Tag Archives: Business & Economy

In 2018, Swiss Rail made a profit of CHF 568 million, 42.5% more than in 2017. Part of the rise was due to higher than average spending on maintenance in 2017. © Erix2005 | Dreamstime.com It is worth noting that Swiss Rail receives a large sum from taxpayers every year. In 2018, the company received CHF 3.5 billion of public funding, CHF 2.7 billion of it booked as income. Without this large lump of taxpayer help Swiss Rail would have made a loss of CHF 2.2 billion in 2018. One way the...

Over the first three months of 2018 Swiss authorities made 80 requests for Facebook user data, however two thirds of them were ignored, according to the newspaper SonntagsBlick as reported in 20 Minutes. © Klevo _ Dreamstime.com When the requests were urgent the response rate rose to two thirds of requests. Reto Nause, who is responsible for security in the city of Bern, is unhappy with the social network’s response record. Several years ago his team asked for information on user activity in...

In 2018, Switzerland’s population consumed around 87,000 tonnes of chocolate. © Astra490 | Dreamstime.com However, average chocolate consumption dropped from 10.5 kg per person in 2017 to 10.3 kg in 2018, a decline of roughly 2%. This decline reflects last year’s longer hotter summer, according to the industry association Chocosuisse. The fall in consumption of Swiss chocolate in Switzerland declined further, dropping by 3.4%. The gap was filled by increased imports of chocolate from outside...

In this year’s Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) survey, Paris, Hong Kong and Singapore tied for the the position of the most expensive. © David Prahl _ Dreamstime.com The survey looks at 160 items including food, drink, rent, transport and utility bills, in 133 cities. New York, the base city, came in 7th, alongside Seoul and Copenhagen. Zurich and Geneva were 4th and 5th. The ten most expensive cities were: 1. Singapore (Singapore)1. Paris (France)1. Hong Kong (China)4. Zurich...

Switzerland’s Federal Office of Civil Aviation (FOCA) has decided to further regulate drones by forcing owners to register them, according to the newspaper NZZ am Sonntag. © Williammacgregor | Dreamstime.com The new requirement, which will probably start in 2020, was suggested in 2017. Drone registration would be done online by the owner. How the police would access the database is still being considered. Currently, those flying drones weighing more than 30 kg require authorization. There are...

Mercer’s 2019 livability ranking looks at 231 cities across the globe. Vienna comes top for the tenth year in a row, while Bagdad ranks last. © Scanrail | Dreamstime.com Three Swiss cities are among the global top ten. Zurich is 2nd, Geneva 9th and Basel 10th. Bern, a fourth Swiss city, is not far behind in 14th place. No other Swiss cities were included in the survey so there is no way of knowing where Lausanne Winterthur, Luzern or St Gallen might have ranked. The ranking is based on the...

© Teo Lay Peng | Dreamstime.com Strolling through the pasta aisle of a Swiss supermarket, someone new to Switzerland might conclude that the locals prefer egg pasta over the eggless variety. And, while that might to some extent be true, there is another reason. Every year, Swiss egg producers produce too many eggs and turn to the government for help. The Federal Office of Agriculture (OFAG) does three things. Firstly,...

Strolling through the pasta aisle of a Swiss supermarket, someone new to Switzerland might conclude that the locals prefer egg pasta over the eggless variety. And, while that might to some extent be true, there is another reason. © Teo Lay Peng | Dreamstime.com Every year, Swiss egg producers produce too many eggs and turn to the government for help. The Federal Office of Agriculture (OFAG) does three things. Firstly, it funds retail egg discounts and runs a “broken egg” programme, which...

Recently published figures show a 7% decline in the percentage of men in Switzerland’s workforce between 1991 and 2018. © Volker Husberg _ Dreamstime.com The workforce figures, which include the unemployed, show a fall in male workforce participation from 81% to 74%, a 7% decline over 27 years. At the same time, the percentage of women working rose 6% from 57% to 63% between 1991 and 2018. Workforce participation for both genders combined declined 0.5% from 1991 to 2018. The largest drop for...

The low-cost French sports goods chain has plans to expand in Switzerland. 14 new stores, employing between 500 and 600 staff, are planned for 2019, according to the newspaper 20 Minutes. © Björn Wylezich _ Dreamstime.com Many of the new stores will be refurbished Athleticum stores. Décathlon teamed up with Athleticum in 2018. In German-speaking Switzerland, the first stores will open in Suhr (Aargau) and Baar (Zug) in March. These will be followed by stores in Bern, Winterthur and St....