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Subnational Debt 2024: Switzerland, Resilient Budget Surpluses Should Enable Further Deleveraging

Swiss local and regional governments' (LRGs) sound budgetary performance is supported by comparatively low cost-inflation and a resilient economy that should enable continued net debt repayments in 2024 and 2025. Swiss LRGs' surpluses could shrink due to reduced profit distributions from the Swiss National Bank (SNB) and pending, potentially costly legislative initiatives at the national level. We forecast Swiss LRG annual gross borrowing of about CHF13 billion in each of 2024 and 2025. That includes CHF3.0 billion-CHF3.5 billion of new bonds, annually, with the new issue volume capped by LRGs' robust liquidity and limited bond maturities during the period. LRG’s interest expense will gradually follow rising market yields, though in-place fixed-rate financing should mean the effective average portfolio interest rate will only marginally exceed 1% by 2025.

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