Saturday , November 2 2024
Home / SNB & CHF / Record research spending defies currency woes

Record research spending defies currency woes

Summary:
Companies have been spending money thinking of ways to cope with the strong franc - Click to enlarge Swiss companies invested record volumes in research and development (R&D) in 2015, despite the franc exploding in value at the start of that year. The private sector was responsible for most of the CHF22 billion (.6 billion) R&D spending in 2015, according to official figures released on Monday. This was an increase of 10.5% from the last time such spending was measured by the Federal Statistical Officeexternal link in 2012. Companies accounted for nearly three quarters of the spending spree. “Seen against the background of the fiscal and economic turbulence, the magnitude of this rise is astonishing,” the

Topics:
Swissinfo.ch considers the following as important: , , ,

This could be interesting, too:

Guillermo Alcala writes USD/CHF slides to test 0.8645 support with US inflation data on tap

Swissinfo writes Swiss central bank posts CHF62.5bn profit

Nachrichten Ticker - www.finanzen.ch writes Trump-Faktor und Marktbedingungen könnten für neuen Bitcoin-Rekord sorgen

Charles Hugh Smith writes Is Social Media Actually “Media,” Or Is It Something Else?

Record research spending defies currency woes

Companies have been spending money thinking of ways to cope with the strong franc - Click to enlarge

Swiss companies invested record volumes in research and development (R&D) in 2015, despite the franc exploding in value at the start of that year. The private sector was responsible for most of the CHF22 billion ($22.6 billion) R&D spending in 2015, according to official figures released on Monday.

This was an increase of 10.5% from the last time such spending was measured by the Federal Statistical Officeexternal link in 2012. Companies accounted for nearly three quarters of the spending spree.

“Seen against the background of the fiscal and economic turbulence, the magnitude of this rise is astonishing,” the statistical office said in a statementexternal link.

The abandonment of the euro-franc peg by the Swiss National Bank in January 2015 caught many industries by surprise. Overnight, the franc soared in value against the euro and dollar, making Swiss produced goods uncompetitive in price and shrinking already slim margins for manufacturers.

The shock appears to have forced many Swiss firms back to the drawing board to rethink how to stay afloat in the hostile environment. Investment in basic research – the building blocks of new products rather than adjustments to existing best sellers – doubled between 2012 and 2015, the figures reveal.

Together with universities and technical colleges, companies increased the number of jobs in R&D by 7.9% in the same period. Switzerland’s R&D spending reached 3.4% of total economic output in 2015, behind just Israel and Japan in advanced economies.

Other academic research in recent years suggests that while R&D spending is growing in Switzerland, it is also concentrating more towards larger companies, particularly those in innovation heavy sectors such as chemicals and IT.

This theory was given further impetus earlier this year by a survey conducted by the KOF Swiss Economic Instituteexternal link that found smaller firms planned to put aside less funds for R&D than larger counterparts. This was particularly the case in industries more closely associated with innovation.

swissinfo.ch/mga

Tags: ,,
Swissinfo.ch
SWI swissinfo.ch – the international service of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SBC). Since 1999, swissinfo.ch has fulfilled the federal government’s mandate to distribute information about Switzerland internationally, supplementing the online offerings of the radio and television stations of the SBC. Today, the international service is directed above all at an international audience interested in Switzerland, as well as at Swiss citizens living abroad.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *