Tag Archives: Business & Economy

There are many theories on why the prices of certain goods and services are so high in Switzerland. A well-known economic phenomenon can be added to them. © David Taljat | Dreamstime.comTheories that help to explain Switzerland’s high prices include, import restrictions and tariffs on products in protected industries like agriculture, high Swiss operating costs, anticompetitive deals struck by international companies that impose higher prices on Swiss retailers and prevent local retailers...

Swiss GDP grew by 1.8% in the second quarter of 2021 after contracting by 0.4% in the first quarter of the year, according to figures published by Switzerland’s State Secretariat for Economic Affairs. © Joe Ahead | Dreamstime.comMuch of the bounce back was in the services sector as Covid measures were relaxed. Private consumption recovered strongly and industry also grew, although not as strongly as in previous quarters. In the second quarter of 2021, total GDP was only 0.5 % lower...

After Switzerland ended talks with the EU on an institutional framework agreement aimed at replacing the country’s current patchwork of agreements with the bloc in May 2021, some in government have been focused on how to keep the EU on side. One obvious way to curry favour is to make the second 1 billion EU cohesion payment. © Gpagomenos | Dreamstime.comHowever, to make the payment, the Swiss government must agree. This week a commission voted 11 versus 2 in favour of making the payment,...

At 11:20am on Tuesday 3 August 2021, Swisscom’s network went down for 45 minutes, according to Fing, a network monitoring service. © Rostislav Ageev | Dreamstime.comThe outage stretched across nearly all of Switzerland’s highly populated plateau as well as the most southern part of the canton of Ticino, affecting most of the company’s customers – see image below. According to Fing, the network drop rate reached 71% of connections at its peak, affecting both fixed and mobile...

Currently, the Swiss supermarket Migros does not sell alcoholic drinks in its stores. Gottlieb Duttweiler, the retailer’s founder, instituted the policy to promote public health when the company was started in 1925. © Tea | Dreamstime.comHowever, this autumn, the management of the cooperative is planning to vote on whether to allow alcohol on to the the company’s shelves for the first time, according to watson.ch and Le Matin Dimanche. Migros’ no-alcohol rule is already fraying at the...

The youth chapter of the PLR (FDP) has successfully collected enough signatures for an initiative to raise the official retirement age in Switzerland to 66 years old, reported RTS. © Skypixel | Dreamstime.comOn 16 July 2021, initiative organisers submitted 145,000 voter signatures as part of the formal process of launching a referendum in Switzerland. Under referendum rules a minimum of 100,000 valid signatures must be collected within 18 months. The official retirement age in...

On 14 July 2021, Switzerland’s State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation reported that it had been told by the European Commission that Switzerland will be treated as a non-associated third country in the EU’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme. © Thamrongpat Theerathammakorn | Dreamstime.comThis means that Switzerland can only participate in limited ways. It can put forward proposals to some projects but will not qualify for funding. As a work around, the...

Normally, those who borrow must pay out more money than they are lent in the form of interest and repayments. Currently, for the Swiss government it is the other way around. Lenders are paying the Swiss federal government to give it money. © Valeriya Luzina | Dreamstime.comOn 14 July 2021, the Swiss Confederation announced the success of its latest issue of government bonds. The government recently issued bonds with a face value of CHF 934 million in return for CHF 1,078 million, netting...

Switzerland has a mechanism that automatically increases taxes on fossil fuels if emission reduction targets are not met. And the small reduction in emissions in 2020 is not enough to avoid triggering a CO2 tax rise in 2022. © Jean-michel Feinen | Dreamstime.comData published this week by the Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN) confirms the slow progress in reducing emissions in Switzerland. Emissions from heating oil and gas did not fall enough in 2020 to avoid triggering a rise in...

On 8 July 2021, the Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) published unemployment figures for June 2021. © Fizkes | Dreamstime.comBy the end of June 2021, there were close to 132,000 people registered as unemployed across Switzerland, 11,000 fewer than at the end of May 2021, bringing Switzerland’s overall unemployment rate down from 3.1% to 2.8%. Youth employment dropped particularly sharply compared to a year earlier. Unemployment among this age group (15-24) was down 32% year on...