GlobalSource Partners | Country Insights

In our quarterly report last August, we asked whether the key policy rate, the overnight RRP rate, will soon return to 3%, its level before the Monetary Board started tightening in May last year. In that tightening cycle, the overnight RRP rate rose by a total of 175bp, ending at 4.75%, before mo...

Castillo projected to defeat Fernandez in the PLD primaries

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC · In Brief · 06 Oct 2019

With a very narrow margin, Gonzalo Castillo, the dolphin of Danilo Medina, is projected as the winner of PLD primaries, defeating former president Leonel Fernández for the presidential candidacy. With 97.5% of the voting booth computed, Castillo reached 48.4% of the total votes, just 14 thousand ...

The fallout after Vizcarra’s decision to dissolve Congress

PERU · In Brief · 06 Oct 2019

After the September 30 dissolution of Congress, a few facts remain clear:This action is considered illegal by most prominent constitutional scholars and constitutional experts (see attached declaration published by 11 constitutional experts in Spanish ). However, there are many lawyers that argue...

Preventive protest sets redlines for Zelenskiy

UKRAINE · In Brief · 06 Oct 2019

Today more than 10 thnd people gathered at Maydan Nezalezhnosty, the central square of the country, to protest against ‘Steinmeier formula’ that President Zelenskiy officially accepted. It’s appeared to be the largest public protest since the Revolution of Dignity in 2013. Andrey Bohdan, Chief of...

Costa Rica´s fiscal rule. A correction

CENTRAL AMERICA · Report · 06 Oct 2019

In our September 30th Monthly Report we indicated that, in defining the Fiscal Rule, the Ministry of Finance considered the final budget allocation, which includes allocations done after the approval of the original budget. That statement was not correct. The compliance with the fiscal rule was ...

Odds of a military campaign increase

TURKEY · Report · 06 Oct 2019 · 3 responses

This week’s note is very brief. On politics, we focus on Turkey’s potential Syria campaign, as President Erdogan has served final notice on Saturday that the Turkish military has been given marching orders to enter North East Syria. He wants a safe zone badly for a variety of reasons. The risk...

Gulf weekly: Saudi rating downgraded; hints of possible Saudi-Iran talks

GULF COUNTRIES · Report · 06 Oct 2019

Fitch’s downgrade of Saudi Arabia to A, in the aftermath of the Abqaiq attack but still leaves its rating well above market-implied levels. The fact that Qatar’s GDP contracted for the first in 26 years is less dramatic than it sounds. There was also GDP data for Saudi (fine) and PMI data for Sa...

Hungary in the centre of the Brexit endgame?

HUNGARY · In Brief · 06 Oct 2019

In a rather unusual story, two British newspapers (Telegraph and Express) reported Hungarian foreign minister Péter Szíjjártó and Hungary's ambassador to the UK to have been spotted as leaving the building of the UK Cabinet Office on Friday morning, around the time when PM Boris Johnson reportedl...

Moreno’s economic knock out

ECUADOR · Report · 05 Oct 2019

Moreno took many by surprise announcing an elimination of fuel subsidies instead of the expected VAT increase requested by the IMF to comply with a 1.5% of GDP increase in revenues for next year.This measure needs no approval from the assembly and would render results starting this month if the g...

Secretary of Ukrainian Security Council resigns

RUSSIA / FSU POLITICS · In Brief · 05 Oct 2019

Oleksandr Danyliuk resigned as Secretary of the National Defence and Security Council on September 30. Danyliuk was a Poroshenko appointee. The reason for his resignation is unclear but he said it was related to the PrivatBank dispute. There had been rumors in late September that Danyliuk was goi...

Will China “defund” Hong Kong?

CHINA ADVISORY · Report · 04 Oct 2019

Beijing has indirectly suggested two, very different, economic policies towards Hong Kong as a result of the six-month long protests. 1) One policy calls for financial support from Chinese state firms. Reuters reported Sept. 21 (never confirmed) that nearly 100 state firms met over the border...

PLD primary could go either way

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC · Report · 04 Oct 2019

The two main political parties -- the PLD, in power since 2004, and the PRM -- will hold their presidential primaries this weekend. All eyes are on the PLD contest, as in the PRM Luis Abinader is expected to handily trounce former president Hipólito Mejía. But in the PLD, the contest between Gon...

OMAN: VAT train slowly chugs into the station, but other reforms will have to wait until it has left

GULF COUNTRIES · Report · 04 Oct 2019

My visit to Oman hasn’t thrown up many surprises; the economy continues to trundle along, and we are still waiting for the government to deliver on its fiscal reforms. VAT should finally happen in 2021, raising around 1.7% of GDP annually. While a number of other fiscal reforms are under con...

A new fiscal deficit ceiling

PANAMA · In Brief · 03 Oct 2019

Yesterday, Héctor Alexander, the head of the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) presented a bill of law at the national assembly in order to amend the deficit limit of 2.0% of GDP established by the Social Fiscal Responsibility Law (LRSF) back in October 2018. The proposed amendment would rais...

Breakthrough on peace for Ukraine

RUSSIA / FSU POLITICS · In Brief · 03 Oct 2019

On October 1 Ukraine reached an agreement with Russia on the breakaway regions of Donbass and Luhansk. At talks in Minsk the Ukrainian delegation agreed to new elections being held in two rebel held regions and to grant special political status to these regions. The agreement is known as the Stei...