Business Iceland held its Economic Outlook 2026 webinar on February 24, 2026, featuring a presentation by Icelandic Minister of Finance and Economic Affairs Daði Már Kristófersson focusing on economic growth and diversification in Iceland. Daði Már highlighted economic resilience as the “guiding light” of Iceland’s economic policy. Rapid diversification across various sectors in Iceland has played an important role in growth and resilience in recent years.
Data from the World Bank and Statistics Iceland showed Iceland as one of the top performers in economic growth among OECD countries over the past 10 years. The 10-year growth rate for Iceland approached 35%. This figure put Iceland in third place on the 10-year OECD growth ranking, just behind Türkiye (approximately 50%) and Poland (approximately 38%). Daði Már said the economic growth outlook remains strong for the coming years, with figures from the Central Bank of Iceland and Statistics Iceland forecasting growth between 2.0% and 2.4% for the period 2026-2028, with trend GDP of 2.3% for 2029-31.
Daði Már said Iceland continues to diversify its economy beyond its traditional strength sectors of fisheries, aluminum and tourism. He cited data showing that new, high-value exports have been leading Iceland’s export growth over the past few years. Figures show that high-value services, medicine and medical products, and aquaculture grew from 9% to 16% of total Icelandic exports during the period 2018-2025. High-value services refer to various types of technical, scientific, specialist and cultural services.
Touching on U.S. tariffs, Daði Már said the effective tariff rate is much lower than the headline 15% rate. Some major Icelandic sectors, such as tourism, air transport, and computer and IT services, are not subject to tariffs, reducing the overall effective rate. Seafood, aluminum, farmed fish and other goods are still subject to the 15% rate, although aluminum showed zero percent as a share of exports to the U.S. in the figures presented by Daði Már.
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