HUNGARY
Analyst
Istvan Racz
Former Director, Central BankDatabanks
Recent Country Insights
The MNB’s tight policy course is vindicated—once again
HUNGARY · Report · 23 Jun 2025
In the past few weeks, this is the second time we are giving this title to a piece of research. The first occasion was when the May inflation data came out with an unexpected rise in the headline rate. But we are coming back to this same conclusion again, after all that has happened, and in view ...
No base rate change is likely at Tuesday's Monetary Council meeting
HUNGARY · In Brief · 22 Jun 2025
The Council is set to hold its regular monthly rate-setting meeting on Tuesday, June 24. So far this year. all decisions, and indeed all votes within the Council, were for holding the base rate at 6.5%. Last time, on May 27, the Council concluded that neither domestic inflation, nor external cond...
May CPI data out, MNB's tight policy course vindicated
HUNGARY · In Brief · 11 Jun 2025
The headline rate of CPI-inflation surprised on the upside in May. Against 4.2% yoy expected by analysts (their median forecast), the actual number was 4.4% yoy, with 0.2% inflation in May alone. The yoy rate rose from 4.2% yoy in April. Non-fuel inflation backed up to 5.2% yoy from the previous ...
May inflation data due tomorrow, and some fiscal data reported
HUNGARY · In Brief · 10 Jun 2025
For headline CPI-inflation, analysts in Portfolio.hu's monthly poll expect 4.2% yoy, unchanged from April, as regards the median forecast recorded by the survey. For end-2025, the headline rate is expected to decrease to 3.9% yoy. We fully agree with this forecast for May, and also with the expec...
Fitch affirmed their BBB/Stable sovereign debt rating on Friday
HUNGARY · In Brief · 08 Jun 2025
Just one week after the latest review by a Top-3 rating agency, Fitch Ratings affirmed their BBB/Stable mark on Hungary on June 6. The report was quite negative in the sense that it identified three key areas where the agency saw deterioration since their previous review: growth outlook, short-te...
Relatively good industry and retail sales data for April
HUNGARY · In Brief · 06 Jun 2025
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...
Moody's affirmed their Baa2/Negative sovereign rating to Hungary on Friday
HUNGARY · In Brief · 01 Jun 2025
This means that the government has escaped a downgrading from a key rating agency for now. But the negative outlook was maintained, and Moody's will review their rating again no later than November 28. The next review by a top-3 agency is due in a week's time, by Fitch Ratings, currently rating H...
No policy change at today's Monetary Council, as expected
HUNGARY · In Brief · 27 May 2025
The base rate remains at 6.5%, and the interest rate corridor has also been left at 5.5-7.5%. The Council expect headline CPI-inflation close to (meaning not a lot above) the target range. They continue to aim at maintaining the stability of financial markets (in our reading this primarily means ...
Good news, bad news: a brief update to last week's monthly report
HUNGARY · In Brief · 26 May 2025
Our latest monthly report was released on May 20. Here follows a list of the most important items, which have shown up since then. 1. In the report, we wrote of the decelerating trend of nominal wage growth, which is good news for inflation but bad news for growth. We referred to the fact that by...