The charts can be found at the Swiss National Bank's website. The speaker would like to thank Till Ebner, Rita Fleer and Adriel Jost for their valuable support in the preparation of this speech. He also thanks Carlos Lenz for his helpful comments. This year's topic - international competitiveness - represents a key challenge for companies and politicians alike.
In order for companies to create growth and wealth in a globalised market, they are continually having to maintain their position against international competitors.
Local factors such as the educational standard of the population, labour market flexibility and the tax burden clearly play their part. The importance of monetary policy may be rather less obvious at first glance. The discontinuation triggered a sharp appreciation of the Swiss franc. On the one hand, this appreciation put Switzerland's price competitiveness under severe pressure in the short term, and I'm sure I don't need to go into detail on the practical repercussions for individual companies in a forum such as this.
The impact is still being felt at many of your organisations, although Swiss firms have once again proved impressively flexible and resilient. On the other hand, the decision last January was absolutely necessary, given that the euro lost considerable ground against all major currencies as a result of the changed international environment. Waiting any longer would have put the minimum exchange rate under permanent pressure.
The minimum exchange rate had become unsustainable. The costs associated with continuing such a policy would thus no longer have been justified. Moreover, had we discontinued the minimum exchange rate at a later date, the impact on the Swiss economy would have been even greater. I am therefore convinced that the SNB's decision came at the right time. Without this difficult step, we would have compromised our ability to fulfil our mandate of ensuring price stability in the medium and long term.
