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No Bounce Back
CHILE · Report · 16 Jan 2017

In 2016, total exports were the lowest since 2009, but there was a rebound towards the end of the year. This rebound was widespread. The value of imports of capital goods continued the upward trend, which is good signal on investment. That’s the good news. In November, the Monthly Index of Eco...

How Perspectives Changed in 2017 in Relation to a Year Ago?
BRAZIL ECONOMICS · Report · 16 Jan 2017

At the start of 2016, inflation was higher than 10%; fear of “fiscal dominance” had raised the quotation of Brazil’s 10-year CDS above 600 basis points and caused the real to depreciate to R$4.00/US$; and the most optimistic GDP projections were for contraction between 3% and 4%. Now as 2017 gets...

The Monetary Easing Cycle Intensifies
BRAZIL ECONOMICS · Report · 16 Jan 2017

At the last COPOM meeting, the Central Bank not only cut the SELIC rate by 75 basis points, it also indicated that until a contrary indication this will be the pace of cuts for the coming meetings. This dragged down the longer term interest rates. It was a correct decision in light of the steep d...

A Brief Recap on the GDP Data
TURKEY · Report · 15 Jan 2017

The Turkish Statistics Institute (Turkstat) introduced very significant revisions to the National Income Accounts (NIA) data in early December, at the time of the release of the third quarter growth stats. We learnt, among other things, that we were quite a bit richer than we thought -- by about ...

Political and Economic Update
TURKEY · Report · 15 Jan 2017

We are very worried about the state of politics in Turkey at a very fundamental level because the country is becoming more detached from the reality as we speak. We identify this malaise as “self-hypnosis”, which has a very ugly anti-Westernism at its core. The new paradigm is in contradiction wi...

Tax police ‘accidental’ reform
UKRAINE · In Brief · 15 Jan 2017

In December 2016 parliament accidentally deprived powers of the tax police. A package of tax changes was under consideration, and by some mistake the tax police was cancelled. We may never know who was the author of this "mistake" but that’s what happened. The tax police was one of the key instru...

CPI-inflation beat expectations in December, marks significant upside risk in 2017-2018
HUNGARY · In Brief · 14 Jan 2017

CPI-inflation came out at 0.4% mom, 1.8% yoy in December, the highest yoy rate since June 2013. The average analyst (including us) expected 0.1% mom, 1.5% yoy, and judged by the Q4 average inflation forecast released just before Christmas, the MNB seems to have shared the consensus view.The bulk ...

Bracing for a difficult year
VENEZUELA · Report · 10 Jan 2017 · 2 responses

Maduro gears up to 2017 with a more loyal cabinet, bringing in left-wing radical civilians and leaving intact the military component. He will continue managing emergencies one by one, hoping that better oil prices and creative financial engineering will allow him to overcome crises. The new cabin...

Week of January 9
BRAZIL POLITICS · Report · 09 Jan 2017

The highlight of the week is the Central Bank meeting to set the benchmark interest rate (Selic). IBGE releases inflation data for December and accumulated results for 2016. In politics, the succession for president of the Lower House is heating up in Brasília, with Federal Representatives Jovair...

Economic Activity is Still Weak
BRAZIL ECONOMICS · Report · 09 Jan 2017

In our last Quarterly Outlook we projected a slow recovery of economic activity starting in the second quarter of 2017. Despite the slight improvement in some indicators, the most recent data still show signs of contraction of both household consumption and gross fixed capital formation. GDP prob...

​Who will lead the BSP?
PHILIPPINES · In Brief · 09 Jan 2017

The financial community entered 2017 with President Rodrigo Duterte's December threat against the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) still ringing in its ears. In his second challenge in as many months to the AMLC, which is chaired by the BSP Governor, the President said that "Tetangco is about...

Political and Economic Update
TURKEY · Report · 08 Jan 2017 · 1 response

After the New Year’s Eve massacre at the posh Istanbul nightclub Reina, terror struck a courthouse in Izmir killing four and injuring eight. More atrocious incidents are highly likely. Meanwhile, AKP extended the State of Emergency for another three months, but we bet that it won’t be the last ti...

“Painful Compromises” of Local Oligarchs
UKRAINE · In Brief · 08 Jan 2017 · 2 responses

On Dec. 29th 2016, Viktor Pinchuk, local oligarch and son-in-law of ex-President Leonid Kuchma made a real coming out on pages of WSJ with an article ‘Ukraine Must Make Painful Compromises for Peace With Russia’. The name of the article tells for itself. Mr. Pinchuk suggests accepting agenda that...

A bit more clarity on the fiscal results of 2016
HUNGARY · In Brief · 07 Jan 2017

The public can see a bit more clearly after an announcement by the Economy Ministry yesterday, even though key questions remain unanswered. The new piece that found its place in the puzzle is that the full-year cash deficit of the central government ended up at HUF848bn or 2.4% of GDP. This impli...

Dealing with Uncertainty
RUSSIA / FSU POLITICS · Report · 06 Jan 2017

Russia’s most popular opposition politician, Alexei Navalny, announced his candidacy for the 2018 presidential election. Although it will be a while before the formal candidate registration procedure starts, this move can win some public support for Navalny and create a supportive context for the...