Switzerland has a highly developed industrialized economy and one of the highest standards of living in the world. Gross domestic product in 1999 totaled $258.6 billion. Services is now the dominant sector of the Swiss economy, with trade, financial activities, government, and other services accounting for 69 percent of all employment. This area is followed by industry, including manufacturing, construction, and mining, at 26 percent; and agriculture, forestry, and fishing at 5 percent. The national budget in 1998 included $64.9 billion in revenues and $74.1 billion in expenditures.
These factors have given rise to service industries such as shipping, freight forwarding, banking, insurance, and tourism, as well as to exports such as chemicals, machines, precision instruments, and processed foods. Industry has also been boosted in wartime because of Swiss neutrality. Industrial diversity and a lack of large firms are characteristic of Swiss industry. However, a number of Swiss enterprises, such as the food giant Nestlé, Ciba-Geigy in chemicals, and Alusuisse in metals, have worldwide enterprises that employ far more people abroad than in Switzerland and account for at least 90 percent of all sales from foreign markets. A significant characteristic of the Swiss economy is the number of foreign labourers, about a quarter of the economically active population, without whom many sectors of the Swiss economy, especially hotels, restaurants, and tourism, would grind to a halt.
Switzerland, a prosperous and stable modern market economy with a per capita GDP 20% above that of the big western European economies, experienced solid growth of 3% in 2000, but growth is expected to fall back to about 2% in 2001. The Swiss in recent years have brought their economic practices largely into conformity with the EU's to enhance their international competitiveness. Although the Swiss are not pursuing full EU membership in the near term, in 1999 Bern and Brussels signed agreements to further liberalize trade ties, and the agreements should come into force in 2001. Switzerland is still considered a safe haven for investors, because it has maintained a degree of bank secrecy and has kept up the franc's long-term external value.
