The Swiss National Bank (SNB) continued its interventions on the foreign exchange market in the third quarter with a view to containing the appreciation of the franc. From July to September, the issuing institute bought 11.0 billion francs in foreign currency, according to statistics from the institute published on Thursday.

The volume of purchases by the SNB fell significantly in intensity in the third quarter compared to the first half of 2020, during which the central bank had seized a total of 90 billion francs for this purpose: 38.5 billion in the first quarter and 51.5 billion in the second quarter.

Over nine months, the figures show that the SNB's interventions have never been as high as this year. In the previous "record year", 2015, the SNB bought foreign currencies worth 86.1 billion francs. Even after the abandonment of the floor rate with the euro almost six years ago, interventions in the foreign exchange market remain one of the main instruments available to the SNB to prevent an unwanted strengthening of the Swiss currency.

Since the outbreak of the pandemic crisis, the central bank has stressed that it will also intervene “increasingly” in the foreign exchange market if necessary. The franc has always "appreciated very much", underlined in mid-December the President of the SNB, Thomas Jordan, during the last assessment of the situation.

The SNB's interventions in the foreign exchange market have also drawn strong criticism from the United States. On December 17, the latter accused Switzerland, alongside Vietnam in particular, of manipulating its currency to gain undue commercial advantage, according to a semi-annual report published by the US Treasury Department. The SNB had reacted strongly to these assertions, hammering that "in no case, Switzerland does not carry out monetary manipulations"

Since 2020, the SNB has published the volume of foreign exchange transactions from the previous partial at the end of each quarter. Previously, it was only in the spring that we learned about the interventions of the previous year.