13-year high in car sales in Switzerland in 2010
New cars in Switzerland: December 2011 registrations were all-time record
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The Swiss Automobile Importers Association has come out firmly against Bern’s announcement last week that the autoroute sticker (road tax) price will jump from CHF40 to 100. Its argument, in aligning itself with truckers associations, is that some of the road tax money will be used to finance the country’s rail system starting in 2030, but the group also argues that the federal coffers have a reserve of 1.7 billion for roads and the tax should not be increased until this falls to CHF0.5 billion.
The rationale for the announced increase is to speed up road improvements that are needed as the number of cars on the road grows quickly. The importers association has just published figures showing that the past two years have seen a significant hike in the number of cars imported into Switzerland, which does not have a major car manufacturing company of its own.
The Swiss Automobile Importers Association notes that in 2011 the country imported and sold 318,958 and by comparison in 2010 the figure was 294,239 cars. The 2011 sales show a 10.6 percent increase in the past two years, with a year-on-year increase of 8.4 percent in 2011 alone.
Last year was the first in a decade when more than 300,000 new cars were registered in Switzerland and the only previous years when sales were higher were 1988, 1989 and 1990. December 2011 is the best sales month that the importers association has ever recorded.
The association points out that new Swiss CO2 reduction regulations for cars go into effect in May 2012 and must be applied to all new cars registered as of 1 July 2012. The change aligns Switzerland with European Union regulations. The one exception is cars brough in from abroad that were registered abroad at least six months before they are imported.
NEUCHATEL, SWITZERLAND – Freight carried by road and rail increased by 2 percent in 2010, showing some recovery after a 9 percent drop due to the faltering economy in 2009.
The new figures are the most recent annual ones for the industry, published by the Swiss Statistical Office in Neuchatel.
Chinese tourists admiring the view and learning about Switzerland's first weather station at Saentis
NEUCHATEL, SWITZERLAND – Figures for the Swiss Hotel industry in November, published 16 January, confirm the likely impact of the high Swiss franc, with the number of overnight stays down by 0.2 percent. Swiss visitors increased, up 2 percent, while foreign visitors diminished, with their stays down by 2 percent.
The total of overnight stays was 1.8 million, with a drop of 3,000 overnights for the month, with foreigners having 19,000 fewer overnight stays.
BERN, SWITZERLAND – The number of asylum seekers in Switzerland rose 4.9 percent in October, representing 100 more individuals (total, 31 October: 2,142) than in September, new figures from the Federal Migration Office shows. The office says that at the end of September the figures for the second quarter of the year were stable, with a 1.2 percent increase.
Zurich, Bern and Vaud have the largest number of active asylum applications under consideration.
Eritreans and Tunisians remain the two largest groups seeking asylum, with Nigerians third.
Switzerland sent 351 applicants to Italy in October, under the terms of the Dublin Regulation, which is designed to prevent asylum-seekers from applying to several European Union states or to move continually from one to another.
Tunisians fleeing Libya early in 2011: the Arab Spring events were not the driving force behind the growing number of asylum seekers in 2011 (photo, UNHCR)
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The number of asylum seekers worldwide increased by 17 percent, the UN refugee group UNHCR announced Tuesday. Applications to industrialized countries numbered 198,300 from 1 January to 30 June 2011, with “most claimants coming from countries with longstanding displacement situations.”
The figures are part of report issued 18 October by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees office, “Asylum Levels and Trends in Industrialized Countries, First Half 2011″. The group notes that applications usually peak in the second half of a year and it expects that the final tally may be the highest in eight years: 420,000.
The report does not show how many applications translate into the granting of asylum, in other words refugee status.
The floodgates have not been opened by the Arab Spring events, with neighbouring countries accepting most of the refugees who have fled conflict in northern Africa. Rather,
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Money invested in mental health comes to a global average of only $3 per capita, according to the World Health Organization, and in some developing countries it is as low as $.25, with most funds spent on long-term hospitalization. Only two percent of all health resources are invested in mental health services and prevention is badly underfunded, the Geneva-based group says in its Mental Health Atlas 2011, published Friday 7 October.
The report “finds that the bulk of those resources are often spent on services that serve relatively few people”, with 70 percent of scarce funding going to mental institutions.
A key problem is that “in lower income countries, however, shortages of resources and skills often result in patients only being treated with medicines. The lack of psychosocial care reduces the effectiveness of the treatment.”
