GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The US Department of Defense is trying to track down $2 billion in unaccounted spending in Iraq, new figures from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction show. The SIGIR was created in 2004 to oversee the country’s reconstruction programme. Last October some $6 billion was reported missing but it was eventually accounted for, US media reports at the time indicated.
The latest lost-funds case centres around documents that have gone missing despite internal checks and controls, reports CNN: “The Iraqi government in 2004 gave the Department of Defense access to about $3 billion to pay bills for certain contracts, and the department can only show what happened to about a third of that.”
Links to other sites: CNBC, SIGIR 30 January quarterly report, pdf,
Insurance was 8.4% in 2009, but cost has risen for past 2 years
Sausage, roesti and great local wine in St Gallen in late October: the Swiss spent CHF460 a month on average of their household budget dining out in 2009, but this includes work canteens and cafeterias as well as restaurants
BERN, SWITZERLAND – Average disposable household income in Switzerland in 2009 was CHF6,650 a month, with 13 percent of that, CHF1,185, going for food, beverages and restaurants. Housing and energy together made up the largest household budget item, CHF1,495 a month.
Transport used up 7.7 percent of the budgets and entertainment 6.7 percent. Clothing: 2.4 percent.
Households were left with, on average, savings of CHF1,160 after all expenses were deducted.
Taxes consumed on average CHF1,125 a month, some 12 percent, or less than what a household spent on food and beverages.
But taxes are only one part of Swiss mandatory expenses, which also include social security payments:
- 10 percent of disposable income that includes AVS and company pension plans (the Swiss first and second pillars)
- the mandatory part of the health insurance system (5 percent)
- and money sent to other households, for example as part of a divorce settlement (2 percent).
These mandatory expenses together with taxes account for 29 percent of household budgets, some CHF2,720 a month.
In addition, the Swiss in 2009 spent 3.4 percent on health insurance not covered by the basic, obligatory plans.
The figures were published by the Swiss Statistical Office Tuesday 15 November.
The office notes three important points: 58 percent of all households had lower revenue than the average, 39 percent had at least two people contributing to the revenue, and revenue here includes salaries but also social security income, pension payouts, interest payments, dividends, income from fortunes and money from other households (notably divorce settlements).
BERN, SWITZERLAND – The slight increase that Swiss political observers were forecasting for the strength of the right during Switzerland’s parliamentary elections failed to materialize as voters turned to new parties to strengthen the centre.
The UDC People’s Party and the Greens both lost significant ground to moderate parties with elements of their programs, rejecting the more strident anti-immigrant stance of the UDC and the leftist social focus of the Greens.
The centre’s recent role as a multi-party and therefore flexible and potentially unpredictable key group in the coalition government is stronger and will have an impact on the December election of the new Swiss government.
Background story: GenevaLunch
Guide to Swiss 23 October parliamentary elections
Swiss parliament in session Photo ©Swiss parliament
BERN, SWITZERLAND – Swiss voters are voting Sunday 23 October to elect a new parliament. Headlines, especially outside Switzerland, have tried to build high drama into the voting session, where turnout is expected to be only around 40 to 45 percent, largely because the real drama comes in December, when the government is elected, say Swiss political specialists.
Last week goat mascots for the UDC (People’s Party) were stolen and found, covered in black paint, and much has been made of the colourful incident, abroad, of this plus the likelihood that the rightwing party is likely to gather the largest number of voters ever. The brouhaha over the rise of the right is the result of misperceptions about the UDC party’s true power and role in Swiss politics, says Ioannis Papadopoulos, professor of Swiss and public politics at the University of Lausanne’s Institut d’Etudes Politiques et Internationales.
The party is not more strongly against things such as immigration than it has been in the past, he argues, but it is more vocal and thus it appears to be moving further to the right. “What is happening now is that there is a tri-polar system” with homogeneity on the left and right but a very large and heterogeneous centre, he points out. The right will garner a few more votes in this election, he believes, but what really counts is the size and makeup of the complex, multi-party centre.
“This tripartate system makes it possible to rise above polarization and continues to make it governable,” he says.
GenevaLunch brings you this guide to the elections, which take place every four years, along with some cliché crunching about the often poorly understood political system of this nation famous for its direct democracy.
Who votes and on what
A trip to Santa Barbara: California beach life 2009
Neuchatel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Residents of Switzerland took 100 million trips in 2008: 3.2 overnight trips and 12.7 day trips per person, show the results of a government survey carried out every five years. And they are spending more money when they do it, CHF148 a day per person for room, board, travel and incidentals for private overnight trips. This is CHF31 more than they were spending in 2003.
Swiss residents are travelling abroad more often and replacing day trips with overnight stays more frequently, with 83.5 percent of the population taking an overnight trip at least once a year. Germany remains the most popular destination outside Switzerland, although 45 percent of all trips are taken within Switzerland.
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Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Swiss spending is showing a mixed picture, with the UBS index for May remaining well below its average: 0.91 in April, down to 0.77 in May, in contrast to its average of 1.50 covring several years. The retail sector, meeting at a conference in Zurich, says its sales rose 4.4 percent in 2008, to CHF95.6 million, reports TSR (Fre). The increase is the best since 1991. Migros and Coop, the two large supermarket chains, account for 30 percent of retailing in Switzerland.
The world is spending 45 percent more on arms than it did in 1999, and military spending rose by 4 percent in 2008 alone, says Sipri (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute). Worldwide military expenditure in 2008 was an estimated $1,464 billion, according to figures released 8 June to mark the launch of the 2009 edition of its Yearbook on Armaments, Disarmament and International Security.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The Swiss government’s latest figures for health care costs, for 2007, show that costs “rose markedly higher than in the previous five years,” by nearly five percent in a year, to CHF55.3 million. Given the growth of the economy overall, the share of health care spending as a percentage of GDP remained stable at 10.3 percent. Only the US, with over 15 percent of GPD (gross domestic product) and France, with 11 percent, spend more on health care than Switzerland, based on 2006 OECD figures, a government report published 30 March indicates.
