Coronavirus (COVID-19) impact on household spending in the Netherlands 2020
Dutch household spending on nearly half of commonly used services or products is expected to go down in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. This according to economic predictions from Dutch bank ING, based on the experiences the Canadian economy had in 2002/2003 with SARS. Even though ING does not mention explicitly how much Dutch expenses will go down (more that it will or not, hence the colors), it does provide a picture of how Canada's expenses responded almost 20 years earlier. The source chose Canada, as it was one of the Western economies that was struck relatively hard by the SARS pandemic. From that experience, the bank concludes, for example, that consumers bought more products in supermarkets in the first few months (February and March 2003) with expenses only going down around May 2003. Following this same pattern, and the potential effect of government measures in the Netherlands, the bank's economic model predicted that 46 percent of all household spending would be affected either in March directly or even in the following months of the COVID-19 outbreak.