Half of the world’s population lives in areas where there is only one psychiatrist per 200,000 people.
Vacancy rate, as a % of all Geneva housing, since 1985
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Geneva’s very tight housing situation has not improved, new figures released 9 August by Ocstat, the cantonal statistical office, show. The figures are part of the annual federal statistics on housing.
The vacant housing rate in June 2011 was stuck at 0.25 percent, the lowest availability rate in Switzerland, with a total of 437 apartments and 119 villages the day the pulse was taken, most of them for rent rather than for sale. Seven of the 25 communes in the canton showed no vacant housing at all, while the 60 additional units listed, compared to a year earlier, were in the city centre, Lancy and Vernier.
Not all cats find their way home: more than 12,000 were abandoned or turned into the SPA in 2010 in Switzerland
BERN, SWITZERLAND – The number of abandoned animals took a jump in 2010, up 13 percent from 2009, for a total of 27,463. The number of abused or neglected animals also rose, by 14 percent, nearly 6,700 animals.
Neglected or mistreated animals, which often have to be put to sleep, are frequently found with what the Society for the Protection of Animals calls “collectors”, people who may have 100 animals because they don’t know how to say no to strays. They are then overwhelmed and the animals end up in a piteable state, according to the Swiss SPA, which published the figures Monday 8 August.
At the end of 2010, about one-quarter of the animals had still not been found a home.
Half of the abandoned animals are cats.
A Chinese TV travel programme film crew shoots preparations for the 1 August national holiday celebrations at a chalet in Valais
Chinese most rapidly growing group of visitors
ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – The Swiss franc has been soaring, but tourists continue to visit Switzerland, the country’s latest tourism figures show.
The first six months of 2011 show a very slight slippage, down 0.2 percent compared to the same period in 2010, with foreign visitors’ overnight stays down 6.9 percent.
The numbers show some surprises, however.
The 7.6 percent drop in the number of overnight stays by Germans, Switzerland’s largest group of tourists, is blamed on the weakness of the euro, but overnight stays by US visitors were up 3.6 percent to more than 700,000 overnight stays despite the increasingly weak dollar.
Germany remains by far the biggest tourism client, with 2.75 million overnight stays from January to end-June, with the UK in second place with 923,000.
Swiss raclette cheese explained, 1 August 2011, to Chinese TV crew
But the number of Chinese tourists (minus Hong Kong) is growing more rapidly than any other group: 221,218 overnights during the first six months of the year, a 39 percent increase. And of the increase of 61,000 overnights, more than 20,000 were in the month of June alone.
China is now the 10th largest source of tourists, close on the heels of India 270,238 overnights during the same period.
China and India are the only non-European countries in the top 10 besides the US.
Virtually all tourism regions in Switzerland saw a slight increase in the first six months of the year, with Graubuenden and Valais as exceptions, but both are big ski destinations and the lack of snow in the latter part of the winter may have had an impact.
Tourism office officials said earlier this year that it generally takes a few months for the impact of exchange rates to show in the figures, since holiday travel is generally booked ahead.
Football and skiing cause greatest number of sports injuries, Swiss safety statistics show
Source: BPU 2011 (click on image to view larger)
ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – The greatest number of injuries to children around the home in Switzerland are due to falling from heights, while by age 26 falling on stairs becomes more of a problem.
By age 45 we become wiser about avoiding falls in general, until age 65 when we suddenly fall more often at level ground and once again from heights. But we remain far more careful about stairs in our old age.
The details of how and when we are likely to injure ourselves in accidents are part of the lastest Swiss safety statistics, published Wednesday 3 August by BPU, the Swiss Safety Council.
Accidents cost the country CHF55 million in 2008
The new figures, culled from 2008 statistics, underscore the often-ignored fact that accidents are a major and costly public health problem. Accidents caused more than 61,000 deaths in 2008, the most recent year for statistics and the one covered by the report.
Disease, by comparison, caused some 57,000 deaths.
The figures hold true for every age group: accidents at all ages take more lives than disease.
The total economic burden of all accidents in 2008 was CHF54.8 million, with home and leisure accidents accounting for more than half, CHF30 million. Road accidents cost more than the sports or home/leisure accidents when tangible costs alone are considered, but the longer-term cost of home and leisure accidents is more than double the figure for either road or sports accidents.
