OREANDA-NEWS. Analysts interviewed by Bloomberg agency believe that the Swedish economy as a whole has benefited from the government’s decision to abandon the strict quarantine in February–May.

Thus, experts consider that by the end of the second quarter, the decline in Sweden’s gross domestic product (GDP) will be about 7 %, and the fall will be much smaller than in all other countries of the European Union and the United States. “The Swedish economy has not been unscathed, despite its light-touch lockdown, but we think that the quarterly drop in GDP in the second quarter is likely to have been about one-third of that seen in the euro-zone,” David Oxley, an expert from Capital Economics, said.

However, it is unclear how Sweden’s course will affect its economy in the long term. “Our Nordic neighbors locked down but may be able to open up and normalize faster,” Nordea economist Torbjorn Isaksson noted.

At the same time, Bloomberg recalled that Sweden’s refusal from strict measures led to the fact that the death rate in this country was one of the highest in the world (56.4 per 100 thousand).