NEWS FLASH

UPCOMING WEBINAR - TURKEY: FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE OR BUSINESS AS USUAL?...

Finance Minister Alfredo Thorne will resign.
PERU · In Brief · 21 Jun 2017

Finance Minister Alfredo Thorne will resign after Congress denied him a confidence vote he formally requested. His resignation comes as part of the fallout concerning the government efforts to revive the proposed airport project at Chinchero, Cuzco. The construction and operation PPP project was ...

Politics: Elections and Democracy in Question
MEXICO · Report · 21 Jun 2017

Opposition parties and candidates are mounting legal challenges to the official vote counts in two of the June 4 gubernatorial elections (Coahuila and the State of Mexico), in a pattern that has become all too predictable in Mexico for decades, in which there is often extensive documentation of w...

People’s Bank promotion?
CHINA FINANCIAL · Report · 20 Jun 2017

Special points to highlight in this issue: • It has long been expected that Zhou Xiaochuan will soon retire as governor of the People’s Bank of China. Guo Shuqing and Yi Gang have usually been suggested as his most likely replacement, with Liu Shiyu sometimes mentioned as a possibility. • Anot...

The Current Account Deficit Widens in the First Quarter of 2017
SOUTH AFRICA · Report · 20 Jun 2017

Despite the South African trade surplus’ being sustained for the second consecutive quarter in Jan-Mar 2017 (registering R57 billion in first quarter of 2017 and R56 billion in the final quarter of 2016), the deficit of the current account balance widened from R76 billion in the last quarter of 2...

Week of June 19
BRAZIL POLITICS · Report · 19 Jun 2017 · 1 response

The interview given by businessman Joesley Batista to Época magazine will continue to reverberate in Brasília. Federal Police may conclude the expert analysis of the tape recording of the conversation between Batista and President Michel Temer. The President will be abroad (Russia and Norway) th...

The Political Crisis and the Worsening of the Economic Scenario
BRAZIL ECONOMICS · Forecast · 19 Jun 2017

From a purely economic standpoint and a strictly short-term scenario, the current crisis is not as severe as many of the previous ones, but in the political realm the story is very different. Governability has eroded, making it virtually impossible to win approval of a reasonable version of the p...

Will Correa Wait Four Years To Return?
ECUADOR · Report · 19 Jun 2017 · 1 response

President Lenín Boltaire Moreno is facing, and will continue to face, many challenges. Not all of them come from the outside. It took former president Rafael Correa less than a month to publicly air his disagreements with some of Moreno’s decisions, especially with his naming of a new anti-corr...

Stronger Economy, Weaker Politics
HUNGARY · Report · 19 Jun 2017

The optimism of official and market forecasters regarding this year’s growth prospects has been justified so far by actual data, even though the government’s 4.1% GDP growth forecast still seems to be at the upper end of existing forecasts. But growth is following a pattern different from largely...

The Signs of Economic Activity
BRAZIL ECONOMICS · Report · 19 Jun 2017

Last week was filled with positive data on April’s economic activity, suggesting the recovery recorded in the first quarter might extend to the second. Along with the continuing fall of the interest rate, other forces are also acting in the direction of economic recovery, but even though the wors...

No change in policy rate expected
PHILIPPINES · In Brief · 16 Jun 2017

How likely is it that the BSP will raise interest rates when the Monetary Board meets on Thursday, June 22? The question has come up following the US Fed’s decision to hike its policy rate by 25bp on Wednesday. The move brought the cumulative increase in the US policy rate since December last yea...

​CHP deputy sent to prison, chairman hits the road
TURKEY · In Brief · 15 Jun 2017

First, allow me to remind my audience that I'll be out of the country until 1st of July during which time my access to e-mail will be limited. If you need to contact me, GlobalSource Partners NYC office is your best bet. I had sincerely hoped that you wouldn’t have to, since up until a day ago, p...

Farmer protests, loan waivers and fiscal deficits
INDIA · Report · 15 Jun 2017

The recent decline in food prices and rural stress are causing farmers to protest in some parts of India. Police firings have led to six deaths in Madhya Pradesh. After two years of drought, demonetization hit the cash economy of rural India hard. The cash ban brought rural markets to a halt, pus...

Online Politics
RUSSIA / FSU POLITICS · Report · 15 Jun 2017

The Moscow Mayor’s Office launched a large-scale city renovation plan that means tearing down thousands of apartment buildings and offering home owners new ones. City-wide discussions resulted in tens of thousands of people protesting, and the city leadership’s goal at this stage is to prevent op...

MPC Remains On Hold As Expected
TURKEY · Report · 15 Jun 2017

The Monetary Policy Committee’s decision was broadly as expected. The Bank kept all its rates unchanged, i.e. the Late Liquidity Window (LLW) at 12.25%, the O/N lending and borrowing rates at 9.25% and 7.25%, respectively and the one-week repo rate at 8.0%.

2017–2019 Forecast: Autocracy vs Reforms
VENEZUELA · Forecast · 14 Jun 2017

With a crashing economy and an unpopular regime trying to entrench its power, anything can happen in Venezuela over our 2017–2019 forecast horizon. We construct two scenarios that we consider equally likely, one in which Maduro’s government persists (“Autocracy”) and another in which it is replac...