Tampereen kauppakamarin TOIMINTA 2021 ECONOMIC REVIEW
19
Corona turned the whole
year upside down
The economy was in an unprecedented
turmoil in 2020. At the beginning of the
pandemic, uncertainty, restrictions and
lockdowns caused a shock to demand
across almost the entire business field.
Everyone was plagued by the unpredict-ability
of big changes.
The turnover figures published at the
Pirkanmaa Region Economic Forum in
the autumn confirmed that the pandem-ic
and the restrictive measures had treat-ed
different industries in very different
ways.
The total turnover of all industries in the
Pirkanmaa region decreased by 1.7 per-cent
from January till June. The turnover
of the manufacturing industry decreased
by 2.7 percent over the same period. The
decline was slightly slower than the na-tionwide
decline, where industrial turn-over
decreased by 6.9 percent over the
same period.
Also, the turnover of business servic-es
showed no significant decrease in the
turnover data from January till June. In-stead,
the tourism and restaurant servic-es
industries were hit by the effects of
COVID-19. The first quarter was near-ly
seven percent worse than a year ago.
The second quarter was catastrophic. In
April-June, the industry’s turnover de-creased
by as much as 47.9 percent.
– In the Pirkanmaa region the industry’s
turnover in the first half of the year end-ed
up being almost 100 million euros
lower compared to the same period in
the previous year. Fortunately, the sum-mer
went quite well for some companies,
says Markus Sjölund, Deputy Director
of the Tampere Chamber of Commerce.
In the autumn, a survey conducted by
Tampere Chamber of Commerce also
confirmed that, overall, the situation had
not deteriorated since the spring.
–The biggest fright was in the spring,
and in the autumn it seemed like the de-cline
had stopped. Expectations for the
next six months improved slightly but
remained modest, of course, says Peer
Haataja, Director of the Tampere Cham-ber
of Commerce.
Of all the respondents to the autumn
2020 survey, 49 percent estimated their
turnover to be lower than in the same
period a year ago. 41 percent believed
that the situation would remain the same
over the next six months, and a fifth be-lieved
it would improve. A third of the
respondents believed their turnover
would decline over the next six months.
In the autumn, the restrictive meas-ures
were a topic of debate. The mod-erate
course of the pandemic in Fin-land
raised hopes for a better spring in
2021. Respondents of the autumn sur-vey
hoped that the officials would hold
off on further restrictions. It was seen
as highly important to continue school-ing
children in person. There was also a
desire to lift travel restrictions. For ex-ample,
many companies had a pent-up
need to be able to run their service busi-nesses
abroad, and on the other hand to
get important customers to visit Finland.
In the overall assessment of the COV-ID-
19 surveys, the outlook for the end
of 2021 for companies in the Pirkanmaa
region is quite positive. 29 percent of
companies in Tampere believe that their
turnover will increase towards the end of
the year and 36 percent expect it to re-main
unchanged. Less than a third be-lieve
that turnover will decline. Nation-wide,
the views are in line with those of
Tampere.•