September

The KOF Economic Barometer remains virtually unchanged in September and now stands at 93.8 points, coming from a revised 93.5 points in August. However, the barometer remains below its long-term average. The barometer, which has been weakening in recent months, augurs a cooling of the Swiss economy for the end of 2022.

The Global Barometers move in opposite directions in September. The Coincident Barometer falls for the eighth consecutive month while the Leading Barometer increases, but continues to fluctuate at a low level, signaling continued pessimism in the global economic growth perspective for the coming months.

The KOF MPC figure for 8 September 2022 is 0.53. At today’s meeting, the ECB’s Governing Council communicated that inflation is far too high and is likely to stay above the ECB’s target for an extended period.

In August, KOF and the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) newspaper surveyed economists at Swiss universities on the country’s pension system and the upcoming vote on the ‘AHV 21’ reforms and received 133 responses. A clear majority of economists are (more or less) in favour of these reforms from an economic point of view. Raising the qualifying pension age is seen by more than half of survey respondents as the most important way of improving the financial situation of the AHV.