The economist Vontobel classifies: create, create, make imperfect

Economist Werner Fontebel

Shava, Shafa – minus

Last year, Switzerland ran a surplus of 73 billion Swiss francs – and still lost 223 billion Swiss francs. We save ourselves.

95.2 billion francs! The National Bank’s record loss in the past six months has made headlines. But this number can be easily exceeded if we look at the whole of Switzerland rather than the national bank. According to the latest data from the National Bank, Switzerland has achieved a current account surplus of 73 billion Swiss francs in the past four quarters (until the first quarter of 2022), but its net foreign assets did not increase by this amount, but by a decrease of at least 223 billion Swiss Franc. A net loss of nearly 300 billion – three times the loss of the Swiss National Bank.

surely. It has been an exceptional year and our foreign assets have always been subject to significant fluctuations. Do not panic. However, an unfavorable long-term pattern has been confirmed: our hard-earned surpluses are wiped out time and time again due to the depreciation of our assets. This also applies to the past ten years, for example. Despite a cumulative surplus of 520 billion, net wealth has fallen by about 100 billion. This results in a negative annual return on assets of approximately 6 percent. Even if we compare the highest level of assets to date of 874 billion with the values ​​of the previous ten years, the final accounts do not look good: cumulative surpluses of 513 billion francs only increased net assets by 110 billion. Here, too, the return on assets is clearly trending in the red.