Relatively good industry and retail sales data for April

HUNGARY - In Brief 06 Jun 2025 by Istvan Racz

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At last, we see a month in which both industrial output and retail sales grew materially, in month-on-month volume terms, on seasonally and day-adjusted basis. As for industry, output was up 1.5% mom. Year on year, this still meant a decrease of 2.6%, but even that was way better than the -6% yoy recorded for Q1. Here is the fixed-base chart (Dec 2010 = 100) from KSH: From the graph, it is immediately clear that with this latest data point, output did not break out of its now two-and-a-half-year long negative trend range yet, but we prefer to be happy with the little good news we have for now. Unfortunately, it is not evident from KSH extremely brief preliminary communiqué exactly which part of the sector improved in April, but we will learn that in less than two week's time. Regarding retail sales, it expanded by 2% mom in April, which implied 4.3% growth in yoy terms, after +2.8% yoy in Q1. Here, a bit of caution is due, as in addition to seasonality and days, the data has been adjusted also for what they call the 'Easter impact', which is perfectly in order theoretically, but may be a bit tricky in practice. Anyway, the really good part of the story is that the existing growth momentum, which has been there since the start of last year, seems to be pretty much well established, looking at the fixed-base chart (of the same kind as the one on industry): Importantly, it looks like there is still a realistic chance that the economy may return to positive growth relatively soon, after the poor results seen in Q1.