Fragile recovery: Business Sweden’s outlook and four questions for procurement

CPO Outlook 2026 · The view from outside in

Business Sweden published its autumn Global Economic Outlook this morning. The title is two words: Skör återhämtning, fragile recovery. The world economy keeps growing. Beneath the surface, Business Sweden writes, a new and more complex risk picture is emerging. Lena Sellgren, Chief Economist and Head of Research at Business Sweden, opens CPO Outlook 2026 on 14 October with the data behind it.

What the report says

Business Sweden’s September 2026 Global Economic Outlook (published in Swedish) forecasts global growth of 2.5 per cent in 2026. That is lower than 2025, but world trade and industrial production have held up better than expected. Growth is forecast to rise to 2.7 per cent in 2027 and 2.9 per cent in 2028.

The distribution is uneven. Europe is recovering after several weak years, but slowly. The US keeps growing at a relatively stable pace. India and parts of Southeast Asia grow fast, while China slows. Investment and trade flows are increasingly shaped by AI, digital infrastructure, energy systems and defence.

For Sweden, the picture is brighter. Household consumption is recovering, investment is rising and exports are supported by a stronger Europe. Lena Sellgren was interviewed on Sveriges Radio about the forecast this morning (in Swedish).

Adaptation works, and it has a price

According to the report, companies’ ability to adapt has contributed to world trade, industrial production and growth holding up better than expected. It describes them as skilled at adapting their supply chains, investments and market strategies. When tariffs or export restrictions made earlier trade patterns less attractive, companies rerouted trade, switched suppliers and adjusted production. US imports from China have fallen sharply, while imports from Mexico and the ASEAN countries have grown.

The report does not say who in the company made those moves. For a procurement leader, a fair question is how much of it ran through the function, and how much happened around it.

The report also puts a price on the adaptation. New suppliers are not always as efficient as the ones they replace, Business Sweden writes. Companies increasingly need parallel regional production chains or larger inventories. Its assessment is that the biggest cost of trade policy is likely to come as slower productivity. Not as an abrupt fall in world trade.

That leaves a question the report does not answer. When the cost comes as a second supplier, a larger safety stock or a longer route, each decided on its own, who in the organisation adds them up?

Risks that reinforce each other

The report’s in-depth section argues that the risk picture should be read as a system. Three things decide how serious a risk is: its probability, its direct effect on growth, and its power to amplify other risks. A geopolitical conflict can hit trade, inflation and financial markets at once. High debt makes a new inflation shock more expensive.

Business Sweden ranks debt and financial stress as the most serious risk when the three are weighed together. A deeper war in the Middle East and a sharp correction in AI investment both carry large spill-over potential. Further trade-policy escalation is judged more likely. So far, companies’ ability to adapt has limited its direct effects. A serious China–Taiwan crisis is judged less likely but potentially systemic. Risks are easily underestimated, the report notes, when they are assessed one at a time.

That last point is close to a long-held EBG thesis, Procurement 1.0: know your suppliers, and build layer upon layer of insight instead of starting over with every new disruption. Is a supplier exposed to energy prices, freight costs and refinancing at the same time one risk, or three?

Europe, China and four Nordic clocks

Europe matters more for Swedish exporters, not less. It took 72.8 per cent of Swedish goods exports in 2025, according to the report’s appendix. Business Sweden’s Export Managers’ Index stands at 56.1 for the third quarter, above its historical average. Expectations for demand from Asia, however, have weakened clearly.

Europe’s recovery is still fragile. Energy prices have pushed monetary policy in a tighter direction, and the European Central Bank raised its three key interest rates by 25 basis points on 10 September 2026. With China’s own demand weak, Chinese producers are adding price pressure in European and global markets. Chinese exports have been redirected towards the EU and ASEAN.

The Nordic economies are not moving as one. Denmark is forecast to grow 3.7 per cent in 2026, then 0.8 per cent in 2027 as the pharmaceutical tailwind fades. Finland is forecast at around 1.6 per cent a year. Norway grows 1.4 per cent in 2026 and 2.4 per cent in 2027, supported by its energy sector. EBG looked at the Nordic divergence earlier this autumn; the new forecast sharpens it.

Four questions for procurement leaders

1. If your company has adapted its supplier base in recent years, where did the cost end up: in dual sourcing, inventory, longer routes? And to what extent is it visible as one number?
2. Which risks do you assess supplier by supplier and one at a time, and in what way could they reinforce each other in your supply base?
3. How does Chinese price pressure in Europe read from your side of the table: a sourcing opportunity, a risk to European suppliers you depend on, or both?
4. If the recovery stays slow and uneven, which decisions in your category plans rest on a stronger 2027 than the forecast supports?

Why these two days, in the middle of change

Several procurement leaders have told EBG they are in the middle of a reorganisation, a transformation, or cost and structural changes right now. EBG’s view is that this is a reason to take the two days, not to skip them.

If the change you are leading includes decisions on suppliers, regional footprint, the cost of resilience or how the function is organised, those are the themes the sessions below are built around. Two days with peers working on the same questions is a way to test those decisions before they are locked in. Not a break from the change work, but part of it.

Where the report meets the programme

Lena Sellgren’s keynote sets the frame for the day. The sessions that follow move from the macro picture to the work inside the function, from the stage and around the tables.

Around the tables

Later the same morning, three Theme Discussions work on cost, risk and resilience:

In the afternoon, two practitioner-led Peer Labs work on supplier risk and predictive procurement:

Day 2: back to your own function

On Day 2, the Lab Recap brings the risk, resilience and regulatory rooms back to the stage, and the Working Session “Where your function is, where it’s going, and who takes it there” gives each table time to map its own function two years out. For anyone in the middle of a reorganisation, that is the session to bring the current plan to.