Imports stagnant, exports grow: high franc pressures both
Source: Swiss Statistical Office, 22.11.11
BERN, SWITZERLAND – The Swiss trade balance for 2011 to date has ballooned by 10 percent compared to a year earlier, to CHF2.2 billion, October trade figures show.
The high franc continues to put pressure on prices, and exports continued to show slowed growth of 1.5 percent for the month, with export prices falling 7.3 percent.
Imports were stagnant at CHF14.9m, compared to exports of CHF17b, but prices slipped with imports as well, down 3.2 percent, with prices for goods down 2.6 percent.
The watchmaking, chemicals and machining industries grew, but their export growth hides the bigger picture, with most other industries showing continuing falling exports.
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – A 43-year-old Valais man died Sunday afternoon while working at a chemical plant belonging to Syngenta in Monthey, canton Valais. He and another worker were trying to recover a tool that had fallen into an emptied vat. When they failed to reach it he went into the vat, but without first putting on a protective mask. He lost consciousness and despite the quick arrival of a rescue team, he died at the site of the accident.
Time flies when trade is growing rapidly; Indian Trade Minister Arnand Sharna at Baselworld 2011
BERN, SWITZERLAND – Trade between India and Switzerland, currently negotiating a bilateral free trade treaty, has grown at a “fulgerant” rate in the past 20 years, the Swiss Customs Office says. Exports from Switzerland to India grew by 18 percent in the first nine months of 2011 and have now crossed the threshold of CHF3 billion.
Swiss exports grew seven-fold from 1990 to 2010, from CHF378 million to nearly CHF2.6 billion. Imports from India grew during the same period from CHF251m to CHF901m. Trade with India has thus grown dramatically, but India remains Switzerland’s seventh trading partner, well behind China, with Swiss exports of CHF7.1b and Japan, with CHF6.43.
Chemicals account for main exports as well as imports: mainly pharmaceuticals for Swiss exports, with basic chemical products and finished ones sharing the imports from India about equally. Other Swiss exports: machines, particularly precision instruments, and electronics plus watches.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Geneva should know by October if the world’s three dangerous substances conventions will share one secretariat under one roof in Geneva and combine some of their activities, with the goal of more closely coordinating their work.
Rotterdam, Stockhom and Basel Conventions could be managed together from Geneva
The Fifth Conference of the Parties to the Rotterdam Convention, which regulates the export of dangerous chemicals and pesticides, gets underway in Geneva Monday with the proposed change high on the agenda.
The conference runs 20-24 June.
The Stockholm Convention, known as Pop (regulates persistant organic pollutants), approved the move in April 2011 and the Basel Convention ends its negotiations on the change in October 2011. The Basel Convention regulates the transboundary movement of hazardous wastes and their disposal. All three organizations are based in Geneva.
Four new dangerous chemical substances to be reviewed for global Pic list
The group’s other key discussion is the review of four new substances. The group will decide if they should be added to the world’s list of 40 dangerous substances.
Switzerland is in favour of adding the four new substances to the Pic (Prior Informed Consent) list, the popular name for the Rotterdam Convention, under which the exporting nation agrees to provide all necessary information on the dangers to human beings and the environment to the importing nation, for any dangerous substance.
British NGO Reprieve has been tracking a UK company Dream Pharma that it says has exported enough drugs to four US states to kill more than 100 prisoners under American lethal injection death row programmes. Reprieve has started a debate in the European Parliament over the need to ban exports of such drugs to back up the parliament’s October 2010 resolution against capital punishment. The group says it has proof, from legal documents, that Dream Pharma supplied drugs used to execute Arizona prisoners and the drugs scheduled to be used in killing a prisoner in Georgia, USA 25 January.
Links to other sites: Death Penalty News, India Times, PR Newswire
A fire raged late Thursday 3 June in an old neighbourhood in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, killing 114, according to government figures, but the number could rise higher, officials say. The force of the fire and the difficulty of pulling out the dead and wounded make it difficult to assess just what happened, but Reuters reports that “fuelling the flames, which some witnesses said rose up to six-storeys high, were chemicals from illegal, home-based factories in the Kayettuli neighbourhood, one of the most densely populated in Dhaka and in the heart of the city.”
An explosion in the city Tuesday killed 25 people. The government has declared a period of national mourning for the dead.
Michael Punke, US ambassador to the WTO, 2010
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - “We’re not negotiating with a gun to anyone’s head – that’s not the way the WTO works,” says Michael Punke, the new US ambassador to the World Trade Organization. “What we’re hoping is they will step up and take up their leadership role,” he says, referring to India, China and Brazil. “At the end of day: we have to ask, are the advanced developing economies ready to accept the responsibility and leadership” that goes with their new roles?
