s decision must, therefore, not be mistaken for a statement on its european policy ; it is solely a precautionary measure. banknote security with progress being made in counterfeiting technology, a note - issuing bank, which has to ensure the security of its banknotes, must always strive to maintain a technological advantage over counterfeiters, or copy machines and scanners. this need is aggravated by the fact that security features previously reserved for banknotes are nowadays increasingly being used to protect such items as security documents, drugs and brand products. as a result, the know - how in security technology at the producer level is becoming trivialised and more prevalent. an increasing number of persons in more and more countries possess some elements of the security know - how that has so far been typically used for banknotes. this also poses a potential risk to the security of banknotes. it was notably the progress made in counterfeiting technology that, over the decades, lowered the life span of a banknote series from forty to around fifteen years. the life span could become even shorter in the future. formerly, a counterfeiter mainly had to be a skilful artisan. nowadays, counterfeits are produced not only by experts, but increasingly by laypersons using colour copy machines, colour printers, and scanners. the dissemination of pcs and low - priced, yet qualitatively excellent scanners and printers today enables virtually anybody to produce good counterfeits at low cost and effort. the six well - known security features on our banknotes are still difficult to counterfeit, though, and the 1 / 3 public can easily verify whether the banknotes are genuine. moreover, we have updated the currently valid banknote series with regard to security technology as far as this was possible and reasonable. the perforated number ( microperforation ), for example, which was initially used only for the large denominations of chf 100, chf 200 and chf 1, 000, has been applied to all the existing banknote denominations since the 2000 issue. we cannot rule out the possibility, however, that one day - given the progress being made in counterfeiting technology - some of the currently used security features could be imitated. for this reason, we have to resort to state - of - the - art technologies and visual phenomena to protect our banknotes. as it is a long way between the development of such technologies and their readiness for practical application, our decision

jean - pierre roth : switzerland as an industrial location and national bank policy summary of a speech by mr jean - pierre roth, chairman of the governing board of the swiss national bank, at the europa forum lucerne, lucerne, 27 october 2003. the complete speech can be found in german on the swiss national bank ’ s website ( www. snb. ch ). * * * in a high - wage country such as switzerland enterprises can only maintain their position in the face of international competition by a process of ongoing innovation. the resulting structural change in the direction of highly technological and increasingly productive economic sectors is also a prerequisite for strong economic growth. in an international comparison, however, switzerland ’ s growth is poor. this weak perfomance in terms of growth highlights the need for action in economic policy. monetary policy cannot, however, fulfil this role. the primary task of monetary policy is to ensure price stability. price stability is an important locational advantage that switzerland has to offer. moreover, monetary policy can also contribute to stabilising the economy and warding off undesirable exchange rate shocks. it is, however, not in a position to bring about a sustained improvement in economic growth. the result of such an attempt would merely be economic overheating with the threat of a subsequent slide of the economy into recession. lasting effects on economic growth may, by contrast, emanate from education policy, research policy, policy on foreigners and fiscal policy. weak growth in switzerland, however, may be explained mainly by the conspicuous productivity gap between the innovative export sector and the domestic sector set in its traditional structures. the reason for this lethargy of the domestic sector is a dense network of regulations which limit competition and obstruct technical progress. the result is an excessively high domestic price level from which not only consumers but also exporters suffer. growth - promoting measures must therefore aim primarily at wedging impediments to competition in the domestic sector.