The business week in review

It has been a busy week for Swiss business, despite the fact that many people have been on holiday and companies are generally quiet at this time of the year.

News of a surge in consumer confidence dominated the business headlines this week, with a survey showing public confidence in the economy is now at levels not seen since before the recession in the 1990s.

The survey among 1,100 households showed that for the first time in years, the Swiss are also much more relaxed about job security. However, there were also fears that the economic recovery might fuel inflation.

The optimism about the economy was underscored by a report from the Swiss Institute for Business Cycle Research on Tuesday. The study predicted that the economy would continue to expand robustly in the months ahead but that growth might have peaked.

Another set of positive figures came on Tuesday regarding unemployment. The total jobless figure at the end of July fell by 822 to 65,140 or 1.8 per cent of the working population, a near ten-year low.

The Swiss watchmaking industry came up with good news on Thursday, announcing that exports of watches and movements for the first six months had reached a record level of SFr4.72 billion ($2.76 billion). This is up by 17.2 per cent compared to the same period last year.

The president of the Federation of the Swiss Watch industry, Francois Habersaat, said he was looking forward to a record for the year as a whole, predicting a total export figure of SFr9.7 billion.

The Federation in Biel said some sectors were now “stretched to the limits of their capacity”.

In other news, farmers warned that five weeks of heavy rain had ruined much of this year’s harvest and had made the land difficult to work. In Berne, the pharmaceuticals group, Galenica, announced plans to expand its activities into the French speaking part of the country. And the Swiss Federal Railways confirmed that it was recruiting 100 train drivers from Germany to fill a shortfall.

Finally, there were smiles at the space technology company, Contraves Space, on Wednesday after the successful launch of two satellites from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on board a Soyuz rocket. Contraves Space had developed, manufactured and tested the satellite structures, a key element in the second part of the Cluster mission of the European Space Agency.

swissinfo with agencies