemployment and continued outflows of human capital. Of the two countries, Latvia is probably closer to a rating upgrade, which can come later in the first half of 2016.