The statistics also show that for the three categories of road, sports and home/leisure accidents, the greatest number of people who are disabled or severely injured have had accidents at home, some 29,000. The figures for people disabled or severely injured by road accidents and sports are about the same: some 12,000 people in 2008 for each group.
The highest number of deaths, 1,538, was due to home accidents, followed by road accidents, 329, and sports accidents, 129.
Road accidents, however, carry the greatest risk of disability, severe injury or death, based on the rates in 2008. BPU registered 91,000 road accidents, 310,000 sports accidents and 600,000 home and leisure accidents.
Soccer has the highest per-hour-of-sport incidence of injuries
Chappatte cartoon from 2009: 2010 didn't see an improvement in revenues (©2011 Chappatte, distributed by Globe Cartoon. More cartoons on Chappatte’s web site. Geneva-based Patrick Chappatte works for the International Herald Tribune, for Geneva newspaper Le Temps, and for NZZ am Sonntag. All cartoons reproduced with permission.)
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – GenevaLunch is on a slow-news holiday schedule for the next two weeks, but to make sure you don’t miss key reports we’re bringing you highlights from some of the news beats, with links to original sources:
EPFL plays key role in understanding Deepwater Horizon oil spill
EPFL is playing a key role in understanding how the properties of hydrocarbons are important in understanding the wellhead structure and pollution diffusion—how pollution spreads out—in the depths.
EPFL notes in a press release: “The main problem was the depth of the well, nearly 1,500 meters below the sea surface. It was a configuration that had never been tried before, and the pollution it unleashed after methane gas shot to the surface and ignited in a fiery explosion is also unequalled. Much research has been done since the spill on the effects on marine life at the ocean’s surface and in coastal regions. Now, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) professor Samuel Arey and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute reveal in the advance online edition of Proceedings of the national Academy of Sciences how escaped crude oil and gas behave in the deep water environment.”
Swiss pharma industry has good second quarter 2011
Novartis‘s second quarter results, announced 19 July, were strong: Net sales grew 27 percent (up 19 percent in constant currencies) to $14.9 billion. The Basel pharmaceutical company says four drugs received approvals: the US FDA approved Afinitor for advanced pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors and Arcapta Neohaler for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and the European Union granted approval for Lucentis in retinal vein occlusion and for hypertension medicine Rasilamlo. The company’s shares rose 3.15 percent Tuesday as a result, reports Le Temps (registration).
Roche is buying mtm laboratories AG (mtm), a privately-held company based in Heidelberg, Germany, the Basel pharma company announced 19 July, for CHF160 million up front and another CHF90m when agreed milestones are met: “mtm is a global leader in developing in vitro diagnostics with a focus on early detection and diagnosis of cervical cancer, the largest early detection market in oncology.”
Swiss media ads down sharply in June
Advertising revenue for Swiss media continues to fall, with June income down 6.5 percent overall from a year earlier to CHF132.3 million, show figures published 19 July by Remp, the industry research arm, reported in Le Temps. Worst hit was the economic and financial press, down nearly 23 percent, with revenues of CHF3.7m. Revenues for daily papers, which account for about half of all media advertising income, was down 8.9 percent. Sunday papers were a rare exception, with revenues inching up by 2.8 percent over a year earlier, to CHF11.8m.
Internet use continues to grow, with a report in mid-July showing that 80 percent of the population surveyed using the Internet several times a week and 67 percent daily, reports Cominmag.
Motorcyclists and bicyclists account for 45% of victims who die or suffer serious injuries in road accidents
BERN, SWITZERLAND – The number of people who died or were injured in road accidents in Switzerland fell below 20,000 in 2010, for the first time since the 1950s, numbers released 19 July show.
Federal Statistical Office annual figures show that 327 people died in road accidents, 4,458 were seriously injured and 19,779 suffered lighter injuries.
The figures show a steady drop since 1992: 61 percent fewer road deaths and 47 percent fewer serious injuries.
Of the 4,785 victims of serious accidents (death, serious injuries) 1,410 were in cars and 1,283 on motorcycles, 864 were on bicycles and 781 were pedestrians.
Motorcyclists are victims of a far higher number of serious accidents in summer, with the figures for deaths and serious injuries almost the same as those for people in cars even though there are far fewer cars on the roads.
