Swedish finance minister cuts 2020 growth outlook due to coronavirus

The outbreak of the coronavirus will lower Swedish growth this year by around 0.3%, Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson said on Wednesday, adding the impact could be greater if the outbreak is longer lasting or more widespread than currently expected.

In January, the government forecast gross domestic product would expand 1.1% this year. "If the situation with the virus does not ease in China in the way we expect it to in our forecast or if the spread to the United States and Europe is wider, then the economic effects will also be larger," Andersson told reporters.

Andersson said global growth would likely be around 0.5% lower than it would otherwise have been without the impact of the coronavirus, that has spread across the world after emerging in central China around the turn of the year. In a move to limit the effects of the virus on the economy, Andersson announced the government would introduce a scheme to enable companies to put workers on shorter hours so as not to have to resort to redundancies.

The cost of the scheme was estimated to be about 350 million Swedish crowns ($37 million) per year for the government. ($1 = 9.4581 Swedish crowns)