NEWS

The Swiss National Bank turned to CHF repo transactions in December with the highest balance since 2012. Meanwhile, Swiss franc exchange rate was rather stable at the end of the week in times of coronavirus scare.

In decade’s time Switzerland will face a huge shortage of employees – up to 700,000 every year. Immigration, women stepping up to work full time and inflow of cross-border workers is the key to avoid this.

Swiss commercial banks have all together paid as much as CHF8 billion in fees due to negative interest rates to Swiss National Bank since 2015, when its monetary policy was imposed.

So far Léman Express, the newly opened, biggest cross-border rail network in Europe, attracts nearly 25,000 passengers per day. Number is at half of the target, but authorities says it is too early to assess the project.

Switzerland on Manipulation Currency Watchlist

                The US Treasury has added Switzerland to its watchlist for countries that supposedly manipulate their currencies, as it called for Swiss government to spend more public money and cut taxes. The US has issued report in which it calls Switzerland to “more forcefully support domestic economic activity” by spending more money while simultaneously reducing taxes, that are already considered low. It is very unusual move to dictate a sovereign country how it should deal with its fiscal policy. The US Treasury justified that “Despite borrowing costs for the Swiss government being among the lowest in the world, fiscal policy remains underutilised, even within the constraints of Switzerland’s existing fiscal rules”.