Oil price shock weighs heavily on Swiss economy growth

KOF: Oil price shock is putting a bigger dent in the economy than expected Keystone-SDA

The KOF Economic Institute has revised downwards its forecasts for the Swiss economy. This is due to high oil prices.

+ Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

KOF economists now expect growth of just 0.8% for the current year, as they announced on Wednesday. Previously, they had forecast growth of 1.0%. The forecasters are also more pessimistic about 2027, lowering their forecast from 1.7% to 1.5% (real GDP, excluding international sporting events).

By way of comparison: on a long-term average, the Swiss economy grows by 1.8% per year. However, the last time growth exceeded this average was in 2022.

Currently, high oil prices are to blame for the slow growth, as the KOF Institute notes. The war in Iran and the resulting rise in oil prices have weighed more heavily on the economic outlook than assumed in the last forecast, according to the press release.

Translated from German by AI/jdp

How we work

We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.  

Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.

If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at [e-mail].