Investment

Investment is crucial when businesses and the economy develop. A favourable flow of investments goes hand in hand with increased productivity and prosperity. Ultimately, the level of investment here is a measurement of how competitive Finland is in the keen international competition for investment.

Finland already attracts a significant amount of potential interest for green transition projects, but our appeal as an investment still needs improvement. To achieve carbon neutrality goals and secure the future of the welfare state, it is essential for as many investment projects as possible to come to fruition. That is why we must ensure that clean, reasonably priced electricity is available, permit procedures are accelerated, skilled labour is readily available, and that companies conduct more RDI.

We also need up-to-date, EU-wide ground rules for state aid. Incentives are necessary, but they must be based on high quality and impact and create cross-border partnerships.

1. A strong national industrial strategy must be created. Finland needs an ambitious industrial policy that supports companies’ sustainable growth and exports. This strategy must also support the transformation of the structure of the economy in a way that allows it to take advantage of the growing clean transition markets.
2. Finland must become a genuinely competitive environment for growth companies. Finnish regulation and taxation must, in particular, encourage businesses to invest and hire.
3. Permit procedures for investments must become smoother, without compromising on environmental protection. The permit authorities must be combined in a multilingual service channel where the permits required for a project can be obtained with a single application and decision. This centralized permit authority must provide advice and should take no more than a year to reach decisions.
4. Incentives must be directed at accelerating the clean transition and at innovation. Growing public RDI funding must be particularly targeted at supporting business-led RDI. The level of pilot and demo funding must also be secured to ensure new solutions can be grown to industry scale and to obtain the testimonials which are so important for exports.
5. Cooperation between different areas of government must be ensured to advance investment projects. A national task group on investment must begin work immediately. This will result in companies making significant investments in Finland having a clear one-stop-shop and provide a constantly up-to-date picture of the status of significant domestic and foreign investment projects.
6. Financing of exports must be ensured. The competitiveness of our export credit system must be raised by reforming the legislation on Finnvera and making Finnvera’s operations more agile.