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Webinar replay - Hungary: Macroeconomic maneuvers and fraught foreign policy
HUNGARY · Report · 17 Mar 2023

How will Hungary’s tight monetary and fiscal policies serve it in 2023 amid economic recession? With rapid BOP improvement on markedly decreasing energy import prices paired with weak domestic demand, will there be disinflation? How will Hungary’s continuing outlier status within the EU and NATO ...

Slide presentation - Hungary: Macroeconomic maneuvers and fraught foreign policy
HUNGARY · Report · 16 Mar 2023

Get insight into Hungary's macroeconomic outlook and the foreign policy challenges it's facing with the presentation from our webinar, "Hungary: Macroeconomic maneuvers and fraught foreign policy".

Inflation fell a bit in February, the economy is weakening further - nothing unexpected
HUNGARY · In Brief · 08 Mar 2023

What everyone had been expecting is now there in the actual data: following a sharp upsurge since about April last year, CPI-inflation edged down a bit, to 25.4% yoy in February, from 25.7% yoy in the previous month. Likewise, core inflation fell a little, to 25.2% yoy from 25.4% yoy. Yesss (!), ...

Moody's did not review Hungary's sovereign credit rating last week
HUNGARY · In Brief · 05 Mar 2023

Moody's passed its first pre-announced review date of this year for Hungary's sovereign credit rating on Friday, March 3 without actually doing a review. As a matter of fact, this sounds like good news, as there seemed to be a realistic chance for a negative rating step, in the form of lowering t...

Is PM Orbán cautiously distancing himself from Moscow?
HUNGARY · In Brief · 03 Mar 2023

On March 1, the Russian government issued a decree to ban visa-free travel by Hungarian diplomats to Russian territory, "until Hungary does not stop breaching the provisions of the underlying bilateral agreement". It is not immediately clear in what way Hungary is breaching the agreement in quest...

Today's Monetary Council meeting went (almost) exactly as expected
HUNGARY · In Brief · 28 Feb 2023

The Council did not change the base rate (13%) and the interest rate corridor(12.5-25%) today, and it specifically said that the O/N deposit rate (18%) also remains unchanged, and  it will remain so for a while in the future as well. The Council made decisions on two issues: 1. The Bank will cont...

Monetary Council tomorrow, Moody's rating review on Friday
HUNGARY · In Brief · 27 Feb 2023

The Monetary Council is set to hold its regular monthly rate-setting meeting tomorrow (February 28). There is once again broad analyst consensus, which we share, that no interest rate move is likely on this occasion. Although analysts seem to believe that CPI-inflation peaked in January, there wo...

Energy import prices look much lower than expected for now
HUNGARY · Report · 23 Feb 2023

In our latest forecast, released last month, we predicted rising energy import prices, as the weather is getting back to its normal seasonal track after the unusual warm weather recorded this winter. Indeed, winter is approaching its end, and the weather is not that exceptionally warm anymore in ...

Q4 GDP and December BOP data: no good, not bad
HUNGARY · In Brief · 14 Feb 2023 · 2 responses

Q4 GDP growth as reported this morning at -0.4% qoq, 0.9% yoy, following the downwardly revised -0.7% qoq, 3.7% yoy data for Q3. This means that the economy is now in the state of a technical recession, just as expected, despite the fact that the full-year growth rate was still 4.6%, because of t...

CPI-inflation above expectation in January, but analysts still believe this may be the cyclical peak
HUNGARY · In Brief · 10 Feb 2023

January CPI-inflation came out this morning at 2.3% mom, 25.7% yoy, the latter up from 24.5% yoy in December. Core inflation was 1.8% mom, 25.4% yoy, meaning that the year-on-year core rate fell below the headline rate for the first time since last February. Non-fuel inflation was 24.6% yoy, more...

Merchandise trade balance improved in December
HUNGARY · In Brief · 08 Feb 2023

This was the first time since April 2021 that the trade balance got better than a year earlier: Note: Monthly merchandise trade balances in EUR million; Source: KSH In nominal EUR terms, exports rose by 12.3% yoy, whereas imports grew by 9.9% yoy in December. As a result, the monthly trade defici...

Robust industry and poor retail sales must be good for the BOP
HUNGARY · In Brief · 07 Feb 2023

Another key piece of statistics after yesterday's poor retail sales number has been the release of the preliminary December industrial output data, with positive growth of 3.8% mom, 5.5% yoy on seasonally and calendar-adjusted basis. Note: Volume data, December 2015 = 100; Source: KSH At this sta...

Retail sales growth continued to slide downhill, became negative in December for the first time since Covid
HUNGARY · In Brief · 06 Feb 2023

Retail sales fell by 1% mom, 1.3% yoy in seasonally and calendar-adjusted terms in December. This was the first negative yoy growth number since March 2021, and it continued a marked straight-line slowdown that started with April 2022. For a few months in late 2022, this deceleration was containe...

A bit of progress, well short of sufficient, reached at rule-of-law talks with the EU
HUNGARY · In Brief · 01 Feb 2023

The good news is that talks on how to restore Hungary's access to new EU development funds apparently continue. Another piece of good news is that Hungary is reported to have made concessions, slowly moving towards meeting the requirements set by the EU in December. The bad news, for those who wo...

S&P downgraded Hungary to BBB-, with Stable outlook, on Friday
HUNGARY · In Brief · 29 Jan 2023

S&P had been holding Hungary on BBB/Negative since August 2022. The explanation of its downgrade, announced on January 27, included: (1) sharp monetary tightening, forced by sustained high inflation, forint volatility and external pressure; (2) high energy prices, uncertain economic prospects and...

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