HUNGARY
Analyst
Istvan Racz
Former Director, Central BankDatabanks
Recent Country Insights
Negative GDP growth reported for Q1
HUNGARY · In Brief · 30 Apr 2025
Preliminary, seasonally and day-adjusted GDP data shows -0.2% qoq, -0.4% yoy real growth for Q1, as reported this morning. This came after +0.6% qoq, +0.1% yoy in Q4, and 0.5% growth in full-year 2024. In an unusually brief statement, KSH only said that Q1 growth was supported by services but hel...
Fiscal cost of election campaign spending increases
HUNGARY · In Brief · 29 Apr 2025
The other day, Economy Minister Nagy confirmed that the members of armed services (soldiers, policemen, etc., about 100k people) will be entitled to another one-time bonus payment, equal to 6-month worth of salaries, in February next year, and that the government are going to earmark some HUF450b...
Non-interest central government cash deficit down in Q1
HUNGARY · In Brief · 24 Apr 2025
Two days ago, when we released our new quarterly forecast report, we were still unable to give any breakdown of the Q1 cash balance of the central government, because the respective official data had not been published yet. So we could not present how exactly the annualised cash deficit ratio ros...
Past Liberation Day: a few changes to growth and inflation forecasts
HUNGARY · Forecast · 22 Apr 2025
The world has changed quite a bit since we published our previous forecast in January, because of Mr. Trump’s appearance on the scene, and especially his latest aggressive trade policy measures. The latter are pushing the global economy towards lower growth but also lower energy prices, both extr...
S&P changed the outlook for its BBB- sovereign credit rating to Negative from Stable
HUNGARY · In Brief · 13 Apr 2025
This happened at this year's first pre-set review date for Hungary, as regards any of the top three rating agencies: At the same time, S&P affirmed its BBB- credit rating, but even so, the agency's decision pushed Hungary to the very brink of losing its investment grade credit rating. S&P lowered...
New MNB vice governor and Monetary Council member proposed by PM Orbán
HUNGARY · In Brief · 11 Apr 2025
Parliament's economic committee is scheduled to hear Mr. Zoltán Kurali (left on the picture below, standing next to governor Varga) on Tuesday next week. Mr. Kurali has been nominated by PM Orbán for the position of vice governor in the MNB. At present, the MNB has three vice governors: Barnabás ...
Good news on inflation at last: inflation fell more than expected in March
HUNGARY · In Brief · 08 Apr 2025
The headline rate was 0% mom, 4.7% yoy, down from 5.6% yoy in February, core inflation was 0.3% mom, 5.7%, down from 6.2% yoy, non-fuel inflation was 0.3% mom, 5.2% yoy, down from 5.6% yoy: Note: year-on-year changes in percent; Sources: KSH, own estimates Importantly, analysts expected the headl...
Both retail sales and industrial output followed their respective trends in February
HUNGARY · In Brief · 07 Apr 2025
Retail sales fell by 0.6% mom, but it grew by 3.3% yoy, in volume terms, in February. The fixed-base chart (Dec 2010 = 100, source: KSH), suggests that it was a correction after January's outstandingly robust result, back to an otherwise significantly increasing trend: So, the trend of strengthen...
Government macro forecast changes in the right direction but at the wrong time
HUNGARY · In Brief · 03 Apr 2025
Early this week, Mr. Nagy, the economy minister, announced a scaling back of the government's 2025 GDP growth forecast to 2.5% from the 3.4% included in the annual budget, parallel to raising this year's forecast for average CPI-inflation to 4.5% from the original 3.2%. These are exactly the figu...