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Iceland 's Economic Outlook Report

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According to the IMF World Economic Outlook report in January 2016, Iceland’s Gross Domestic Product grew at 4.8% in 2015 (IMF, 2016). This is in stark contrast to the -4.6% decline in 2009, and -3.5% the following year. Iceland’s central bank and its government have used many different policy tools, both Fiscal and Monetary to enable the economy to recover not only as quickly as it did, the overall economy grew at just over 1% in 2011, but as strongly as it is doing now. Recent projections from the IMF WEO indicate that Iceland is expected to continue this level of growth into 2016/17 at around a 3% growth rate, inflation is ‘expected to reach 4% in early 2016 and to remain between 4 and 4.5% in the next two years.’(IMF, 2016)

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It must be viewed that Iceland was considerably affected by the recent Financial Crisis. We can see from the data that Iceland 's economy shrank by a rate of 4.3% and 3.9% respectively in 2009 and 2010. It must be recognized that the authorities in Iceland, through a mixture of employing capital controls, strict financial regulation and increased government expenditure, are already surpassing pre-crisis levels of GDP growth. Issues now come with the winding up of the failed banks, and the opening of full cross border trade through a full relaxation of capital controls. This may cause issues for Iceland in the future, however with GDP growth currently quite strong, if they are able to keep a sustainable level of long term growth, even one which falls below its trend, then Iceland 's Fiscal and Monetary authorities may not have to do much to stimulate demand. Iceland’s GDP, by latest figures, is composed of ‘5.8% Agriculture, 20.9% Industry and 73.3% Services.’(CIA, 2015) Showing a high dependence on the service sector, particularly tourism. It could be seen that tourism may cause a volatile demand structure in Iceland at a time when the World Economy is become increasingly more unstable. Thus it could be argued that, in order to combat Iceland’s over exposure to the globalized world of tourism, the monetary and fiscal authorities should be prepared to act to stimulate this

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