The number of bicyclists injured fell in 2010, but the number of pedestrians injured rose. Pedestrians are particularly vulnerable in winter.
“Inattention” is the leading factor behind accidents, with mobile phone use increasingly cited. Inappropriate speed and not giving priority are two other main factors, according to the statistical data.
Ed. note: TSR, in a related article, notes that Geneva and Zurich have the highest car insurance rates in Switzerland
The city centre Plainpalais park is ringed by old apartment buildings, which when renovated, as Muller's is, generally fetch high rents (photo: Rohit Acharya on flickr, reproduced with permissison)
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Geneva is heating up as the summer holidays set in, not over outdoor temperatures but over the revelation by TSR public television 30 June that Mark Muller, Geneva councilor with responsibility for construction, pays only CHF1,800 plus charges for a seven-room apartment.
The rent for the top-floor flat overlooking Plainpalais is well below the rate of about CHF7,000 one would expect to pay in Geneva, according to TSR and the Tribune de Geneve, which corrects the amount to CHF2,000 a month, based on a phone interview.
The Tribune focuses on the fact that the housing boss’s rent remains relatively low because of the LDTR, loi sur les démolitions, transformations et rénovations d’habitations, which Muller has fought for several years. He has rented the apartment since 2009, he told the Tribune and he did not take over a lease held by a friend.
The disclosure follows the canton’s publication this week of housing statistics that show rent jumps 17 percent when tenants move. The statistics show that the average rent for a 7-room apartment is CHF3,187, but the annual report on Geneva rents notes that the price varies hugely at this end of the rental scale depending on the “standing” or quality of the apartment.
Less snow than usual for the Swiss 2010-11 winter, but enough to provide some fun: Corvatsch, St Moritz in canton Graubuenden
NEUCHATEL, SWITZERLAND – The continuing strength of the Swiss franc is having repercussions on the tourism industry, figures released Monday 6 June by the Swiss Statistical Office show, but the dip is slight.
The winter season saw a decline in numbers, down 0.7 percent or 114,ooo overnight stays compared to the previous year, but the lack of snow may have played as much of a role as the strong franc. The winter season, which runs from November to April, saw 15.8 million overnight stays in Switzerland.
Tourism, measured by overnight stays, was up by 0.8 percent, or 118,000 stays in April, compared to the same month the previous year. Visits by Swiss tourists rose by 2.3 percent while the number of stays by foreigners fell by 0.4 percent.
The overall figures hide some significant differences, with Chinese tourists up 59 percent, an increase of 15,000 overnight stays, to some extent making up for the loss of 45,000 overnight stays by Germans, a drop of 9.5 percent.
Half of all drivers fail first attempt at on-the-road test
Some cantons offer theory tests in English, but success rate low
Revised Swiss motorcycle license tests put new emphasis on handling the bike on the road, maneuvers to increase safety
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Lausanne and Neuchatel are once again the toughest places in Switzerland in which to get a driver’s license, 2010 Swiss statistics on the success rates for theory and driving tests show. The figures are published this week by ASA, the Swiss Automobile Association.
English theory test pass rate 17 points below national average
The new figures also show that while the pass rate for theory tests nationwide is 67.4 percent on average, the rate for tests administered in English is 49 percent. The tests are offered in English by only a handful of cantons and are only 0.9 percent of all tests. They are offered in German, French and Italian throughout Switzerland.
This is the first year that the published statistics have also included motorcycle permit pass rates, as part of efforts to reduce the number of serious accidents involving motorcycles. The pass rates vary considerably for the driving test, from 83.6 percent in Bern to 52.6 percent in Zurich. Motorcyclists in Geneva had a pass rate of 68.4 percent while in Vaud it was 54.1 percent.
Motorcycle driving tests were recently improved, according to ASA, in order to put more emphasis on specific maneuvers while driving, to improve safety.
Vaud had Switzerland’s lowest pass rate for car licenses
The pass rate on the category B (cars) driving test also varied widely:
Basel – 66.6%
Bern – 69.5%
Geneva – 65.6%
Neuchatel – 55%
Vaud – 53.1%
Zurich – 60.4%
Swiss judiciary police in action - Photo GE police
Neuchatel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The overall crime rate fell by 1 percent in Switzerland in 2010, but the picture was mixed, figures released by the federal government Monday 21 March show.
