Iceland, Symbol of Financial Crisis, Finally Lifts Capital Controls

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/14/business/iceland-economy-finance-capital-controls.html

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Nine years after a giant banking crash made Iceland a symbol of the global financial crisis, the government on Tuesday effectively declared that financial stability had been restored as it ended longstanding restrictions on the flow of money into and out of the country.

Yet even as it closes a fraught chapter in its economic history, Iceland is facing new challenges with its growth rebounding — some say too quickly for the country’s own good. As the economy has stabilized, a jump in tourism is stoking a housing construction boom, potentially raising new risks of overheating and inflation.

Iceland’s growth surge — the economy expanded 7.2 percent last year — represents a remarkable comeback since 2008, when the country’s three main banks failed and its currency and economy fell into a tailspin. To prevent an outright collapse, the government imposed capital controls on businesses, pensioners and individuals.

“Without the capital controls, Iceland would have suffered a much more serious fate,” said Yngvi Kristinsson, the chief economist for the Icelandic Financial Services Association, a consortium of banks and insurance companies.

Although untested at the time, the capital controls played a pivotal role in stopping panicked foreign investors and others from taking money out of Iceland and decimating its economy even further.

Initially designated for six months, they dragged on for nearly a decade as financial authorities restructured debts and sought to diversify the economy, which had thrived on fishing exports before pivoting to the lucrative, and ultimately perilous, realm of international finance. In that time, the government has been locked in a longstanding dispute with international investors, after freezing their assets amid the crash.

Iceland, a Nordic island nation of 330,000, has gradually been easing the controls for more than a year now, and their full removal on Tuesday signifies the country’s return to international financial markets.

Countries generally try to avoid using capital controls except in desperate circumstances because restrictions on the free flow of funds can cripple businesses and cause hardship for households short of cash.

The capital controls have hit companies by deterring investment and raising borrowing costs. Their removal should help Icelandic firms that had not been allowed to invest in new operations outside the country.

“Good riddance,” said Georg Ludviksson, the chief executive and a founder of Meniga, a digital banking software vendor based in Reykjavik. The company, with 80 employees, almost could not get 3.5 million euros, or $3.7 million, in foreign venture capital when it was set up in 2009.

“It was hard to convince foreign investors to bring money into a country with capital controls,” Mr. Ludviksson said. The company had to apply to the central bank for an exception, which “slowed us down,” he added.

Yet the controls ultimately prevented a widespread economic crash in Iceland and shielded the economy from severe depreciation, the government said in a statement before their removal.

The combined assets of Iceland’s three biggest banks were 14 times the size of the nation’s economic output when the 2008 crisis hit. When the industry collapsed under $85 billion in debt, foreigners owned such a huge chunk of that figure that allowing them to take assets out would risk severely devaluing Iceland’s currency, the krona.

The country’s success in engineering a recovery stands in contrast to the efforts of Greece, which uses the euro and does not have its own currency to manage.

Greece has continued to falter since Athens imposed capital controls in 2015 as the country seemed to be veering toward abandoning the euro. Some restrictions have been eased, but they are mostly expected to remain in place for the foreseeable future. As long as Greece, now in its third international financial rescue program in seven years, continues to labor under a huge debt, economists see little hope of a recovery.

Iceland, by comparison, did not have a huge national debt overhang, although corporations and individuals owed large sums after the financial crash, which some are still working off.

The authorities forced creditors to take some losses, and among other things, the top executives of one of the biggest failed lenders, Kaupthing Bank, were sentenced to prison.

The government, working with the International Monetary Fund, took steps to ward off future crises, including strengthening regulatory oversight of banks and curbing foreign currency loans. The authorities also sought to tamp down the oversize presence of banks in the economy by encouraging growth in tourism, fisheries, tech start-ups and renewable energy.

With the cheap krona, tourism took off much faster than other new ventures because visitors could see the northern lights and the rugged Icelandic landscape at a steep discount.

Today, tourism has exploded into Iceland’s biggest industry, overtaking fishing and banking. With the number of visitors approaching two million a year, tourism revenue topped $3 billion in 2015, a third of the country’s export earnings. Tourism is also the single biggest employer, accounting for a tenth of jobs.

Over all, the unemployment rate has fallen to a near record low of 2.6 percent. Double-digit wage increases are crimping productivity and may encourage inflation, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Many Icelanders are pouring money into services and new construction, and cranes keep rising across the country.

And that seems to be the rub — in a bid to reduce the country’s reliance on finance, Icelanders are wondering if they may have planted the seeds of another bubble.

The current boom is healthier than the growth in the years leading up to the 2008 crash, which was driven by the flow of foreign funds, said Asgeir Jonsson, an economics professor at the University of Iceland.

Still, growth in the past six years “has been led by mainly one sector of the economy,” he noted.

“Iceland has become a very expensive destination, but the tourism sector keeps heating the economy,” Mr. Jonsson said. “What can be done to slow it, ban more visitors? Hardly.”