GENEVA – Switzerland’s President and Finance Minister Karin Keller-Sutter forecast higher annual budget deficits of around 3 billion Swiss Francs ($3.31 billion) in the next few years due to higher military spending and pension costs, she told SonntagsZeitung in an interview.
Switzerland has historically had balanced budgets although began reporting larger deficits from 2020 due to extra costs tied to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2024, the projected deficit was 2.6 billion Swiss Francs, a government website showed.
Swiss voters decided in a referendum last year to increase pension payments for older people despite government warnings that it is financially unsound.
The neutral country is also upgrading its defences after the Ukraine war, buying new fighter aircraft and missile systems as well as building new data centres to make it less vulnerable to cyber attacks.
($1 = 0.9057 Swiss francs)
(Reporting by Emma Farge; Editing by Tomasz Janowski)
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