FollowingIn a pattern seen recently in Australia, Austria and Israel, Swissinfo/SRI [Swiss Radio International] could lose all its government funding by 2006. It would then be up to the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation to guarantee its future financing.
That’s one of the possibilities under consideration as the Swiss parliament debates controversial proposals to cut public spending by SFr3.3 billion (about 2.4 billion US dollars) to avoid massive deficits over the next few years. Switzerland’s national debt is currently SFr120 billion, and the government expects this to increase by SFr3 billion a year. So the government has drafted a radical savings plan which represents the biggest spending cut in Swiss history.