Swiss Inflation Returned Below SNB’s 2% Ceiling in June

Swiss inflation slowed to below the 2% ceiling targeted by the Swiss National Bank, offering limited reassurance to officials who have already signaled further tightening is likely.

Author of the article:

Bloomberg News

Bastian Benrath

Published Jul 03, 2023 • 1 minute read

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(Bloomberg) — Swiss inflation slowed to below the 2% ceiling targeted by the Swiss National Bank, offering limited reassurance to officials who have already signaled further tightening is likely.

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Consumer prices rose 1.7% in June from a year earlier, down from 2.2% the previous month, as energy costs fell. Underlying inflation, which strips out such volatile elements, also slowed to 1.8%, according to Switzerland’s statistics agency.

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The so-called core gauge had already fallen below the central bank’s ceiling last month, while the headline number now shows the weakest pace of price growth since January last year.

While Switzerland has already enjoyed some of the lowest inflation rates of the OECD since the energy crisis first began, the data will still provide some comfort to central bank officials that consumer prices aren’t yet spiraling out of control.

Even so, the SNB has said that another increase in borrowing costs is likely. Policymakers have forecast inflation to rebound to 2% by the end of the year, and then stay above that level until early 2026. That’s because of a wave of rent increases and electricity price hikes in the pipeline, as well as the rising cost of services.

In her last public appearance as an SNB rate setter, Andrea Maechler said last week that underlying pressures are “really persistent” and too high for fulfilling the institution’s “mandate of trust in money.”

Based on the European Union’s harmonized measure, Swiss inflation was 1.8% in June — that’s much less than in the surrounding euro area, where also the core reading recently ticked up again.

—With assistance from Joel Rinneby and Kristian Siedenburg.

(Updates with chart after second paragraph)