World Champion Austria Vorarlberg
Vorarlberg – business indicators bring optimism Martin Ohneberg, President of the Vorarlberg Federation of Industries, and Hans Peter Metzler, head of the Vorarlberg Economic Chamber, speak about the challenges in their province and how to tackle them.
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© Frederick Sams
fter a few years of solid growth in the gross added value, Vorarlberg’s economy suffered a heavy setback in 2020 due to the Covid pandemic. Real gross added value (without agriculture and the timber industry) fell by 6.4 percent, which was in tune with the Austrian average. In retail, turnovers fell by 3.8 percent and thus not as bad as in the rest of Austria (-4.6 percent). The production index of sold products was slightly worse than the year before (-3.2 percent) but still better than the Austrian average of -5.5 per-
Hans Peter Metzler, head of the Vorarlberg Economic Chamber
cent. Vorarlberg’s building sector, however, recorded a strong growth of 3.2 percent (the Austrian average was at -1.8 percent). “The short work scheme and Covid reliefs prevented employment numbers from falling even more,” says Regional Councillor Marco Tittler. The pandemic had a high impact on all economic areas and tourism was hit the hardest of all sectors in 2020. Vorarlberg’s export industry also recorded noticeable slumps in turnover in the first half of 2020. Preliminary figures for the months January to June 2020 show goods worth 4.87 billion euros exported and goods imported to the amount of 3.7 billion euros. Compared to the same period the year before, exports fell by 8.4 percent and imports by 8.5 percent. The trade balance stayed in the black with 1.17 billion euros. All over Austria, exports went down by 12.6 percent and imports by 11.7 percent. This year, the trend is pointing upwards again, according to the figures from Vorarlberg’s economic report. Martin Ohneberg, President of the Vorarlberg Federation of Industries, and Hans Peter Metzler, head of the Vorarlberg Economic Chamber, offer further insights into the province’s economy and industry. Mr Metzler, Mr Ohneberg, how are Vorarlberg’s businesses doing at the moment? Hans Peter Metzler: The pandemic has hit us all; the challenges of a global pandemic are manifold and know no borders between sectors. One-person-businesses and international top players alike were faced with novel, never-seen-before facts from one day to the other. Hardly anything was more important than planning reliability, tax reliefs, financial aids and promotion programmes, investments, innovation, digitisation, supply with raw