Juvenile crime fell by 8 percent and penal code infractions were down 5 percent. But numbers for drug-related crimes and the foreigners illegally entering the country were up, 4 percent for the first and 7 percent for the second.
The last two increases could be due at least in part to better policing, given that these arrests are the result of police investigations, while property crimes are generally recorded as a result of victims posting complaints.
Switzerland’s crime rate is relatively low, compared to other countries, but recent, accurate comparisons are hard to come by and not widely considered accurate.
The Federal Statistical Office in Neuchatel cautions that 2010 is only the second year when police departments from all cantons provided harmonized statistics, some cantons that joined the nationwide crime statistics programme in 2009, the first year, were still adapting their own reporting systems. Comparison should be made with some reserve, the federal agency notes.
Most crimes were against property
The total number of crimes reported was 656,858 for a population of some 7.7 million. Eighty percent of the crimes were against property, 14 percent involved drug laws, 4 percent were illegal presence in the country and 2 percent involved breaking “other” federal laws.
Foreign criminals disproportionate to non-Swiss population
Waving less bravely
Bern and Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – US State Department figures for 2010 confirm what many Americans who are long-term residents in other countries have suspected: the number of US citizens giving up their citizenship is on the rise. The figure was 1,485 according to renunciationguide.com, but Bloomberg lists 1,534. In both cases, the 2010 figure appears to be about double that for any year since 2003.
Renunciationguide.com, a site maintained by and for people considering giving up US citizenship, points out a number of errors in the figures and notes that clear records are not published, and that it is safe to assume the figures are higher based on inter-agency discrepancies.
The US began, in 1996, publishing in The Federal Register the names of those who renounce, and from this readers calculate the numbers.
The figures reflect completed requests, not demands and there are long waiting periods at some embassies, with Bern, for example, taking appointments for August 2012.
The number of people rose despite an administrative fee of $450 imposed in July 2010. Renouncing citizenship had previously been free of charge.
“The UN Universal Declaration on Human Rights recognizes the right to leave one’s country and to change one’s nationality, but it’s not US law,” notes renunciationguide.com.
New passport remark links passport applications to the IRS for first time
The line may grow longer, as embassies begin to provide new forms published in December 2010 for renewing US passports, which state clearly for the first time, as part of the Privacy Act information, that data will be provided (italics GenevaLunch) to the US treasury, where the IRS tax office is housed:
“Your Social Security Number will be provided to Treasury, used in connection with debt collection and checked against lists of persons ineligible or potentially ineligible to receive a US passport, among other unauthorized uses.” (2008 form, identified by the DS-82 and 02-2008 in the lower left corner, still on some US embassy web sites, and the new 2010 form)
Click on image to view larger and compare the Privacy Act Statements
The same is true for new passport applications: DS-11 from 2008 and from 2010.
The new forms include several other changes and should be read carefully by anyone applying for or renewing a US passport.
The US goverenment does not allow its citizens to renounce citizenship to avoid paying taxes, but people with dual citizenship may find the passport change to be a deciding factor in keeping just the other nationality.
US citizens with assets and income above a certain level have long been considered to give up their citizenship for tax purposes whether or not they have other reasons, as a 1998 Senate Finance Committee report stated, and the law has not changed (ed.note: figures are from 1998):
“Any individual with a net worth of $500,000 or more (adjusted for inflation) on the date of expatriation or who has an average annual net income tax liability for the five years preceding expatriation of $100,000 or more (adjusted for inflation) is irrebuttably presumed to have expatriated for tax-motivated reasons . . . and thereby is subject to tax under section 877 regardless of actual intent. All expatriates are required under the Code to provide upon expatriation a statement indicating residence and citizenship. In the case of expatriates with gross assets having an aggregate fair market value in excess of $500,000, a detailed statement of assets and liabilities is also required.”
The law has eased somewhat, however, and in 2008 a requirement was dropped that obliged wealthy former citizens to file US tax forms for 10 years after giving up citizenship, Bloomberg points out in an article on the growing number of people giving up their citizenship.
Tax compliance and long waits slowing down renunciation process
For those who want to join the line to “renounce” citizenship, as Washington labels the process, an added complication is proof that a person is “compliant” where US taxes are concerned. The issue for these people is rarely fraud, but the complexity and cost of becoming compliant.
