While the Swedish economy as a whole is starting to grow at a decent pace, Stockholm’s rate of growth is accelerating. During the third quarter of 2013, the capital’s private sector growth rate reached the highest level since 2010, according to the latest Stockholm economy report released by Stockholm Business Region.

“Stockholm continues to perform well with strong sales growth,” said the organization’s chief executive officer, Olof Zetterberg. “It is particularly pleasing that employment is rising while the number of bankruptcies are hitting their lowest point in several years.”

Sales in the private sector increased during the third quarter by 4 percent in Stockholm County and 10 percent in the city, compared to the preceding quarter. The figure was 3 percent in the rest of Sweden.

The rate of employment and the number of available jobs increased across the county by 2.2% and by 4.7% in the city. Those figures are significantly higher than the figure of 0.7 percent for the country as a whole, mainly due to the high rate of immigration to the Stockholm region.

During the quarter, construction of 1,991 apartments began, 1,154 of which are in the City of Stockholm. That corresponds to an increase of almost 30 percent in both the city and the county compared with the same quarter last year, while the national rate of growth is 5 percent.

Sweden – which relies on exports for half its economic output – is recovering as Europe and the U.S. emerge from their crises. The country’s GDP will expand 2.8 percent this year, compared with 1.1 percent in the euro area, the EU commission estimates.

Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt recently told Bloomberg that Sweden’s economy will not need any more government help and predicted that the recovery has become self-sustaining. “Optimism is spreading, for example in the services sector,” he said.



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This article was sponsored by Stockholm Business Region.

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