The ambassador lost no time Monday morning, during a media breakfast for the new man in Geneva, making it clear that he is keen to start negotiating and to see the Doha Round of trade talks get back on track.
Punke insists there is strong support in the US “to negotiate a Doha outcome that is balanced and ambitious.”
Balanced, in the sense of advanced developing economies taking stronger roles.
Ambitious, in the sense of the Doha Round succeeding without the “arbitrary deadlines or big bang events [that] haven’t worked” in the past, the kind of events where top-level ministers show up and work intensely and everyone hopes the outcome will be a great leap forward.
He believes Geneva has focused too much on these. He is adament that “there aren’t any shortcuts but sitting down, day in and day out” to get through the issues that remain. “The only way to improve that balance is to engage in negotiation.” The US, he says “wants to focus on key sectors in priority markets – the advanced developing economies.”
Muttenz, Basel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Chemicals company Clariant has announced layoffs of 500 employees, 400 of which are in Switzerland, as it continues to restructure. The company suffered sharp losses in 2008, largely due to a sudden drop in the auto industry. The company has since then shed more than 3,000 jobs. It is now moving its textile dyes and textile chemicals division to Asia. The company employed 1,200 people in Switzerland at the end of 2009.
The company’s sales were down 18 percent in Swiss francs in 2009 over the previous year, to CHF 6.6 billion. Clariant reduced its net debt to CHF545 million from CHF1.2b at the end of 2008. Net debt divided by equity was at 29 percent by the end of 2009, well down from the 61% at the end of 2008.
Foreigners at top end out-earn Swiss
Neuchatel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Top managers’ salaries in Switzerland have continued to rise “sharply”, especially in the financial field, since 2006, and the spread between Switzerland’s lowest paid workers and highest increased, a preliminary government statistical report shows. Well-qualified foreign workers and those with long-term C residence permits out-earn their Swiss counterparts while foreigners with lower qualifications and some border workers earn less than Swiss people in comparable jobs.
Salaries, bonuses for insurers, bankers up sharply 2006-2008
The Swiss Statistical Office Tuesday 17 November issued its preliminary report on salaries in 2008. Salaries remained mostly stable, it shows, with the financial sector an exception: salaries and bonuses both rose, with top managers’ salaries increasing 38.8 percent from 2006-2008, compared to an 11.6 percent increase for top managers in all other fields.
Update 10:30 Basel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Multinational Lonza, chemical and biotech active ingredients supplier to the pharmaceutical industry, saw its sales fall by 9.2 percent to CHF1.3 billion in the first half of 2009 but it remained on target with forecasts. The company notes that “the nature of Lonza’s custom manufacturing business model, along with a slowdown in parts of Life Science Ingredients, led to a weaker performance.” Net profit “on a comparable basis” fell by 32.9 percent to CHF118 million from January to June. The profit figures do not include the company’s 2008 profits on the sale of its remaining share of Polynt S.p.A.
Related, Reuters
Ludwigshafen, Germany (GenevaLunch) – German chemicals giant BASF announced 6 July that it was eliminating 3,700 jobs company-wide by the end of 2013. In Switzerland 530 jobs will be affected. BASF bought Swiss chemical company Ciba in April 2009 and hopes to make savings of €400 million by the end of 2012.
Related: Le Temps, Fre
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Geneva-based Givaudin, the world’s leader in scents and flavours, had a 6.07% increase in sales in local currencies in 2008, to CHF4.09 million, representing a fall of 1.1% in Swiss francs. Net income was up 19.4% from CHF93 million in 2007 to CHF111m in 2008. The group says it is relatively optimistic for 2009 despite the overall market downturn.
In other Swiss business news, Basel-based chemical company Clariant has posted a 2008 loss of CHF37 million, hurt by a sharp drop in the textiles and leather business, notably in the auto industry.
Basel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Ciba Tuesday 10 February reported a loss of CHF564 million for 2008, compared to profits of CHF268 in 2007. Sales were down 9% for the year, reflecting a sharp drop in sales in the last quarter of the year, mainly in coatings and plastics for the automotive industry, the chemical company noted.
Basel, Switzerland (RSR, Fre) – Ciba, one of Switzerland’s chemical giants, is being bought out by German BASF, the world’s largest chemical company, for CHF6.1 billion. Ciba was initially raided by the German company, but the two multinationals opened talks and an amicable agreement was reached, with the deal announced over the weekend. Read more…