Non-compliance may be due simply to the fact that “It’s a daunting and complex task to file a ‘resident’ US tax return, and non-residents have to further complete a foreign tax credit computation and filing. Also, some of the common software tools like Turbo Tax haven’t allowed users to file electronically with a foreign address. Finally, most people have already had to file taxes once in another country, so it’s double the work,” says Gregory Dean of US Tax in Geneva.
A translator in Paris explained to GenevaLunch why he did not file US taxes for the first 20 years of his adult life.
Two-wheelers most at risk on Vaud's roads
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The number of people killed in road accidents in Vaud in 2010 is 40 percent lower than in 2003, show new figures for the canton issued Monday 14 March.
Thirty-six people lost their lives in 2010, compared to 63 in 2003. The main factors remain speed, inattention, refusal to give priority and drunkenness.
One-third of the drivers at fault were between 18 and 29 years old, a percentage disproportionately higher than the number of drivers in that age group.
The number of motorcyclists killed on Vaud roads last year was down from 13 to 8, but authorities say this group remains the most at risk.
Accidents overall fell to 5,206, nearly 100 fewer than in 2009, despite some 15,000 more vehicles registered in Vaud in 2010, a 2.9 percent increase.
The number of cars actually on the road appeared to be stable, according to federal figures.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Swiss jobless figures for January 2011 show a steady improvement, with overall employment up 1.2 percent and manufacturing up 1.4 percent over a year, the largest increase since 2007.
Bern’s official statement notes: “According to the Federal Statistical Office (FSO), the quarterly indicators of the employment barometer show a significant year-on-year increase in employment. For the first time since the 1st quarter of 2007, employment growth is more pronounced in the secondary sector than in the tertiary sector. In addition, all short-term employment outlook indicators show a positive trend for the third consecutive quarter.”
Increase due almost entirely to pedestrians outside crosswalks
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The number of deaths on roads in Switzerland fell by 4 percent in 2010 but the number of pedestrian deaths was up by 27 percent, new figures from the Swiss Safety Council (bfu/bpa) show. There was little change in the number of people killed while using a crosswalk, but pedestrians killed elsewhere rose from 39 to 56.
Overall number of accidents continues to fall
Alcohol and speed factors remain high
Photo, Mr Kio on flickr, http://www.flickr.com/photos/igievil/
A total of 361 people died on Swiss roads in 2010. Speed is estimated to have played a role in about one-third of fatal accidents and alcohol in about one-fifth.
Another 4,508 people were seriously injured in road accidents in Switzerland in 2010. Speed may have been a factor in about one-quarter of these and alcohol in about one in seven accidents.
The number of accidents in 2010 was more than 500 lower than in 2005, with the number falling every year. The safety council attributes the decline to preventive efforts and more policing, but it says there are still far too many deaths and injuries.
Speed, crossing outside crosswalks a deadly combination
Most pedestrians are killed during busy traffic periods such as rush hour, the new annual safety council report indicates.
“Most pedestrian accidents occur while people are crossing the road, in towns, and during rush hour. A systematic reduction in speed would help reduce the number of accidents and reduce the seriousness of injuries caused by them.” Bfu/bpa notes that the percentage of deaths when cars are going 30kph is 10 percent, but this climbs to 70 percent when cars are going 50kph.
Three out of five Swiss residences are single-family homes
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss government has counted the country’s homes, officially, for the first time. The new Federal Register of Buildings and Dwellings statistics show that at the end of December 2009 the number of buildings with residential use in Switzerland was 1,623,000 with a total of 4,008,400 dwellings.
Switzerland has a population of 7.4 million, giving it on average 1.85 persons per dwelling.
More houses than apartments, and homes are getting larger
Three out of five dwellings are individual homes, surprisingly almost as many in urban areas, 57 percent, as in rural, 59 percent. But houses supply only 25 percent of lodgings. Three- and four-room apartments account for 53 percent of all residential living space.
The five largest cities vary, with Zurich having not quite twice as many individual houses as apartments, while Geneva has three times as many houses.
Source: Swiss Federal Register of Buildings and Dwellings, 2009 figures. Left to right: total buildings, total housing, individual homes, multi-dwelling housing
The study does not look at the number of square metres of dwellings but in terms of the number of rooms, apartments have been getting larger.
