August retail and industry figures: one mediocre, one miserable, plus an interesting comment from PM Orbán on central bank policy

HUNGARY - In Brief 07 Oct 2025 by Istvan Racz

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Retail sales (volumes, seasonally and day-adjusted) grew 0.8% mom, 2.3% yoy, the latter following +2% yoy in July and +3.1% yoy in Q2. The fix-based KSH chart (Dec 2010=100) looks as follows: As it is optically observable as well, retail sales remain on a generally ascending trend, but the pace of expansion has decelerated somewhat lately. Industrial (volumes, also sda basis) fell 2.3% mom, 4.4% yoy, the latter after -1.2% yoy in July and -3.2% yoy in Q2. Here, the same sort of fix-based charts is the following: Well, this looks really awful, the straight downwardly trend line pressing forward for the last three years, without any traces of the 'take-off' or 'breakthrough' promised by the government from the outset of the current year. By the way, PM Orbán spoke of economic policy publicly, in unusually abundant detail, a few days ago. In a local podcast he appeared together with the head of the Hungarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, jointly presenting the government's new cheap loan (3% fixed interest, due to interest subsidies) facility, to be offered to SMEs soon. On this occasion, Mr. Orbán said that the promised take-off is indeed happening, though not from the start of the year, as he originally predicted, but from July, as Mr. Trump was unable to secure quick peace in Ukraine, and so external conditions were worse than expected. And it should not be understood as an immediate upswing of output in the economy; rather it is heralded by the start of the delivery of the government's various fiscal campaign measures, as what else could they be described other than a genuine take-off. Perhaps more importantly, Mr. Orbán was asked about central bank policy, namely...