The economy has been disrupted by the corona crisis and if things go wrong, that may still be the case in the years after 2021, says Finance Minister Wopke Hoekstra.
He said this when presenting the Budget Memorandum for 2021 to the Lower House.
Chances are, however, that all the figures from that Budget Memorandum will be different again, Hoekstra warned. The situation we are in now is simply very uncertain.
Growth of 3.5 percent
After the boom of the corona virus, the economy will grow again from the third quarter of this year, according to the Central Planning Bureau in the Macro Economic Outlook 2021. For the whole of 2020, a contraction of 5 percent will remain on balance.
In the most likely scenario, our economy will grow by 3.5 percent next year, according to the CPB in the Macro Economic Outlook 2021.
That may sound good: growth. But our economy will still be smaller next year than in 2019 and also about 4 percent smaller than the CPB expected before the corona crisis.
‘Recovery can break the button’
However, it can turn out even worse. In a second wave of corona infections ‘the recovery is broken in the bud’, according to the CPB.
The corona crisis could then exacerbate the situation via the housing market and the (international) financial system. This could mean that the Dutch economy will not grow in 2021, but will shrink by another 3 percent, according to the CPB.
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