HUNGARY
Analyst
Istvan Racz
Former Director, Central BankDatabanks
Recent Country Insights
A few snippets on most recent developments
HUNGARY · In Brief · 29 Jan 2026
By and large, the MNB's January rate-setting meeting on Tuesday proved to be a non-event, as expected. But, please, remain being warned that a base rate cut, most likely by 25bps, may come in late March, provided the usual early-year wave of price adjustments is found to have been completed with ...
Extreme election uncertainty magnifies risks of macro forecasts
HUNGARY · Forecast · 23 Jan 2026
Less than three months before the parliamentary election, there remains extraordinarily high uncertainty as to the likely outcome. Opinion poll results are diverse, even though on average they suggest that the opposition Tisza is distinctly more popular than Fidesz. However, given the existing he...
Hungary's MOL is set to acquire a majority stake in Serbia's NIS oil refinery
HUNGARY · In Brief · 20 Jan 2026
MOL has just said it signed a binding letter of intent to acquire a 56% controlling stake in Serbia's Nafta Industrija Srbije (NIS) company, which includes the country's only oil refinery at Pancevo, a retail network and a hydrocarbon exploration and production branch. MOL is buying this stake fr...
EU decisions regarding Hungary reportedly postponed until the election
HUNGARY · In Brief · 16 Jan 2026
Early this week, the President of the Republic officially called the parliamentary election for April 12, the earliest legally possible date, in line with long-time expectation, but running counter to some local speculations that PM Orbán may act to postpone the election if developments are not f...
Headline inflation rate down sharply in December, further reduction is likely in Q1
HUNGARY · In Brief · 13 Jan 2026
Headline CPI-inflation was 0.1% mom, 3.3% yoy in December, the latter sharply down from 3.8% yoy in November. Despite the significant move by the yoy rate, this data was no surprise: the median analyst expected exactly this outcome, according to Portfolio.hu, and our own forecast table included 3...
2025 fiscal deficit is much bigger than officially expected... or will it still be in line in the end?
HUNGARY · In Brief · 08 Jan 2026
It has just been reported that the central government's cash deficit ended up at HUF5739bn or 6.6% of GDP in full-year 2025, according to preliminary figures. This means no less than HUF1668bn (an annualised 23.1% of GDP) in December alone, which is quite an impressive sum for a single month, eve...
Attention, friends of convergence trade: Tisza aims at euro introduction in medium term
HUNGARY · In Brief · 06 Jan 2026
It had been claimed by Tisza for a while, more or less superficially, that they would go for the introduction of the euro in Hungary, should they win at the election later this year. However, Tisza held a news conference yesterday, at which Péter Magyar, founder and head of the party, and András ...
New year started with delivery of known fiscal campaign promises
HUNGARY · In Brief · 03 Jan 2026
A Happy New Year to all Readers! Just for the files, all the fiscal campaign measures promised by Fidesz with introduction at the start of 2026 have been indeed duly delivered, as shown by our standard table below: Sources: own compilation and estimates, based mainly on data from the Economy Mini...
Is 390 the current officially preferred EURHUF rate?
HUNGARY · In Brief · 18 Dec 2025
You know, it is a pretty common disease among analysts to see reason even where there is none. So, maybe we have just fallen prey to this pandemic this time. However, there may be still a story, a sort of conscious calculation to manage the EURHUF exchange rate, behind what we have seen most late...