Uploaded on 2018-08-21 by Tea Lobo

This is a picture of a typical construction site in Switzerland. The construction materials are quite traditional: it is a steel-enforced cement structure with large glass panels. Because Switzerland has few ore mines, it imports a large proportion of metals used in construction. By contrast to the African countries who do the same, Switzerland can balance out the import costs by its exports of luxury goods and its globalized banking services (in fact, the building constructed is for the Baloise bank). So the photograph shows a local construction, a Balois bank in Basel, with likely imported materials like the steel rods used to enforce the cement blocks.