Swiss perspectives in 10 languages

Swiss statistical office cuts services amid budget constraints

Federal Statistical Office must restrict services
Federal Statistical Office must restrict services Keystone-SDA

The Swiss Federal Statistical Office (FSO) is having to cut back on services due to budget constraints. In order to continue fulfilling its mandate and at the same time balance the budget, a savings programme has been drawn up, the Federal Statistical Office announced.

+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

The cost-cutting measures adopted by Parliament in recent years will impact the budget of the FSO by a total of CHF7.4 million ($8.2 million) in 2024 and 2025, according to a press release issued on Friday. This is based on an annual budget of around CHF180 million.

Furthermore, additional, unfunded tasks have been transferred to the FSO in recent years. These have resulted in costs totaling CHF13 million per year. At the same time, the structural deficit has risen as a result of the sharp increase in expenditure, particularly in the IT sector.

The savings program that has been drawn up therefore includes a series of internal measures that the Office has already implemented – including the waiving of salary adjustments, the restriction of new hires, cuts in procurement and the discontinuation of certain statistical publications. However, further measures are still necessary that will have an impact on the FSO’s services, the statement continued.

Adapted from German by DeepL/jdp

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.

If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, if you want to learn more about how we use technology, click here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.

Most Read
Swiss Abroad

Most Discussed

News

In compliance with the JTI standards

More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative

You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!

If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.

SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR

SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR