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.
