HUNGARY
Analyst
Istvan Racz
Former Director, Central BankDatabanks
Recent Country Insights
Disappointing CPI data for April: cap on retail margins did not work quite as suggested previously
HUNGARY · In Brief · 09 May 2025
The headline rate was 0.2% mom, 4.2% yoy, the latter down from 4.7% yoy in March, core inflation was 0.1% mom, 5% yoy, also down from 5.7% yoy in the previous month:So, it looks like the spike seen in the first two months of this year has been overcome, both headline and core fell neatly, and the...
April CPI out tomorrow: prepare for the headline rate deeply below 4%
HUNGARY · In Brief · 08 May 2025 · 1 response
The headline rate went up to 5.6% yoy in February, from where it came down to 4.7% yoy in March. Against that, a further drop to below 4% in April may look extraordinary. But circumstances are extraordinary, too.For one thing, fuel prices (7.3% of the CPI basket) dropped substantially again in Ap...
US, EU trade policy measures work against economic growth in Hungary
HUNGARY · In Brief · 07 May 2025
Well, this looks like a series of unfavourable news now. Here is a list of what we mean: 1. A few days ago, Mr. Trump's 25% tariffs on the imports of car components took effect, following a similar measure on the imports of complete cars, implemented one month earlier. Naturally, these moves affe...
Administrative price regulation will most likely be extended and broadened after end-May
HUNGARY · In Brief · 03 May 2025
Economy Minister Nagy has made a considerable number of public appearances on the existing administrative price regulation applied to the retail prices of certain food items recently. The summary of his statements must be as follows, we think: - The limitation of the retail price margins used at ...
Negative GDP growth reported for Q1
HUNGARY · In Brief · 30 Apr 2025
Preliminary, seasonally and day-adjusted GDP data shows -0.2% qoq, -0.4% yoy real growth for Q1, as reported this morning. This came after +0.6% qoq, +0.1% yoy in Q4, and 0.5% growth in full-year 2024. In an unusually brief statement, KSH only said that Q1 growth was supported by services but hel...
Fiscal cost of election campaign spending increases
HUNGARY · In Brief · 29 Apr 2025
The other day, Economy Minister Nagy confirmed that the members of armed services (soldiers, policemen, etc., about 100k people) will be entitled to another one-time bonus payment, equal to 6-month worth of salaries, in February next year, and that the government are going to earmark some HUF450b...
Non-interest central government cash deficit down in Q1
HUNGARY · In Brief · 24 Apr 2025
Two days ago, when we released our new quarterly forecast report, we were still unable to give any breakdown of the Q1 cash balance of the central government, because the respective official data had not been published yet. So we could not present how exactly the annualised cash deficit ratio ros...
Past Liberation Day: a few changes to growth and inflation forecasts
HUNGARY · Forecast · 22 Apr 2025
The world has changed quite a bit since we published our previous forecast in January, because of Mr. Trump’s appearance on the scene, and especially his latest aggressive trade policy measures. The latter are pushing the global economy towards lower growth but also lower energy prices, both extr...
S&P changed the outlook for its BBB- sovereign credit rating to Negative from Stable
HUNGARY · In Brief · 13 Apr 2025
This happened at this year's first pre-set review date for Hungary, as regards any of the top three rating agencies: At the same time, S&P affirmed its BBB- credit rating, but even so, the agency's decision pushed Hungary to the very brink of losing its investment grade credit rating. S&P lowered...