The Swiss government\u2019s economic support program has helped Switzerland avoid a wave of companies going bankrupt or out of businesses due to the implications of the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic, according to a recent report by the KOF Swiss Economic Institute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The number of companies that went out of business actually declined by 20% between March and July of this year compared with the same period last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nevertheless, this could not prevent the economic downturn, which became a global issue due to the challenges of facing the pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe number of bankruptcies has not been significantly higher than expected in any major region or sector of the economy,\u201d the report said as cited by SwissInfo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Accordingly, volatile industries such as hospitality and entertainment experienced a small impact from the pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The program included measurements such as a large lending program, coupled with a ban on debt collection, starting from April in order to cope with COVID-19.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In addition, the program presented a compensation scheme for short working hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The number of people who worked shorter hours amounted to 890,890 in May, decreasing by 17% compared with the level registered in April, according to data by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Furthermore, the shorter working hours compensation scheme, which was used by nearly 110,000 companies were in May, helped reduce job losses due to the pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The program aims at reducing the slump in demand during the current circumstances, according to remarks by the Minister of Finance, Ueli Maurer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The use of the program witnessed a decline of 16% in May compared with April, when the crisis was at a more challenging stage and led to job cuts around the world and a the steepest point in the economic downturn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meanwhile, unemployment rate in Switzerland stabilized at 3.2%, according to non-seasonally adjusted for the month of June.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, the number of the unemployed people at 148,870 remains higher by 53% compared with the same period in 2019, according to the most recent by SECO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Swiss gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to fall by around 6.2% this year, according to a recent report by SECO, marking the worst downturn for the economy of Switzerland since 1975.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Moreover, unemployment could rise as high as 3.8% in 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The June forecasts for the GDP contraction were better than the 6.7% economic downturn that SECO expected in April.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the other hand, the Swiss government reportedly expects a gradual economic recovery in the second half (H2) of 2020 and next year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A growth rate of 4.9% is expected in 2021, but losses of $100 billion are expected to be recorded in production due to the COVID-19 negative impact on the economy, according to recent estimates by economic experts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A recovery next year would highly depend on the change in the current circumstances, with a second wave posing a risk for the anticipated economic recovery, as in this case, the market could face a larger number of job cuts unless a proper repose is provided.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Swiss government\u2019s economic support program has helped Switzerland avoid a wave of companies going bankrupt or out of businesses due to the implications of the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic, according to a recent report by the KOF Swiss Economic Institute. The number of companies that went out of business actually declined by 20% between March …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":32540,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[6863,6980],"class_list":["post-32548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-economic-reports","tag-covid-19-2","tag-switzerland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32548"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32549,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32548\/revisions\/32549"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}