Today, October 8, MARTIN LINDPERE, economist of the Economics Department of Eesti Pank, gave a presentation "The current situation and outlooks of the Estonian economy" at the seminar "Estonia's economic forecast for the next two years" organised within the framework of the Tartu Entrepreneurship Week.

At the seminar, Martin Lindpere provided an overview of the factors affecting the current situation and the development outlooks of the global economy. "Estonia's small and open economy is largely dependent on the economic success of our major trading partners. The financial systems of Europe and the USA have entered a vicious circle with distrust creating even more distrust. In addition, economic development is affected by high commodity prices and, in some countries, the low of the real estate market. All these factors have contributed to rising uncertainties and pessimism as regards further growth outlooks throughout the world. In larger economic areas, the likelihood of a recession, i.e, a decline in the volume of the economy, has notably increased during the past couple of months and economic growth outlooks have been revised downward," he said.

He added that for the Estonian economy the key issues are still the questions whether the competitiveness of out enterprises is going to persist and whether the labour market will be able to react to changes flexibly enough. Moreover, we need to take into account that now our economy will have to manage with reduced credit assistance. "Estonia's economy needs time to recover from the rapid, mainly credit-growth-based period of growth and for the necessary rearrangements in the labour market to take place. The start of a new upward cycle depends on the speed at which markets settle, trust in the financial markets recovers and pessimism withdraws," Lindpere said.