Swiss National Bank back in the black

The Swiss National Bank (SNB) said Friday that it had made a first-half distributable profit of 6.7 billion Swiss francs (5.21 billion US dollars) for 2005.

This year's "extremely positive results" make a comparison with last year's loss for the same period of 900 million Swiss francs (700 million dollars).

The distributable profit is the amount of the annual profit shared out to the federal authorities and the country's 26 cantons.

It is worked out taking into account provisions allowing the bank to maintain the currency reserves at a level necessary for monetary policy and with an eye on the development of the Swiss economy.

"The gold price and the US dollar increased substantially, while interest rates declined slightly," said the bank in a statement.

In all, the gold price and the US dollar both climbed by 13 percent in the first six months of the year and the exchange rates of all other investment currencies also moved up.

"This accumulation of favorable market developments led to unusually high valuation gains on foreign currency investments and gold holdings," it added.

Interest rates in all SNB-relevant investment markets dropped slightly, with a particularly sharp decline in euro interest rates.

The SNB said it was not ready to speculate on the whole year results, because the financial result is strongly affected by market conditions.

Source: Xinhua