By John Revill <\/p>\n
ZURICH, Sept 3 (Reuters) – The Swiss economy grew by 1.5% in the second quarter of 2026, the government said on \u200cThursday, its fastest growth rate in nearly five years. <\/p>\n
A booming chemical \u200cand pharmaceuticals sector accelerated the country’s economic growth rate from 0.5% in the first three months \u200bof the year. <\/p>\n
The second quarter increase, which matched a preliminary estimate by the economy ministry earlier this month, was the fastest since the third quarter of 2021 when Switzerland was recovering from the COVID pandemic. <\/p>\n
“After several quarters of weak \u200cor, in some cases, negative \u2060growth, the chemical and pharmaceutical industry expanded sharply, reflecting higher exports and sales,” said the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), \u2060referring to 10.5% growth for the sector. <\/p>\n
Growth in the rest of manufacturing was moderate, SECO added, while services showed modest but broad-based growth. <\/p>\n
The figures were a \u200bfurther positive \u200bsign for the Swiss economy after the \u200bSwiss Purchasing Managers Index rose \u200cto 57.1 points in August, according to data published on Monday. <\/p>\n
Economists were impressed by the resilience of the Swiss economy despite challenging conditions like sharply rising oil prices and geopolitical uncertainties. <\/p>\n
European industry is currently showing a remarkable recovery, with Germany – traditionally Switzerland’s biggest export market – doing much better than originally anticipated, \u200csaid VP Bank analyst Thomas Gitzel. <\/p>\n
“If the \u200bEuropean single market gains momentum, the Swiss economy \u200bwill also benefit from it \u200bthis year,” he said. <\/p>\n
“Even if the strong GDP growth of \u200cthe second quarter is unlikely to \u200bbe repeated on \u200bthat scale so quickly, growth rates will remain robust for the time being,” he added. <\/p>\n
Swiss inflation doubled in August, government data showed on Thursday, \u200bas the conflict in \u200cthe Middle East pushed fuel prices higher, raising the prospect of \u200ban earlier interest rate hike by the Swiss National Bank. <\/p>\n
(Reporting by \u200bJohn Revill; Editing by Alexandra Hudson) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By John Revill ZURICH, Sept 3 (Reuters) – The Swiss economy grew by 1.5% in the second quarter…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125127,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[2943,61090,4004,5199,60892,10993,41,17,61091],"class_list":["post-125126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-switzerland","tag-1-5","tag-john-revill","tag-of","tag-reuters","tag-revill","tag-seco","tag-swiss","tag-switzerland","tag-the-second-quarter"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/117206849026848353","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125126\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}