HUNGARY
Analyst
Istvan Racz
Former Director, Central BankDatabanks
Recent Country Insights
Confirming the obvious: price caps will be extended beyond end-August
HUNGARY · In Brief · 24 Aug 2025
We had this coming from the first instance. PM Orbán has just announced that the government's administrative caps on the gross retail margins of certain food items and household goods will be upheld after August 31, when, in the legal sense at least, those measures were set to expire. He did not ...
An update on the Druzhba oil pipeline
HUNGARY · In Brief · 23 Aug 2025
During the night of August 22, the Unecha pumping station in the Bryansk region of Russia was hit by Ukrainian UAV drones, causing the whole station to go up in flames, as everyone can check by seeing the video published by the Ukrainian military. This was the fourth attack against the Druzhba oi...
The government is interfering with monetary policy once again
HUNGARY · Report · 19 Aug 2025
The often incalculable consequences of current US trade policy have proven to be quite easily calculable lately, even though probably for a short while only. Mr. Trump’s threat to impose penalty-level import tariffs on European goods has been averted, with the initially announced tariffs halved, ...
July inflation data was moderately disappointing
HUNGARY · In Brief · 08 Aug 2025
The headline rate was reported at 0.4% mom, 4.3% yoy, the latter down from 4.6% in June, core inflation fell to 0.4% mom, 4% yoy, down from 4.4% yoy in the previous month, and non-fuel inflation was 0.4% mom, 4.9% yoy, the latter falling only marginally, from 5% yoy previously: This was somewhat ...
Inflation warning: Expect the year-on-year headline rate fall significantly in July
HUNGARY · In Brief · 07 Aug 2025
CPI-inflation data for July is due in the morning tomorrow. In June, the yoy headline rate was 4.6%. Against that, analysts, including us, expect a material reduction to 4.1% yoy (the median value in Portfolio.hu's monthly analyst poll). This reduction would be due essentially to two base effects...
Industry and retail sales figures for June: no trend change seen, business as usual
HUNGARY · In Brief · 06 Aug 2025
Preliminary industrial output and retail sales data (volume growth on sda basis) for June has been reported this morning. A quick look at the fixed-base chart below (volumes, Dec 2010=100, source: KSH) serves with the easy conclusion that there has not been any change in the long-standing trends,...
Q2 GDP data met expectations, exceptionally
HUNGARY · In Brief · 30 Jul 2025
As we reported yesterday, all forecasters expected GDP growth to be slightly positive in Q2, after being similarly negative in Q1. And they have proven to be right. In fact, real GDP growth reached +0.4% qoq, +0.2% yoy, the former after a revised -0.1% qoq in the first quarter. This also means th...
Tariffs, secondary tariffs and Q2 GDP
HUNGARY · In Brief · 29 Jul 2025
The preliminary Q2 GDP data is due tomorrow. Following -0.2% qoq, -0.4% yoy in Q1, Portfolio.hu's analyst poll shows a median forecast of 0.2% qoq, 0% yoy for Q2, with 0.7% average growth for this year and 2.7% growth for 2026. A short while ago, our quarterly forecast update included a slightly ...
Interest rates, assessment all kept unchanged at today's Monetary Council
HUNGARY · In Brief · 22 Jul 2025
The regular monthly rate-setting meeting of the Monetary Council was held this morning. Nobody expected any change, and there was none either, except a reduction of the mandatory reserve ratio for banks, from 10% to 8%, starting from August 1. Why is the latter essentially unimportant? Because th...