| The KOF Economic Barometer, with a current reading of 101.3, increased 1.6 points in September 2016 (from revised 99.7 in August). Therefore, the Economic Barometer recovered from its fall below the 100 points level that was witnessed last month and climbs just above its long-term average. The outlook for the Swiss economy remains stable, consistent with its long-term average growth pace.
In September 2016, the KOF Economic Barometer, with a new reading of 101.3 points, rises to slightly above its long-term mean value. Hence, the Barometer recovers from a dip below the 100 points level last month. The strongest impulses contributing positively to the dynamics of the Barometer are coming from manufacturing and consumption sectors, followed by those from the construction sector.
The outlook for the banking and tourism sectors as well as the future assessment of the international business situation remain stable.
Within the manufacturing sector, the improved outlook appears primarily in wood-processing as well as special industries. These positive tendencies are, at the same time, counterbalanced by the deteriorated outlook for the textile industry. In industries such as chemical, electrical, metal processing, machine building, food processing and paper, the overall development is without noticeable contributions to the dynamics of the Barometer in either direction. The improvement of the sentiment in manufacturing as a whole is primarily reflected in the favourable assessment of incoming orders and intermediary product purchases as well as improving confidence regarding the overall business climate. However, the assessment of the employment situation, like a fly in the ointment, contributes negatively to the overall positive development of the Barometer. |
KOF Economic Barometer September 2016(see more posts on Switzerland KOF Economic Barometer, ) - Click to enlarge |
Economic barometer und Reference series:
Annual Update
In September 2016, the scheduled annual update of the KOF Economic Barometer took place. The annual update of the Barometer concerns the following stages: redefinition of the pool of indicators that enter the selection procedure, update of the reference time series, a new execution of the variable selection procedure and a procedure to estimate missing monthly values of quarterly variables. The updated reference series is the smoothed continuous growth rate of Swiss GDP according to the new System of National Accounts ESVG 2010, released at the end of August 2015, which takes into account the release of the previous year’s annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) data by the Swiss Federal Statistical Office. As a result of the indicator variable selection procedure, the updated KOF Economic Barometer is now based on 272 indicators (instead of 238 as in the previous vintage) from a pool of more than 400 potential indicator series. They are combined using statistically determined weights. |
KOF Economic Barometer and Reference Series September 2016(see more posts on Switzerland KOF Economic Barometer, ) - Click to enlarge |
