HUNGARY
Analyst
Istvan Racz
Former Director, Central BankDatabanks
Recent Country Insights
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...
New MNB vice governor and Monetary Council member proposed by PM Orbán
HUNGARY · In Brief · 11 Apr 2025
Parliament's economic committee is scheduled to hear Mr. Zoltán Kurali (left on the picture below, standing next to governor Varga) on Tuesday next week. Mr. Kurali has been nominated by PM Orbán for the position of vice governor in the MNB. At present, the MNB has three vice governors: Barnabás ...
Good news on inflation at last: inflation fell more than expected in March
HUNGARY · In Brief · 08 Apr 2025
The headline rate was 0% mom, 4.7% yoy, down from 5.6% yoy in February, core inflation was 0.3% mom, 5.7%, down from 6.2% yoy, non-fuel inflation was 0.3% mom, 5.2% yoy, down from 5.6% yoy: Note: year-on-year changes in percent; Sources: KSH, own estimates Importantly, analysts expected the headl...
Both retail sales and industrial output followed their respective trends in February
HUNGARY · In Brief · 07 Apr 2025
Retail sales fell by 0.6% mom, but it grew by 3.3% yoy, in volume terms, in February. The fixed-base chart (Dec 2010 = 100, source: KSH), suggests that it was a correction after January's outstandingly robust result, back to an otherwise significantly increasing trend: So, the trend of strengthen...
Government macro forecast changes in the right direction but at the wrong time
HUNGARY · In Brief · 03 Apr 2025
Early this week, Mr. Nagy, the economy minister, announced a scaling back of the government's 2025 GDP growth forecast to 2.5% from the 3.4% included in the annual budget, parallel to raising this year's forecast for average CPI-inflation to 4.5% from the original 3.2%. These are exactly the figu...
Long-time gap between real wages and retail sales growth closed in January
HUNGARY · In Brief · 31 Mar 2025
For quite a while, but at least throughout the whole of 2024, government speakers and all sorts of analysts have been complaining about the weakness of consumption growth, in comparison with the expansion of real wages. Problem solved, one could say when looking at the January data (yoy changes i...
Today's Monetary Council went just as expected
HUNGARY · In Brief · 25 Mar 2025
The MNB base rate was left at 6.5% and the interest rate corridor remained at 5.5% to 7.5%. At the press conference held after the meeting by Mr. Varga, the new governor, it has been stressed that the base rate may be left unchanged for a longer period, without any specification on how long that ...
Monetary Council tomorrow: no rate change expected
HUNGARY · In Brief · 24 Mar 2025
This will be the first regular monthly rate-setting meeting chaired by Mr. Varga. In addition, it will be the one to discuss the Q1 inflation report. So, a really important event to watch anyway. Importantly, analysts are unanimously predicting no rate change from 6.5%, according to Portfolio.hu'...