Swiss Franc (CHF) Data Coverage: Indicators, Sources and Release Times

Quick answer

The FXMacroData production catalogue lists 37 Swiss franc series. They come from the Swiss National Bank (SNB), the Federal Statistical Office (FSO), the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), Eurostat for the labour-force participation rate and the Bank for International Settlements for the trade-weighted index.

The set covers the SNB policy rate, SARON, the Confederation yield curve, CPI and core inflation, producer prices, GDP, labour statistics, sentiment surveys, the balance of payments, money supply, sight deposits and the SNB's reserves. For USD/CHF and EUR/CHF the most important of these are the SNB's quarterly decisions, CPI, and the balance-sheet series that show intervention.

This guide describes each series as it appears in the production catalogue, the publisher behind it, the release times recorded for it, and how FX traders use Swiss data.

Who publishes Swiss franc data

Swiss National Bank. The SNB sets the SNB policy rate at its quarterly monetary policy assessments and publishes, through its data portal, the SARON overnight rate, Confederation bond spot rates, monetary aggregates, sight deposits, its monthly balance sheet, international reserves and the Swiss balance of payments (which is also the source of the export, import and trade balance series in the catalogue).

Federal Statistical Office (FSO). The FSO publishes the consumer price index, the producer and import price index, retail trade, the ILO unemployment rate from the Swiss Labour Force Survey, and employment from the BESTA job statistics.

SECO. The State Secretariat for Economic Affairs compiles the quarterly national accounts (GDP), the monthly economic sentiment composite and the quarterly consumer sentiment survey.

Eurostat and BIS. Eurostat republishes the Swiss labour-force activity rate used for participation_rate. The trade-weighted index is the BIS nominal effective exchange rate (broad basket, 2020=100), not the SNB's own export-weighted franc index.

Each observation is stored with its source series name and an announcement_datetime taken from the publisher's own release records where they are available.

CHF indicators covered

Every series below is listed at /v1/data_catalogue/chf. Where the catalogue serves the same publisher series under two slugs, both are named together.

Policy and rates

• SNB policy rate (policy_rate): one row per quarterly assessment, holds included. Before June 2019 the SNB had no single policy rate, so earlier values are the midpoint of its target range for three-month CHF Libor.
• SARON (risk_free_rate): the Swiss Average Rate Overnight, the reference rate the SNB steers towards its policy rate.
• Confederation bond yields (1-year, 2-year, 3-year, 4-year, 5-year, 10-year, 20-year, 30-year): daily Confederation spot rates from the SNB. Swiss yields are among the lowest in the G10, which is why the franc is a common funding currency in carry trades.

Inflation

• CPI inflation (inflation): year-on-year change in the FSO consumer price index, with history from 1922.
• Core inflation (core_inflation): monthly core inflation from the SNB data portal (the catalogue labels it Core Inflation 1).
• Producer and import prices (ppi): the FSO's producer and import price index for total supply, year on year. Import prices are where a strong franc shows up first.

Growth and activity

• GDP (gdp): quarterly GDP at current prices, seasonally adjusted, compiled by SECO.
• Retail sales (retail_sales): real year-on-year change in retail trade from the FSO.
• Economic sentiment (business_confidence): SECO's monthly composite sentiment index, normalised to a 0 to 100 scale.
• Consumer sentiment (consumer_confidence): SECO's quarterly consumer sentiment survey, normalised to a 0 to 100 scale.

Labour market

• ILO unemployment rate (unemployment): quarterly, from the Swiss Labour Force Survey. It runs higher than SECO's monthly registered unemployment rate, which uses a narrower definition and is not the series served here.
• Employment (total, full-time, part-time): quarterly job counts from the FSO BESTA statistics, from 1991.
• Participation rate (participation_rate): the quarterly activity rate for ages 15 to 64, as republished by Eurostat.

External accounts

• Goods trade (balance of payments basis) (trade balance, exports, imports): quarterly goods flows from the SNB's balance of payments, in CHF million. These are not the monthly customs trade statistics.
• Current account balance (current_account_balance): quarterly, from the SNB. Switzerland's persistent surplus is one of the structural supports for the franc.
• Trade-weighted index (BIS NEER) (trade_weighted_index): monthly nominal effective exchange rate, the cleanest way to see franc strength across all trading partners.

Money, balance sheet and reserves

• Money supply (M1, M2, M3, broad money): monthly SNB aggregates in CHF million; broad_money serves the same M3 series.
• Sight deposits (sight_deposits): weekly sight deposits of domestic banks at the SNB. Changes are widely read as a proxy for SNB foreign-exchange intervention between quarterly reports.
• Foreign currency reserves (FX reserves, foreign reserves): the SNB's monthly foreign currency investments in CHF million; both slugs serve the same series.
• Gold holdings (gold_reserves): monthly SNB gold holdings in CHF million.
• SNB balance sheet (balance sheet, central bank assets): both slugs serve the SNB's monthly relevant foreign-currency position, which approximates total balance-sheet assets but is not identical to them.

CHF release timing

Swiss releases cluster in the European morning. The times below are those recorded on recent FXMacroData rows, in Zurich time (Europe/Zurich). Switzerland follows central European daylight saving, so the UTC column shows summer time (CEST, UTC+2) first and winter time (CET, UTC+1) second.

The full schedule with upcoming dates is on the release calendar, and SNB statements are collected in the CHF press release feed.

Worked example: the September 2026 CPI

The FSO published the September 2026 CPI on Thursday 1 October 2026 at 08:30 Zurich time. This request returns it:

curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_API_KEY" "https://api.fxmacrodata.com/v1/announcements/chf/inflation?start_date=2026-09-01"

The newest row in the response (abridged to the core fields):

{
  "date": "2026-09-01",
  "val": 1.0,
  "announcement_datetime": 1790836200,
  "previous_value": 0.8,
  "previous_date": "2026-08-01"
}

For Swiss CPI the date field marks the reference month by its first day, so 2026-09-01 is September 2026. val is inflation of 1.0 percent year on year, up from 0.8 percent in August, and announcement_datetime 1790836200 is 06:30:00 UTC, which is 08:30 CEST. With the SNB defining price stability as inflation below 2 percent, a reading of 1.0 percent sits inside that range.

How traders use CHF data

CPI against the SNB's 0 to 2 percent range

The SNB equates price stability with CPI inflation between 0 and 2 percent. Prints near the bottom of that range increase the odds of a lower policy rate or more active currency intervention; prints towards 2 percent reduce them. The quarterly assessment is the only scheduled decision, so the CPI prints between meetings carry the expectations.

Intervention watch through sight deposits

Weekly sight deposits, monthly FX reserves and the monthly balance sheet are the public footprints of SNB currency operations. A rise in sight deposits during a franc rally is commonly read as the SNB selling francs; the reserve data confirm it with a lag.

Safe-haven flows and yield spreads

The franc tends to strengthen in risk-off episodes. Pair the Swiss 2-year and 10-year yields with the matching US and euro area series to see whether CHF moves are rate-driven or flow-driven: a franc rally with stable spreads points to safe-haven demand.

Import prices and the strong-franc channel

A stronger franc lowers import prices, which feeds into CPI. The producer and import price series, read alongside the BIS trade-weighted index, shows how much of the inflation outlook is being imported through the exchange rate.

Related pages

• Swiss National Bank: key indicators and API data guide
• Sight deposits and CHF intervention signals
• USD/CHF dashboard
• EUR/CHF dashboard
• Release calendar
• FXMacroData data coverage across all 22 currencies