GlobalSource Partners | Country Insights

Unfortunately, the expected severe aggravation of the pandemic in Brazil has proved true. In one month, the seven-day moving average of daily Covid deaths tripled, from 1.2 thousand to 3.1 thousand, setting a new world record. Indeed, the country’s daily death toll has exceeded the sum of the nex...

Twitter fined USD 117,000 by Russia

RUSSIA / FSU POLITICS · In Brief · 05 Apr 2021

On April 12 a court fined the social media giant for not taking down forbidden content. Cases against Facebook and YouTube are ongoing.In January 2021 these companies allowed posts to be published calling on people to demonstrate in favor of Navalny. Roskomnadzor accused those who posted these me...

Changes in the Armed Forces and other weekly topics

BRAZIL POLITICS · Report · 05 Apr 2021

The government initiates the new phase of emergency aid payments, which could have a positive impact on evaluations of the administration. On Wednesday, the Lower House may vote on the bill that allows private companies to purchase vaccines. The Federal Supreme Court decides on the Patent Law. On...

Good news on Covid at last

HUNGARY · In Brief · 05 Apr 2021

The lockdown measures introduced on March 8, combined with an accelerated pace of vaccination, finally appear to work. It took a week that the reinfection rate (the 7-day average of the ratio of daily new infections to the stock of active cases a week earlier) reached its peak at 7.43% on March 1...

Turkey Covid Watch - April 5, 2021

TURKEY · Report · 05 Apr 2021

• Cases rose exponentially through March and are now clearly exceeding their December peak. The situation in ICUs is close to critical in some cities, including in Istanbul. On the positive side, medical care capacity utilization as a whole is down, as new capacity has been added in the interim. ...

Lockdown watch (2)

PHILIPPINES · In Brief · 05 Apr 2021

On Black Saturday, President Rodrigo Duterte extended the ECQ status of Metro Manila and surrounding provinces (“NCR+”) by another week to April 11. The decision was not unexpected considering experts’ prognoses that a one-week lockdown would not be enough to control the surge in covid19 infectio...

Don’t bet on inflation peaking in May

TURKEY · Report · 05 Apr 2021

Consumer prices rose by 1.1%, m/m, in March, broadly in line with the consensus, with the 12-month rate rising further to 16.2%, from 15.6% in February. Domestic-PPI inflation was 4.1% in the month, which led to a more dramatic increase in the 12-month rate, to a whopping 31.2%, up from 27.1% in ...

Russia moves more troops to the border with Ukraine

RUSSIA / FSU POLITICS · In Brief · 05 Apr 2021

On April 2 the Russian government acknowledged that it has deployed additional forces to Crimea and on Ukraine's eastern border. Moscow maintains that this is not menacing. Ukraine is alarmed by this. The US government has affirmed its unstinting support for Ukraine. There has been an uptick in e...

Turkmenistan's president elected to its senate

RUSSIA / FSU POLITICS · In Brief · 03 Apr 2021

On March 28 elections were held for the newly created senate. No opposition candidates ran. Berdymukhamedov won 100% of the vote. The whole country voted in 2 hours at only 6 polling stations.

Sugar prices rising in Russia

RUSSIA / FSU POLITICS · In Brief · 03 Apr 2021

On March 31 Izvestia reported that sugar factories have suspended sales and deliveries to supermarkets as the sugar sector waits for a state subvention. Food prices have gone up 7.7% in the last 12 months. That is the steepest annual rise since 2016. Living standards are at their lowest in 10 yea...

Goldman Sachs thriving in Russia

RUSSIA / FSU POLITICS · In Brief · 02 Apr 2021

On April 2 Goldman Sachs announced that 2020 was a year of record profit for it in Russia. There were several major corporate deals.Investment banking, global markets and the asset management arm all grew significantly in 2020. The bank made a total profit of USD 9 million in Q1, Q2 and Q3 in 202...

Floundering in COVID-19’s Third Wave

UKRAINE · Report · 02 Apr 2021

The growing number of COVID-19 cases, the mounting numbers of virus-related deaths, and the return to a strict nationwide lockdown are the top issues these days, while the country’s vaccination effort rolls out at a snail’s pace. Still, it does not look as though Ukraine will face the dramatic ec...

A make-it-or-break-it year

TURKEY · Forecast · 02 Apr 2021 · 1 response

Let’s start with a caveat. In our almost two decades of jointly covering Turkey as the Global Source Partners Turkey team, we’ve never written a quarterly/forecast report amid this sort of uncertainty. As a compromise of sorts, since the key questions in most of our readers’ minds focus on the ve...

Russia’s 2020 GDP is revised up

RUSSIA ECONOMICS · In Brief · 02 Apr 2021

Rosstat announced that according to its second estimate, Russia’s GDP contracted by 3.0% instead of 3.1% reported previously. The result is not unexpected as earlier upward revisions of the 2018 and 2019 growth should have affected the 2020 data. At the same time, Rosstat finally released quarter...

Russia’s Pandemic/Political Update: Every Sandpiper Praises its Swamp

RUSSIA ECONOMICS · Report · 02 Apr 2021

In the past four weeks, Russia’s daily average registered virus cases gradually descended from around 10K to around 9K, and were getting closer to 8K quite often in recent days. Overall, the trend was downward so far, albeit decelerating. The country’s epidemiological picture looked more favorabl...