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​Good Tidings, Citizen
TURKEY · In Brief · 10 Jan 2019

Dear All, I’ll be out of town for the weekend to launch my third book, thus skipping my weekly contribution to the knowledge pool of the world. I thought it would be appropriate to comment on municipal elections, the winning of which moved to the center of AKP policymaking and new threats by Fore...

Hike, cut or hold?
PHILIPPINES · In Brief · 08 Jan 2019

The inflation outlook has become much more benign following price declines over the last two months. We now expect the headline rate to fall back within target (2-4%) this quarter, averaging 2.9% for the full year. The significant adjustment in our inflation forecast since December (3.9%) also co...

The government is serious about selling shares of Punta Catalina power plants
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC · In Brief · 08 Jan 2019

Yesterday, the Ministry of Finance informed that it has selected Guggenheim Securities to advise the government in the design of a potential tender for the sale of the shares of the Punta Catalina Thermoelectric Power Plant. The announcement shows that the intentions of the government are serious...

Elections in Congress and other weekly topics
BRAZIL POLITICS · Report · 07 Jan 2019

President Jair Bolsonaro holds the second cabinet meeting since his inauguration. Ministers will present measures that will be executed in January. Political negotiations continue ahead of the elections for the presidencies of the Lower House and the Senate. This week’s Talking Points: • Posi...

The labor market and the cyclical recovery
BRAZIL ECONOMICS · Report · 07 Jan 2019

The consensus projections are for modest acceleration of the cyclical recovery. The main impulse should come from fixed capital investment, and the strength of its propagation to boost consumption will depend crucially on improvement in the labor market, whose behavior will be continually monitor...

The bond market will react to the BoI macro forecast for 2019-2020
ISRAEL · Report · 07 Jan 2019

GDP growth in 2018 reached 3.2% on fairly balanced growth, but slowing from 2017, and expected to reach 2.8% in 2019. We expect a rate hold decision today but the tone of the announcement will shed some light on the new Governor's bias. More important will be the BoI macro forecast, which is like...

Election economics takes odd twists
TURKEY · Report · 06 Jan 2019

Winning local elections has become the sole priority for AKP, around which all policy decisions, including those concerning foreign affairs shall revolve between now and March 31st. There are very few polls, but plenty of commentary from pollsters. Trying to correlate those as impartially as o...

December inflation drops
PHILIPPINES · In Brief · 04 Jan 2019 · 1 response

The headline inflation rate fell sharply to 5.1 percent from 6.0 percent in November, with the price level falling for the second straight month. Similarly, core inflation eased to 4.7 percent in December from 5.1 percent in the previous month, indicating diminishing second round impacts.The lowe...

No budget for 2019… yet
PHILIPPINES · In Brief · 04 Jan 2019

2018 ended with congress failing to pass the executive’s proposed 2019 national budget, the result of an apparent spat between the two co-equal branches of government. The disagreement started back in mid-2018 on the technical issue of the executive’s proposed “cash” vs. previous years’ “obligati...

The government sector balance was close to zero again in January-September 2018
HUNGARY · In Brief · 03 Jan 2019

KSH reported the government sector balance, by ESA-2010, i.e. on accrual basis, at a deficit of 0.4% of GDP for the first three quarters of 2018. This was in fact almost the same number as the 0.6% of GDP actual recorded in January-September 2017. The message is that government finances have inde...

Powerful across-the-board growth
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC · Report · 03 Jan 2019

Real GDP growth for 2018 should come in at 7%, the Central Bank reported, after expansions of 6.8% in October, 7.2% in November and 7.1% (estimated) in December. Growth was strong across sectors, with communications, construction, free zones and heath particularly robust. Accumulated inflation...

Five major challenges that shook India’s economy in 2018
INDIA · In Brief · 03 Jan 2019

As a service to our clients, we are reproducing this Op-Ed by Ila Patnaik, which appeared in ThePrint on December 29, 2018. From GST to RBI to NPAs, both institutions and governance had a turbulent ride. The year 2018 saw significant challenges for the Indian economy. Implementation of the GST, a...

Inflation ends the year not as high as feared, but pretty high nevertheless
TURKEY · In Brief · 03 Jan 2019

Consumer prices dropped by 0.4% in December, broadly in line with consensus forecasts, ending the year at 20.3%, y/y, further down from 21.6% in November and a peak of 25.2% in October, which, incidentally, corresponds to the worst yearend performance since 2002, when we were in an entirely diffe...

Winter is coming to China
CHINA ADVISORY · Report · 02 Jan 2019

Recent data on employment and investment in fixed assets suggests a modest stimulus will lead to improvements in China’s economy. However, a closer look at local polls, along with other research, indicates that employment is much weaker than stated in the official data. Because macro data tend...

Comedian Zelenskiy to run for presidency
UKRAINE · In Brief · 02 Jan 2019 · 2 responses

On the New Year night comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy announced his decision to run for presidency in real. He spoke on TV channel 1+1 which belongs to oligarch Igor Kolomoyskiy at the time when President Petro Poroshenko was making his traditional New Year speech for Ukrainians. This move was arran...