World Champion Austria Salzburg
Salzburg – the industrial sector became the saviour Peter Unterkofler, President of the Salzburg Federation of Industries, speaks about the good atmosphere in Salzburg and his fear of a possible inflationary spiral.
How are Salzburg’s businesses doing? Overall, Salzburg’s industrial firms overcame the Covid crisis quite well compared to other sectors. The last 15 months showed our national economy how important an export-oriented and well-oiled industrial sector is. We worked hard together for the current economic upswing. We can be proud that the industrial sector acted as an engine for the entire economy even during a crisis. Many companies benefitted from the investment bonus. An economic survey has hardly ever before yielded such positive results as our latest one. In the months to come many sectors and companies will continue to face a scarcity of resources – just like the corresponding price hikes and supply difficulties,
and the lack of skilled workers that we have been experiencing for years. The markets are in large parts overheated. The number of vaccinations kept rising before the summer while the number of infections fell. We seem to have overcome the worst. But have we really? Is the crisis over? What do we need to look out for now? The industrial firms kept working throughout the entire Covid crisis and their in-house vaccination centres made a valuable contribution in fighting the pandemic. We hope that we are out of the woods and are happy about the psychological element of the currently good atmosphere. We are still not back at the pre-Covid levels of 2019, but we are going to get there in 2022.
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eing a province of tourism and culture, Salzburg had been hit particularly hard by the Covid pandemic with the closures of the hospitality sector and cultural facilities. The regional gross domestic product fell by seven percent, which was much higher than the Austrian average of 6.3 percent. A fairly robust boom in the industrial and the construction sector with a subpar decrease in production prevented a bigger slump. A robust material goods industry and a positive development of corporate service in its wake will ensure that Salzburg’s regional economy will be back on a path of growth this year with an increase of two percent this year, says UniCredit Bank Austria Research. It is not presumptuous to say that Salzburg’s industrial sector helped Salzburg as a business location out of the economic doldrums. Peter Unterkofler, President of the Salzburg Federation of Austrian Industries, knows more about the industrial firms in the province.
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