Economic Growth Loses Momentum. Medium-term Forecast for the Austrian Economy Until 2023

The world economy is likely to have reached a cyclical peak in 2018. A gradual downturn is expected over the next years. Over the forecast period 2019-2023, Austria's economy is projected to grow at an annual average of 1.7 percent, slightly down from the 1.9 percent for the period 2014-2018, but exceeding the euro area average by about ¼ percentage point. Private household incomes will benefit from the introduction of a "Familienbonus" (family bonus: income tax relief for house-holds with children), which should support consumer demand mainly in 2019 and 2020. Over the entire forecast horizon, pri-vate consumption is expected to increase by 1.7 percent on annual average, after +1.1 percent p.a. 2014-2018. Thanks to benign cyclical conditions, the creation of new jobs will outpace labour supply growth until 2020, taking the unemployment rate down to 7.2 percent. Thereafter, the labour force may again expand faster than labour demand, with the unemploy-ment rate edging up to 7.5 percent by 2023. Inflation pressure is set to stay moderate over the medium term, such that the positive gap of domestic inflation vis-à-vis the euro area should close. The consumer price index is anticipated to rise by an average 2 percent p.a. Under the projected business cycle scenario and the underlying no policy change assumptions, the general government balance should be positive over the entire period. Hence, the public debt ratio (general government debt as a percentage of nominal GDP) should fall from 2018 to 2023 by around 14.5 percentage points to the benchmark value of 60 percent.