Further good news on industry and retail sales in September

HUNGARY - In Brief 08 Nov 2026 by Istvan Racz
Industrial output grew 0.9% mom, 7.8% yoy in September, the latter following +8.6% yoy in August. Thus output growth accelerated to 6.9% yoy in Q3 from 3.6% yoy in Q2, and it reached 4% yoy in January-September. The fixed base chart below (December 2010 = 100) shows a pretty good-looking upswing for the past one-year period or so:  In the usual short-spoken style of preliminary output reports, KSH said that the drivers of growth included mainly vehicles, computers & electronics and electric equipment. We translate this as car manufacturing, IT hardware and EV batteries. The novelty seems to be the latter one: this we attribute to the new CATL factory at Debrecen, where the Chinese company started to produce NCM and LFP battery cells on two production lines in September, coming closer to the full commissioning of its newly built production capacities in Hungary. Previous developments were the start of the local production of EV cars by BMW in Q4 2025 and the opening of the second local factory of Mercedes in June this year. In further good news, BYD said about a month ago that it would start serial assembly of its cars in its new factory at Szeged, southern Hungary already in Q4 2026.  Retail sales expanded by 1.1% mom, 4.1% yoy in September, the latter after a temporary slowdown to 2.7% yoy in August. We attributed that slowdown to a setback of tourism in summer, in the form of less incoming and more outgoing tourists this year, because of the forint's increased strength. But now that the summer peak tourism season is over, retail sales growth has apparently recovered. Retail sales expanded by 3.9% yoy in Q3 after 3.7% yoy in Q2, and the January-September growth rate w...

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