Good monthly output and demand data for October, at last

HUNGARY - In Brief 06 Dec 2024 by Istvan Racz

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Following a series of poor monthly output and demand figures of late, pretty good numbers were reported by KSH for October in the last two days. Retail sales were up by 1.2% mom, 3.7% yoy, bringing the cumulative ten-month expansion for this year up to 2.8% yoy. This came after a disappointing -1.4% mom in September: Note: Seasonally adjusted volume data, December 2010 = 100; Source: KSH Industrial output also grew, by 2% mom, in October, even though this still implied a 3.2% yoy contraction, given the substantially negative results of previous months. The cumulative ten-month change of the output volume this year was -3.9% yoy. Car manufacturing and battery output still fell in October on mom basis, but the majority of other branches of industry picked up: Note: Seasonally adjusted volume data, December 2010 = 100; Source: KSH By the way, the details of the Q3 GDP data were revealed by the KSH earlier this week. The main numbers did not change from preliminary, but the details told a lot about the causes of the genuinely weak totals. In essence, this weakness indeed came from a number of reasons, which did not include consumption - in fact, purchased consumption grew by 4.7% yoy, exhibiting a trend of acceleration over recent quarters. So, the problems were in industry, agriculture, and construction on the supply side, and in fixed investment and net exports on the demand side, in the order of importance in both cases. Services and consumption did relatively well. As a first reaction, we would say that the forint just badly needed this kind of news. Recently, we had the thought occasionally that someone important (the MNB, the prospective new governor, the economy min...