On new data releases: weak industry, strengthening consumption, and moderate surpluses on the BOP

HUNGARY - In Brief 07 Oct 2024 by Istvan Racz

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1. Industrial output fell 0.5% mom, 3.5% yoy in August, he latter following -6.4% yoy in July. January-August was -3.8% yoy. So far this year, the usual mantra has been that most of the obvious weakness is caused by cars and batteries. But this time around, the foregoing preliminary numbers were accompanied by KSH's super-brief comment that negative year-on-year changes were registered in the overwhelming majority of industrial sub-sectors, more accurately in 12 out of the total 15 of those, in August. To make it worse, the foregoing numbers are seasonally and day-adjusted. This time around, calendar adjustment did a favour actually, as there were two less work-days in August this year than one year earlier, and the unadjusted volume change was actually -9.5% yoy, a rather poor figure. True, KSH applies workday adjustment in a relatively conservative way, but this kind of adjustment is still based on the assumption that additional workdays would have resulted in more or less proportionally higher output. And that is a built-in assumption only. Anyway, the fixed-base gross industrial output volume chart (December 2010 = 100) looks as follows, a negative trend on it, following the similarly looking trend of European industry, still being easy to spot: 2. Retail sales grew by 0.8% mom, 3.6% yoy in August, the latter after +2.4% yoy in July. January-August was +2.8% yoy. Seasonal and day adjustment is no big problem here: the unadjusted volume growth figure was +4.1% yoy in August, a bit stronger than the adjusted number. Also, it could be raised that August is the outstanding peak of tourism, and maybe incoming tourism was very strong or outgoing tourism fell, and that ma...