More than 60 percent of apartments built after 1990 have four or five rooms, with a steady fall in the number of three-room apartments. Geneva is the only city to have more five- and six-room apartments (combined) figure than four-room ones.
Number of dwellings, by the number of rooms, Swiss-wide, 2009 (source: Federal Statistical Office)
The figures for the first housing tally are limited, based on figures gathered on the basis of the 2000 census, but the register will be expanded in coming years.
It is part of the new federal approach to gathering annual statistics for a more comprehensive government data base in the place of a census every 10 years.
Government education subsidies keep fees low, even for foreign students
Parked and working hard at the Rolex Learning Center, EPFL in Lausanne
Neuchatel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – One-fifth of Swiss university students are foreign, with the figure climbing for graduate students, yet university fees remain low in Switzerland thanks to government subsidies. Parents pay about half of their adult children’s university costs. New federal statistics published Tuesday 23 November show that only 10 percent of the cost of attending graduate school is financed by scholarships or student loans.
The figures are part of a European-wide survey, Eurostudent, to be published in coming days, according to Bern. Thirty countries participated in the study.
Living at home saves students’ one-third of costs
Three-quarters of Swiss graduate school students work, and their families finance at least 50 percent of their costs.
The bulk of working students are employed during the school year as well as during school holidays.
Students at the HES, or specialized schools, are most often employed in a field linked to their studies.
Graduate students spend on average an additional CHF1,870 a month if they are paying rent away from their parents’ home, or CHF1,210 if they are living at home. Swiss graduate school tuition fees range from CHF1,000-8,000 a year, with foreign students often but not always paying the higher fees.
EPFL’s Aebischer: we need more foreign students
EPFL: Rolex Learning Center has cubicle's for teamwork
The relatively low fees, compared to those in the UK and US, for example, are due largely to government subsidies, but there is little outcry over subsidizing international students. A recent change in the law now gives international students six months to find a job before their permits run out at the end of their studies. Some students, notably engineers, are in short supply and companies who hire them are anxious to see schools like EPFL, the Lausanne polytechnic, turn out more of them.
“There’s a real penurie,” says Denis Piaget, chief executive officer of Etel, a company in Motier, canton Neuchatel. It is the world’s leading supplier of direct drive and motion systems, whose high-tech industry clients include makers of semi-conductors, and it has long worked closely with EPFL. “Our products are unique, so we’re constantly innovating, and our clients have to be companies that are able and ready to invest in that. It’s tough to find really well qualified engineers who can work at this level, so strong academic centres are crucial for us.”
More foreigners with C permits, border workers
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Switzerland’s quarterly unemployment figures can now be compared to other countries’, using ILO (International Labour Organization) methodology for calculating the numbers. Bern’s new numbers show that the active, working population in the country increased by 1.6 percent during the first half of the year, compared to Q1 and Q2 2009. Unemployment fell from 3.5 to 3.2 percent for Swiss workers and from 10.6 to 7.6 percent for foreigners.
The government attributes the rise in the number of employed to the economic recovery but cautions that the figures also reflect seasonal changes and it will take several quarters using the new calculations to make reliable seasonal adjustments.
By comparison, the European Union and the euro zone active working population fell by 0.6 percent during the first half of 2010.
New unemployment definition
12 November Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A man hung himself from a tree early Thursday morning 11 November in central Geneva, near the Swiss federal compensation office building, the Tribune de Geneve reports, noting that no details have been released by Geneva police. A spokesman for the Disability Insurance Office for insured people living abroad (OAIE) told GenevaLunch he is unable to confirm whether or not the man had a link with the office, as a GenevaLunch reader (see comment below) suggested early Friday.
The suicide caused a stir in the neighbourhood, according to the Tribune, in part because the body was initially easily visible, before police put a tent around it. The area where the man died, on avenue Edmond-Vaucher, is close to a school and at 07:20, when the body was discovered, the neighbourhood starts to get busier.
Ten days earlier another man took his own life near the offices of canton Geneva, with whom he had had a long-running dispute.
Some 1,500 people commit suicide each year in Switzerland, according to federal statistics, with the rate falling since 1980. Canton Geneva records about 75 a year, with 48 men and 30 women committing suicide in 2007, the most recent year for which figures are available.
