Switzerland

Switzerland: Largest Reserves-to-GDP Ratio in This Batch, Minimal Military Spending

Switzerland's GDP was $936.6 billion in 2024, per the World Bank's WDI series, with GDP per capita of $103,998 — the highest figure in this batch — and a population of 9.0 million. The IMF's World Economic Outlook projects government debt at 38.5 percent of GDP in 2026. Reserves stood at $929.6 billion as of 2025, per the IMF's International Financial Statistics — a figure close in scale to the country's entire 2024 GDP, and by far the largest reserve holding among the countries covered in this batch. The reserves figure and the GDP figure are drawn from different sources and years, so the near-equivalence should be read as a notable data point rather than a precise ratio.

Military Posture

SIPRI's 2025 figures put Swiss military expenditure at $7.6 billion, or 0.757 percent of GDP under SIPRI's own GDP series — the lowest spending share among the countries in this batch, and a figure that should not be recomputed against the separately sourced World Bank GDP number above. Active personnel totaled 20,000 as of 2022, per COW NMC, the smallest force size in this set, with a CINC score of 0.00116 for the same year, also the lowest in this batch.

Governance

V-Dem's 2025 data (v15) scores Switzerland at 0.882 on electoral democracy and 0.843 on liberal democracy — both the highest scores in this batch — with a state capacity score of 0.995, near the top of V-Dem's 0-to-1 scale.

Energy

Primary energy consumption was 1.22 exajoules in 2024, per Our World in Data, the smallest among this batch's countries. Electricity generation reached 65.02 terawatt-hours in 2025. Both oil and gas production are recorded at 0.0 terawatt-hours, dated 2016 in the supplied data — nine years stale and showing no output at all, consistent with Switzerland having no significant domestic hydrocarbon extraction, though the age of the figure means it cannot confirm that this remains the case today.

Data Gaps

No trade, inflation, or GDP growth figures appear in the supplied data for Switzerland. The debt figure is a 2026 projection rather than an observed outturn. The oil and gas production figures are both stale, as noted above, and the personnel and CINC figures predate the most recent economic and military-spending data by two to three years.

Sources: World Bank WDI, IMF WEO, IMF IFS, SIPRI Milex, COW NMC, V-Dem v15, Our World in Data (Energy)