Tag Archives: 3.) Swissinfo Business and Economy

Carving its own way: ski resorts in Switzerland have remained open this winter. Keystone / Marcel Bieri As a fresh covering of snow brought ideal skiing conditions to the Alpine resort of Piani di Bobbio last weekend, facilities manager Massimo Fossati eagerly anticipated the arrival of the first visitors in nearly a year. Italy’s government had given the go-ahead for the skiing industry to reopen on February 15, raising hopes of a return to normality after 11 months...

An infographic shows the process of applying for an eID on the website of e-ID Switzerland, a committee in support of the eID Law opposed by a referendum. The popular vote is scheduled for March 7, 2021. © Keystone / Christian Beutler The eID is billed as a long-overdue key to the digital world, a single access point for services provided by a range of public and private-sector organisations. But the model proposed by Switzerland – being put to a nationwide...

There is a significant gap in the online trade between high and low-income countries that UNCTAD says urgently needs to be narrowed, if populations are to benefit from the digital economy. © Keystone / Christian Beutler Switzerland is the best equipped country for online shopping, according to a United Nations comparison of more than 150 states. Last year, 97% of the Swiss population used the Internet, the annual study by the Geneva-based UN Conference on Trade and...

The Conference on Afghanistan on November 28, 2018. With the exception of a few organisations and institutions that continue to operate in person, such as the UN Human Rights Council, which is currently conducting its Universal Periodic Review process, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the WHO and some permanent missions to the United Nations, most day-to-day business and multilateral activities are conducted online. March 2020 marked a major...

The dispute centres around a Swiss attempt to uniformise functions across ATMs from different providers. © Keystone / Alexandra Wey The competition authority suspects the global credit card firm of using its position to prevent the rollout of a new, more uniform, ATM system across Switzerland. COMCO said on Tuesday it had launched an investigation on February 8 after a complaint by the Swiss financial infrastructure company SIX, which is responsible for developing...

Swiss residential property may offer quality that is high, but so are the prices. Keystone / Arno Balzarini Residential property prices in Switzerland rose sharply in the final quarter of 2020, and by an average 2.5% for the year as a whole, according to the Federal Statistics Office. This is according to the Swiss Residential Property Price Index published for the second time by the FSO on Tuesday. The new index climbed by 2.3% in the fourth quarter compared to the...

Florian Fox © Rob Lewis Photography What’s it like to move back to – or away from – Switzerland during a pandemic? What does gold mined in Peru have to do with Switzerland? Did you know that “nostalgia” is a Swiss invention? Not content to mind her own business, Susan studied journalism in Boston so she’d have the perfect excuse to put herself in other people’s shoes and worlds. When not writing, she presents and produces podcasts and videos. More about the...

View of the Europaalle urban development in Zurich on April 12, 2019. © Keystone / Christian Beutler The share of foreign investment in Swiss commercial real estate fell from 15% before 2011 to 5% between 2017 and 2019, according to new research. The issue of foreigners buying cheap Swiss property during the Covid-19 pandemic is being discussed in Bern. Foreign investment in commercial buildings in Switzerland reached CHF750 million ($841 million) a year, or an...

Shoppers most often chose traditional retailers such as Migros and Coop over discounters and specialty shops for their groceries. Keystone / Laurent Gillieron Consumers spent 11.3% more on food and beverages in brick-and-mortar shops last year than they did in 2019, helping the food retail trade to pull in a record turnover of nearly CHF30 billion ($33.7 billion). In total, the average household spent CHF7,680 on comestibles, according to figures released on Thursday...

More people opted for a car over public transport last year. © Keystone / Gaetan Bally A third of Swiss people chose not to travel on holiday last year as the coronavirus pandemic gripped the world, according to automobile association Touring Club Switzerland (TCS). Of those people who continued to commute to work, a greater proportion opted to get to the office under their own steam rather than take public transport. These are the findings of a TCS survey of 1,297...