Suicide prevention and information in Geneva, Stop Suicide (Fre)
Green Party member's web site to combat what he says is false information in right-wing UDC mailing
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - A web site has gone live in Switzerland to uncover fictive aspects of “facts” concerning foreigners in the country that were sent to Swiss households by the right-wing UDC political party. The UDC, or People’s Party, is behind a popular referendum, which will be put to the vote 28 November, to send foreigners back to their home countries if they are found guilty of a variety of crimes. Ce que le UDC vous cache, in French and German, presents 52 factual and statistical errors: a mix of manipulations, omissions and lies, says the site’s creator, Antonio Hodgers, a Green Party politician from Geneva.
A poster published by China's Statistics Bureau to encourage everyone, including foreigners in China, to take part in the 2010 census
Update 23:55 More than six million census-takers will scour 400m households over 10 days as China counts its people, in what is billed as the largest mobilization in peace-time. Census-takers will for the first time register where people are actually living, rather than where they are registered to live under China’s hukou system in an attempt to capture the estimated 200mn rural migrants in China. Foreigners will be included for the first time, although not those on short-term visas.
The government says that the new statistics will help it capture the level of urbanization, better calculate the constantly shifting migrant population and count the actual number of children born. The official one-child policy does not apply in all areas of the country and in rural areas where it does, families sometimes ignore the policy and hide children from authorities to avoid fines.
The census will cost $105m and results will be released in April 2011. The last census 10 years ago counted 1.29bn people.
Links to other sites: BusinessWeek, China Daily, CNN, Hindustan Times
Neuchatel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Switzerland could boast 9,740 people with a fortune greater than CHF10 million in 2007, the latest year for which final figures are available, new statistics issued Thursday show. The number was nearly 1,000 greater than a year earlier, but it will be October 2011 before we see how many of them held onto their wealth once the global economic crisis was underway in 2008. Zurich is home to the largest number of multimillionaires.
The rest of Switzerland lives on considerably less, with more than half of the population declaring a fortune of less than CHF50,000 to the government. Fully one-quarter of the population declared that it had no income at all.
Unemployment hits foreigners harder than Swiss
Streets of Zurich: 22.2% of residents in Switzerland are foreigners
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The rate of growth of resident foreigners as part of the Swiss population is picking up, with a 2.2 percent increase in 2009, new federal statistics show. Germany and Italy lead with the way, with European Union citizens accounting for two-thirds of the increase. Switzerland at 31 Dcember 2009 had 1,802,300 resident foreigners, not including diplomatic and international organization employees.
Switzerland has the highest percentage of foreigners in Europe, after tiny Liechtenstein and Luxembourg, 22.9 percent of the population and one in four workers.
Long-term residents
Nearly 21 percent of resident foreigners were born in Switzerland and nearly 40 percent of those born abroad have lived in the country for at least 15 years and 15 percent have been in Switzerland for at least 30 years.
Asylum-seekers a small percentage
Only 2.2 percent of the resident foreign population, some 40,000 people were in the process of consideration for asylum, with another 1.1 percent having recently demanded asylum.
Higher unemployment, lower wages for foreigners
The definitive figures for 2009, published by the Swiss statistics office Thursday 23 September show several changes in the foreign population, as well as some marked differences between resident foreigners and the Swiss.
But 1,000 women die a day: numbers must fall further, say UN agencies
Maternal health care, Sierre Leone (photo: UN / H Bigur)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Maternal deaths are falling worldwide, down by 34 percent since 1990, shows a new multi- agency report published 15 September. Some 358,000 women died during or from complications related to childbirth in 2008, down from 546,000 18 years earlier.
The fall is commendable, notes the World Health Organization (WHO), which is one of the author agencies, but the rate of decline is less than half of that needed to meet the Millennium Development Goal of a 75 percent reduction in maternal deaths between 1990 and 2015.
The report was published jointly by WHO, the UN Children’s Fund (Unicef), the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and the World Bank.
Pregnant women still die from four major causes, according to the report: severe bleeding after childbirth, infections, hypertensive disorders, and unsafe abortions. About 1,000 women died due to these complications every day in 2008. Of these, 570 lived in sub-Saharan Africa, 300 in South Asia and five in high-income countries.
Neuchatel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) – Producers’ prices and import prices in Switzerland fell by 0.4 percent in June, the first decline in four months. Year-to-year, prices were nevertheless 0.9 percent higher at the end of June. Lower prices for petrol and metal accounted for the fall registered by Switzerland’s statistical office.
