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Peace in Ukraine is far from certain
RUSSIA / FSU POLITICS · In Brief · 11 Oct 2019

On October 10 the Ukrainian Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko said that Ukrainian warships captured by Russia in November might be returned immediately. This would be a confidence building measure towards peace.The Steinmeier Formula has sparked large scale protests in Ukraine. President Zelensky ...

​Understanding domestic politics: Successions, support, sects and settlers (part 1)
GULF COUNTRIES · Report · 11 Oct 2019

This is the first in our series of "Understanding the Gulf" background reports. Pending successions are creating uncertainties in Kuwait and Oman that have unsettled policymaking. Four states have partially-elected parliaments (all except Saudi and Qatar) but none have executive powers and so the...

SA law enforcement agencies start acting against corrupt politicians and business personalities
SOUTH AFRICA · Report · 11 Oct 2019

One of the major reasons South Africa’s economy has been failing to improve for so long is because of low business confidence. This has not only been the result of policy uncertainty, but also the poor state of governance that prevailed, especially in the past decade as corruption became rampant....

​US sanctions bill has fangs, will it pass?
TURKEY · In Brief · 11 Oct 2019

All wars are lost by the poor. It is their houses which get bombed. They flee cities in thousands with their meager belongings on their weary shoulders, with their children sent to frontlines or the front of the firing squads.War in North East Syria is spreading its tendrils like a cancerous cell...

Russia and Iraqi oil
RUSSIA / FSU POLITICS · In Brief · 10 Oct 2019

On October 7 the US announced it was pulling troops out of Syria. Trump has reversed that decision temporarily but there is no doubt that the United States wants to withdraw from Syria sooner or later. Some Americans complained that a US withdrawal would leave the Kurds in Iraq vulnerable to atta...

Policy rates likely to move lower in the near future
ISRAEL · Report · 09 Oct 2019

We are revising our rate forecast from hold through 2020 to zero or possibly negative by mid-2020. We reached this assessment following the recent policy rate press conference, and revised BoI macro forecast (reflecting slower growth in 2020 of 3.0% and possibly lower rates, to 0.1% from the curr...

​HEADS UP: Military incursion appears imminent
TURKEY · In Brief · 09 Oct 2019

The chairman of Presidential Communications Commission Prof Fahrettin Altun tweeted a few hours ago that the Turkish military in conjunction with allied Syrian rebels will cross the Syrian border to the East of Euphrates to initiate the control of the safe zone ”soon”. Syrian Kurdish sources comp...

Severe and Dangerous Protests after the Presidential Decision to Eliminate Subsidies
ECUADOR · In Brief · 08 Oct 2019 · 1 response

The last economic measures taken by President Moreno have been the root of violent protests in Ecuador. Albeit we expected social unrest, the level of violence we are witnessing on the streets and highways has no precedence, at least in the last decades. Social groups including the transportation...

September CPI data positively surprising, but there is a twist in the story
HUNGARY · In Brief · 08 Oct 2019

The headline rate of CPI-inflation fell to 2.8% yoy in September from 3.1% yoy in the previous month. This has been the first below-target number since January. It is also a positive surprise, as the average of analyst expectations was 3% yoy, according to Portfolio.hu. And most importantly, the ...

Credit stress in large private firms
INDIA · Report · 08 Oct 2019

Credit stress in large private firms is one of the most important features of the Indian macroeconomy. In the class of listed companies with a balance sheet size of above Rs.0.5 trillion, we compute the "Distance to Default" (DtD) using the Merton/KMV model. A useful rule of thumb under Indian co...

Temporary inflation slowdown coming up
VENEZUELA · Report · 08 Oct 2019

Inflation accelerated to 63 percent in September from 58 in August. That’s a slightly slower pace than our forecast of 66 percent. Prices were pushed up by an 89 percent jump in the black-market dollar‒bolivar rate in August, including a 45-percent spike in the last week of said month. Overall...

No more rate cuts this year
PHILIPPINES · In Brief · 08 Oct 2019

Monetary authorities appear to have closed the door on further policy rate cuts this year. News feeds report that BSP Governor Benjamin Diokno, responding to questions from journalists, said that while authorities may consider additional reduction in banks’ reserve requirement ratio (RRR) this ye...

​Trump tweet throws a spanner in safe zone plans
TURKEY · In Brief · 08 Oct 2019 · 1 response

Trump staged one of his classic U-turns on Monday, with White House first green-lighting a Turkish military campaign in North East Syria, and then Trump tweeting his second “I will obliterate Turkey” warning in early evening.He mentioned “crossing my lines” which makes the U-turn even more intrig...

Pension Reform Proposal: the final steps
BRAZIL POLITICS · Report · 07 Oct 2019

A slow week in Brasília – because of the canonization of Sister Dulce on October 13, parliamentarians, governors and other authorities will travel to Rome. Congress meets on October 8 to analyze the LDO and vetoes. The five-business-day waiting period for second round discussions on Pension Refor...

Economics: Signs of a weaker economy in 2H 2019
MEXICO · Report · 07 Oct 2019

For some time we have been discussing in these pages the extent to which external economic and financial headwinds as well as domestic political factors threaten to pull the Mexican economy into recession. Aggregate demand components through the first half of the year validated our view that the ...