Economic Outlook of Selected Economic Sectors on a Weekly Frequency Scale

The Austrian federal government has announced extensive COVID-19 opening steps for 19 May 2021. These directly affect tourism-related activities, food service activities, and the event and cultural sector. In this report, an attempt is made to quantify the effects from the withdrawal of the restrictions in the course of May for different economic sectors and, based on this, to create a forecast for the development of value added until the end of August 2021 (specifically, up to and including calendar week 34 2021) on a weekly frequency scale. The focus here is on the value-added sectors "Wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles" (ÖNACE G), "Transportation" (ÖNACE H), "Accommodation and food service activities" (ÖNACE I) and "Other private services" (ÖNACE R to T) of the output side of the national accounts. Overall, the value-added sectors analysed here can be expected to contribute up to 3 percentage points to overall economic growth. However, this contribution is mainly limited to the months of May and June 2021 and thus to the weeks surrounding the opening. Subsequently, the momentum in these sectors is likely to be overshadowed by others – primarily industry.