Restarting Sweden - Reforms for a more competitive and sustainable Sweden

The Confederation of Swedish Enterprise has recently presented the first package of measures in its project "Restarting Sweden" to ensure that the Swedish business sector emerges from the crisis with strengthened competitiveness.

The pandemic has hit the Swedish economy and labor market hard. The government has rolled out crisis package after crisis package to prevent an economic collapse. It has been a lifeline for businesses to survive the crisis.

In the middle of summer, the situation remains serious and the future uncertain. There is a need to extend crisis measures to enable companies to survive the summer so that more people have a job to go to and to counteract future long-term unemployment that is taking hold. According to the Swedish Public Employment Service, the situation is expected to get tougher and unemployment will continue to rise sharply in 2020 and 2021.

At the same time, businesses have shown a drive to adapt quickly where needed and Swedish society has demonstrated that decisions can be taken in a short time when it really matters. The importance of digital services has also become even clearer and we are experiencing one of the fastest digital transitions ever. If it were not for our world-leading tech sector, the relatively high digital maturity of the country's citizens and the fact that Sweden has made some progress in its digital transformation, we would be even weaker. It is important that the IT and telecom industry can tackle the ongoing crisis in a good way for Sweden to keep up with the transformation that is now accelerating.

Rebooting Sweden

IT&Telecom companies, together with other member organizations, have been involved in the project "Restart Sweden" and our previously presented package of measures is reflected in many of the proposals. IT&Telecom companies have highlighted the importance of supporting digital and creative entrepreneurship in the IT and telecom industry and thus solutions to today's challenges and future jobs.

IT&Telecom companies are positive to the package of measures and welcome the fact that skills supply and expanded digital infrastructure are two of the five main proposals presented. We would like to point out some valuable proposals:

- Sweden needs to take action to stimulate fixed broadband deployment across the country and enable 5G technology to get the most out of digitalization. The coronavirus crisis has highlighted the need for people and businesses across the country to have access to fast and secure connectivity and to stimulate the use of 5G applications to competitively restart the Swedish economy.

-The supply of skills to sectors in need of labor needs to be facilitated. The increased use of digital tools, and the need for skills that arises in its wake, has become even more evident through the Corona crisis.

-We need to accelerate the digital transformation and create a national IT infrastructure for the welfare sector, especially in light of the many challenges that health and social care now face.

For more information: Visit the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise website