Switzerland’s economy is to suffer its worst downturn in decades this year as the COVID-19 pandemic damages output and jobs, the government said yesterday, but the downturn would be less severe than initially feared.
Swiss GDP is to fall 6.2 percent this year, the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs said, the worst downturn since 1975, when the country was hit by the aftermath of the oil price shocks.
Unemployment is forecast to rise to 3.8 percent this year, as foreign trade suffers, consumer spending shrinks and companies emerge slowly from shutdowns imposed to halt the spread of the novel coronavirus.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Still, the forecast was a slight improvement from the 6.7 percent downturn in GDP foreseen by the Swiss government’s economists in their April statement, and compares favorably with other European countries.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and has said that the UK could suffer an 11.5 percent slump this year. Downturns of 11.4 percent are expected in France and 11.3 percent in Italy.
The Swiss government expects a gradual recovery during the second half of this year, provided a massive second wave of the disease along with severe restrictions does not occur.
For next year, the secretariat has forecast underlying economic growth of 4.9 percent, although unemployment would remain high by Swiss standards at 4.1 percent.
“Switzerland’s economy has been fairly resilient in an international comparison,” Mirabaud Group chief economist Gero Jung said.
“Switzerland has been very quick to respond to the crisis, with the government’s stimulus package being massive, totaling more than SF60 billion (US$63.22 billion) or close to 10 percent of domestic GDP,” he said.
More than SF15 billion in emergency loans have also been handed out to nearly 130,000 businesses. About 1.9 million people — or 37 percent of the workforce — have applied for short-time working compensation.
The Swiss lockdown to prevent the disease’s spread was also less severe than in other countries, while the country’s large pharmaceuticals sector has continued to thrive.
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to