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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'...

The election campaign has started: major social policy measures announced
HUNGARY · Report · 21 Mar 2025

European gas prices have corrected substantially in recent weeks, more on the warming weather than on peace prospects. We still see no realistic prospect for the restart of the transit of Russian gas through Ukraine. Hungary finished the winter period with higher-than-usual gas reserves, and it c...

Inflation rose further in February: an administrative ceiling comes on retail trade margins for a set of basic food items
HUNGARY · In Brief · 11 Mar 2025

Headline CPI-inflation in February was reported at 0.8% mom, 5.6% yoy this morning, the latter up from 5.5% yoy in January. Core inflation looked bad as well, at 0.6% mom, 6.2% yoy, the latter up from 5.8% in January. Non-fuel inflation, which we estimate from the official KSH data, was 0.9% mom,...

PM Orbán vetoed in the European Council: will this be consequential?
HUNGARY · In Brief · 08 Mar 2025

On March 6, the European Council held a 'special' (extraordinary) summit meeting, in preparation for the regular summit set for March 20-21. The Council did not make any decision on this occasion, but it published a set of conclusions on two subjects: a €800bn plan to rearm Europe, and EU policie...

Industry further down, retail sales further up: nothing changed in January
HUNGARY · In Brief · 06 Mar 2025

In January, industrial output grew by 0.8% mom, but it fell by 3.9% yoy, the latter after -7.8% yoy in December and -4.3% yoy in the whole of Q4 2024, all in seasonally and day-adjusted volume terms. The moderate uptick in January could be somewhat promising, even if not exactly the jump start of...

Ahead of a special European Council meeting on March 6; where does Hungary stand?
HUNGARY · In Brief · 04 Mar 2025

Amidst the political whirlwind of recent days, created and actively fuelled by the US president around Ukraine/Russia/Europe and a potentially destructive trade war due to his new penalty-level tariffs on various items in various directions, it may be useful to establish where Hungary's governmen...

More news on fiscal policy, more bad than good, today
HUNGARY · In Brief · 27 Feb 2025

On the same day that Cabinet Minister Guyás told the press that the government remains committed to meet this year's 3.7% of GDP fiscal deficit target (after the preliminary actual 4.8% deficit ratio in 2024, both figures referring to general government by Eurostat methodology), the economy minis...

No surprise from the last Monetary Council rate-setting meeting chaired by outgoing governor Matolcsy
HUNGARY · In Brief · 25 Feb 2025

As governor Matolcsy is set to leave the MNB on March 3, today's was the last regular monthly rate-setting meeting chaired by him in the Monetary Council. There was absolutely no surprise caused by the Council on this occasion: the base rate was kept at 6.5%, the interest rate corridor at 5.5-7.5...

PM Orbán announced new social policy measures yesterday
HUNGARY · In Brief · 23 Feb 2025 · 1 response

It seems the governing party's campaign for next April's election is already running at full steam. At least, this is the lesson conveyed by PM Orbán's annual evaluation speech (similar to the US president's state of the union speech) held yesterday. On politics, Mr. Orbán saw a "breakthrough" in...

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...

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