STOCKHOLM, April 15 (Xinhua) -- The Swedish economy is expected to remain sluggish with rising unemployment, the government said when presenting its spring amendment budget on Monday.
The economy is expected to remain slow until 2025 with the gross domestic product expected to grow by 0.7 percent this year and 2.5 percent in 2025, the government said in a press release.
Meanwhile, the unemployment is expected to climb up from 7.7 percent in 2023 to 8.3 percent this year, the press release said.
The spending package totaling 17.3 billion kronor (1.6 billion U.S. dollars) is considerably bigger than the 4 billion announced in last year's spring amendment budget of which a large proportion is earmarked to support local governments.
In the wake of inflation, local governments have said that they may have to resort to layoffs of health care staff and 6 billion kronor in the spring amendment budget are earmarked to support health care.
A further 1.4 billion kronor is allocated to an expansion of the prison system while 1 billion kronor are for boosting airport security.
The spring budget amendment also includes means to strengthen defense and crisis preparedness. Enditem (1 Swedish krona = 0.092 U.S. dollar)