Assuming vaccination rates in the Netherlands and other European countries increase and the lockdown can be phased out, the Dutch economy will grow by over 2% in 2021 and 3.5% next year, the government’s macro-economic think-tank CPB said on Wednesday.

Unemployment, which has remained what the CPB says at a ‘remarkably low’ level so far, will rise to 5% in 2021 and then decrease again to 4.5% over the course of next year, the CPB said in its new forecasts.

CPB Infographic: the economy-after-a-year-corona-crisis

‘While the course of the pandemic continues to surprise us in a negative sense, the economy has in fact proven to be resilient,’ CPB Pieter Hasekamp said in a statement.

‘Recovery is in sight, but once the virus has been brought under control, the economic impact of the crisis will still be felt.’

Once the pandemic is over, government support policies must be quickly phased out and replaced by policies aimed at facilitating economic recovery, Hasekamp said.

‘We expect that not all companies will survive and that unemployment will rise temporarily,’ he said. ‘In a way, this is inevitable; the normal economic dynamic will have to resume at some point.’