Fr., Jan. 6th 2023
American tourists who booked once-in-a-lifetime Swiss ski trips have been disappointed.
An unusually warm start to the year has left Swiss ski resorts without snow; and therefore, without the tourism the mountain villages rely on. Some mountain resorts are seeing temperatures as high as 69 degrees Farenheit – the warmest first week of January since 1864, according to the country’s federal office MeteoSwiss. In Gstaad, only 16 out of 70 slopes are open. In Leysin, skiers have only one narrow strip of artificial snow to use. According to the UN UN Intergovernmental Panel Switzerland is warming at about twice the global average because of the heat-trapping effect of the mountains. Mehr lesen.
With fewer Swiss residents shopping in-person during the Covid-19 pandemic, Müller has struggled to survive.
One of the country’s biggest health food retailers, Müller Reformhaus, announced this week that it will liquidate its stores after never fully recovering from financial struggles related to the Covid-19 pandemic. The retail chain, founded in 1929, was already struggling with online competition before 2020. Debt continued to mount while stocks plummeted over the last two years. On January 3, Müller stopped trading. Müller will start with closing 37 of its stores (which employ about 300 Swiss residents). “Every day our employees were confronted with the statement that our offer was too expensive,” a spokesperson said, adding “we were not able to improve the employment conditions of our workforce in the long term.” Lesen Sie mehr.
The SNB, the Bank of England, the European Central Bank and U.S. Federal Reserve all raised rates at the end of December.
Inflation in Switzerland unexpectedly slowed in December, although costs overall increased by nearly 2.8% since December 2021, according to the Federal Statistics Office. The slowdown is below the 3% median forecast economists predicted in a Bloomberg survey. That said, the slowdown is probably just a reprieve before a January acceleration, thanks to increases in both health insurance and electricity costs. Energy costs will, on average, increase by 27% for Swiss households, according to state regulators from ELCOM. Health insurance costs will increase by about 6.6%. Overall, the country has been above the Swiss National Bank’s 2% ceiling for nearly one year. Lesen Sie mehr.
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