September

In September 2018, the KOF Economic Barometer climbed by 3.3 points to a new reading of 102.2. It thus now pints to a level that is somewhat above its long-term average. Accordingly, in the near future the Swiss economy should grow slightly above its 10-year average.

Germany’s leading economics research institutes and their international partners have downwardly revised their forecasts for 2018 and 2019. They now expect economic output to increase by 1.7 percent in 2018, and not 2.2 percent as forecast in spring. They also scaled back their 2019 forecast slightly from 2.0 to 1.9 percent. These are the results of the Joint Economic Forecast for autumn 2018 that will be presented in Berlin on Thursday.

The euro area’s economy will grow by 0.4 percent respectively in Q3 and Q4 2018 and Q1 2019, according to the three economics institutes ifo (Munich), ISAT (Rome) and KOF (Zurich). This represents a continuation of developments seen in the first two quarters of 2018.

The KOF MPC figure for 13 September 2018 is 0.54. The ECB communicated confidence in the sustained convergence of inflation to the aim even after a gradual winding-down of net asset purchases.