KOF Business Situation Indicator: Swiss Companies Report Slight Slowdown
- KOF Business Situation Indicator
- KOF Bulletin
In June 2018, the KOF Business Situation Indicator for the Swiss private economy lost some ground after having risen substantially in the preceding month (see G 9). All in all, the Business Situation Indicator has changed little since the beginning of 2018. Although the economic situation in Swit-zerland continues to be favourable, businesses are failing to make up further ground.
The slowdown of the business situation can be felt on a broad basis across the different sectors. Aside from the project engineering sector, where the excellent business situation improved even further, the Business Situation Indicator lost ground in all industries surveyed by KOF on a monthly basis (see T 1). Financial and insurance service providers reported a slight slowdown of their rather posi-tive business situation, with the indicator also dropping to some extent in the construction and manufacturing indus-tries. The Business Situation Indicator has also turned slightly negative in the retail trade as the recovery trend reported in the preceding month came to a halt. Wholesal-ers, hotel and catering companies and the other service providers were last surveyed in April. At the time, the busi-ness situation was improving in the hotel and catering sec-tor and among the other service providers, while remaining almost unchanged in the wholesale sector.
From a regional perspective, the business situation slowed down in the large majority of the main FSO regions. The Zurich region, where the Business Situation Indicator changed only marginally, was the only region to escape this trend. In North-West Switzerland, the business situation in June is almost as favourable as in the preceding month. The Business Situation Indicator has noticeably declined in the Lake Geneva region, Ticino, Eastern Switzerland, Espace Mittelland and Central Switzerland.
Explanation of graphs:
Graph 9 presents the KOF business situation across all sectors covered by the survey. The business situation in sectors which are surveyed on a quarterly basis is kept constant during the intervening months.
Graph 10 presents the business situation in the main regions according to the Federal Statistics Office (FSO). The regions are coloured according to business situation. The arrows in the regions indicate the change in the business situation compared to the previous month. An upward-point-ing arrow, for instance, indicates that the situation has improved over the previous month.
The KOF business situation is based on over 4,500 reports by Swiss companies. Every month, businesses are sur-veyed in the following sectors: industry, retail trade, con-struction and project engineering as well as financial and insurance services. Businesses in the hotel and catering sector, wholesalers and the other service providers are surveyed in the first month of every quarter. Among other questions, the businesses are asked to assess their cur-rent business situation. They may rate their situation as ‘good’, ‘satisfactory’ or ‘bad’. The balance of the current business situation is the percentage difference between the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ responses.