Member of Tallink board suggests admiring Finnish engineers

Gertrud Levit
gertrud.levit @ aripaev.ee

Estonian experts find that economy in Finland is more stabile than in Estonia and that we should admire the engineering skills of Finns, writes postimees.ee.

Member of the board of Tallink, Toomas Vilosius, who helps run the company over the Finnish Gulf noted that media has created colourful fantasy pictures of Finnish economy.

“I would like to point out that a few days ago a Finnish newspaper published a story comparing the situation in Finland to an economic crisis,” Vilosius said yesterday. “Both viewpoints are wrong – whether it’s written that everything is going badly or that everything is very good, with a surplus of half a billion in the state budget.”

“If companies and the state try to be economic, then it’s not a crisis, it’s a normal situation,” Vilosius, who reads reports of economic crises in Estonian newspapers daily, commented. “Economy can’t rise forever, a small fall is normal.”

Vilosius noted that if Estonia should truly end in a crisis, we should learn from the experience Finland has of how to come out of economic low point swiftly. Finland should also be an example with its level of technology level and skills of engineers.

“Not all young people in Estonia have to study humanitarian subjects. A lot of Estonian youth could learn engineering, as that’s what makes life go on,” Volusius said. “We should admire the engineers in Finland, as a nation they are only five times larger than us after all.”

Andrus Säälik, analyst from the Ministry of Finance, said that the advantage of Finland is stability – unlike Estonia, where macro economic indicators are as curvy as a rollercoaster.

“If we simply compare the economic indicators in Finland and Estonia, then Finns are doing better. They have a quicker growth and lower inflation rate,” said Säälik. “But there’s no need to claim that we are in a crisis, because banks haven’t gone bankrupt and there isn’t a lot of unemployment.”

According to Säälik, Estonia soared in the last couple of years, which is why currently our economy is doing relatively well in a situation where the economic growth is very small or lacking completely as well.

“Finns have been discussing lowering income tax for a long time, but it hasn’t been possible before due to strain on state budget,” said Säälik, adding that Estonia’s advantage before Finland is a small public debt.