Re: Economic comparison Estonia<->Finland -- some 80 years ago?


"kalev-" <you.wish@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:42mpheF1jm6iqU1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>I keep hearing a in-the-bar rumour that:
> "-You know, Estonia had a stronger economy that Finland in the early 20th
> century". (~during the first period of independence, I'd assume.)
>
> Does anyone have any open source figures to support this statement?
> I'm just curious if there is any public data to back this up...

I've been hearing this too, but it's hard to find commensurable data. GDP
values were obviously not much used in those days. From one source I got the
following numbers:

Population by trade
- agriculture and forestry EE 68% FI 60%
- industry and mining EE 16% FI 17%
- trade and transport EE 7% FI 8%
- other EE 9% FI 15%

Export value 1938
EE 104,000,000 EEK
FI 8,336,000,000 FIM

Major exports
EE Butter, timber, paper & pulp, flax
FI Pulp & paper, sawmill produce, timber, butter

Judging from this, the economies were very similar, and it wouldn't surprise
me if Estonia had a slightly higher GDP before the war.

The situation would hardly have changed much, had the USSR not interfered.
Finland remained a predominantly agricultural country well into the 1960s --
Estonia would obviously have shared that fate. It was only when we started
producing industrial goods that Finland got rich. This began slowly with
shipbuilding and paper machines, and then in the 80s and 90s electronics
became our new strength sector.

We would probably be even more similar today than in the 30s, had not the
Soviet parenthesis occurred.

Regards,
John


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