HUNGARY
Analyst
Istvan Racz
Former Director, Central BankDatabanks
Recent Country Insights
Inflation jumped in January
HUNGARY · Report · 19 Feb 2025
CPI-inflation started the year with a big upward adjustment in January, on a cyclical pickup of agricultural prices, the decent strength of consumer demand and the impact of the weak forint on import prices. The size of this change genuinely surprised the MNB and analysts, even though its directi...
A rare occasion: PM Orbán comments on the forint's exchange rate
HUNGARY · In Brief · 17 Feb 2025
This morning, PM Orbán has put on to his facebook a short video. In this, he is sitting at his desk, attentively studying a full-page chart with European gas prices. Asked from the backstage how the week is going, he says that they closed last week and also started this week with the discussion o...
All forecasts in ruins: CPI-inflation sharply up in January
HUNGARY · In Brief · 11 Feb 2025
No forecast survives the first contact with reality, it seems, one could say paraphrasing general Moltke's famous claim, which is widely known from history. For January, the MNB predicted the headline rate of CPI-inflation at 4.6% yoy in late December. This was followed by a much more recent anal...
Outgoing member of the Monetary Council sends out a hawkish message
HUNGARY · In Brief · 07 Feb 2025
Just a few days before the release of the January CPI data on February 11, Monetary Council member Gyula Pleschinger spoke to Reuters, saying the following: - CPI-inflation may have run above 5% yoy in January, and is likely to return to the MNB's 2-4% target range only by the end of 2025;- avera...
Poor December figures for industry and retail sales, not entirely consistent with Q4 GDP flash estimate
HUNGARY · In Brief · 06 Feb 2025
Industrial output fell 1.8% mom, 5.7% yoy in December, the latter after -2.8% yoy in the previous month. Q4 was down 4.1% yoy, full-year 2024 was a decrease of 3.5%, after -4.7% in 2023. As local industry is heavily focussed on exports, all this substantiates concerns about the state of the Europ...
Preliminary Q4 GDP in line with expectation, more or less
HUNGARY · In Brief · 30 Jan 2025
Real GDP (preliminary, seasonally and day-adjusted) grew by 0.5% qoq, 0.2% yoy in Q4 2024, implying 0.6% growth for the whole of 2024, after -0.8% in 2023. Analysts expected 0.2% growth for Q4, and the 2025 budget includes 0.8% growth for full-year 2024. Note: Real GDP growth in percent; Source: ...
The Monetary Council sent out an expressly hawkish message today
HUNGARY · In Brief · 28 Jan 2025
Just as expected, the Council took no action regarding the MNB 6.5% base rate at today's regular monthly rate-setting meeting. So, analysts, who uniformly expected a hold decision this time, have been vindicated. Until this point, this is no really interesting story, but the messages sent out by ...
No rate action expected from tomorrow's Monetary Council
HUNGARY · In Brief · 27 Jan 2025
The regular monthly rate-setting meeting of the Monetary Council is scheduled for tomorrow. This will be the first one in 2025 and also the penultimate one chaired by the outgoing governor, Mr. Matolcsy. None of the twelve analysts asked by Portfolio.hu in their regular poll expect any rate actio...
Stronger GDP growth but no further disinflation in 2025-2026
HUNGARY · Forecast · 24 Jan 2025
The European gas market has weathered the initial shock of Ukraine's halting the transit of Russian gas on the first day of 2025, without any major variations in the Dutch TTF gas price. However, a recent unsuccessful attempt by Ukraine to disrupt the TurkStream gas pipeline, together with Donald...