What is SECO Economic Forecasts?
SECO Economic Forecasts, officially Economic Forecasts for the Swiss Economy, are quarterly projections by the Federal Government Expert Group on Business Cycles. They cover the whole Swiss economy: real GDP by spending components in seasonally adjusted volumes, plus jobs, unemployment and CPI inflation.
These are conditional projections from stated assumptions, not measured GDP, flash estimates, sentiment surveys or FSO releases. FSO data serve only as a source.
When is it released and what happens each release?
Releases arrive quarterly around mid-March, mid-June, mid-September and mid-December in the morning. Dates are provisional and shift by days between quarters. Work ends about a week before publication.
Each release brings an English press release with data annex, the Konjunkturprognose forecast chapter in German and French, and detailed XLSX tables. Each release revises prior figures in brackets after new data, national-accounts base-data revisions and changed assumptions. Annual growth reads against the 1.8% average as below average or well below average, while jobs and CPI read as levels.
What moves SECO Economic Forecasts?
Growth splits into domestic demand and foreign trade, plus jobs and prices.
- Private and government consumption: household spending, the largest home driver, plus public-sector demand, supported by jobs and low inflation.
- Construction investment: building activity that reads permits, vacancy rates and the interest-rate level.
- Equipment and software investment: business spending on machinery, equipment and software that moves with world demand.
- Goods exports: foreign sales of products, including volatile chemicals and medicines, exposed to euro-area industry and currency strength.
- Services exports and imports: cross-border services trade, including sport-event licence income, where imports are subtracted to reach GDP.
- Labour market and prices: full-time-equivalent job growth, unemployment rate and CPI inflation that confirm whether growth is broad and stable.
The September 20, 2022 release cut 2022 adjusted growth to 2.0% from 2.6% in June, and 2023 to 1.1% from 1.9%. Unadjusted growth stood at 2.1% and 0.8%. The cut rested on one condition: no broad energy shortage with production outages. It lifted inflation to 3.0% for 2022 from 2.5% and to 2.3% for 2023 from 1.4%, with unemployment at 2.2% then 2.3%. Consumption surged 4.0% after Covid curbs ended while goods exports grew only 1.3% against 4.7% expected in June. The release added positive and negative energy scenarios, proof that forecasts are conditional paths, not promises.
How is SECO Economic Forecasts calculated?
- Expenditure identity: Start from GDP and components in seasonally adjusted volumes, with foreign trade excluding valuables, as consumption plus investment plus exports minus imports.
- Sport-event smoothing: Strip licence income from major tournaments run by Swiss-based bodies (FIFA World Cup, IOC Olympics, UEFA Euro) from the headline. Each event adds about 0.4 points to unadjusted growth in even years, with a matching 0.4-point reversal in odd years.
- World picture: Build export-weighted world demand from trading partners GDP plus oil from futures-market guidance. Add SARON rates, bond yields, Brent prices and currency paths as conditions that GDP holds only if met.
- Component projection: Project each demand, jobs and price part with the world picture and signals such as retail sales, hotel nights, vacancies and consumer sentiment. Use industry and services PMI surveys versus the 50-point growth line, KOF surveys and weekly activity.
- Aggregation: Aggregate to annual-average growth rates and point contributions, with prior vintages in brackets and adjusted GDP as headline. For illustration only, adjusted GDP indexed at 100 with private consumption growing 2.0% at about one-half weight gives 1.0 points. If other parts sum to minus 0.2 points, GDP growth is about 0.8%.
Key point: Quote only sport-event-adjusted GDP as the cycle signal, since unadjusted GDP holds FIFA, UEFA and IOC spikes that misread momentum. Attribute the forecast to the SECO Expert Group, not the FSO statistics office, which appears only as a source.
