HUNGARY
Analyst
Istvan Racz
Former Director, Central BankDatabanks
Recent Country Insights
Budapest Pride march took place without problems yesterday
HUNGARY · In Brief · 29 Jun 2025
On Saturday, June 28, the annual Pride March of the LGBTQ community took place in Budapest, despite the government's express will and a previously announced police ban on the event. The march attracted between 50-100k participants, making the event the biggest Pride ever, and the second largest s...
No change in the base rate today - the MNB has become more pessimistic about the inflation outlook
HUNGARY · In Brief · 24 Jun 2025
Today, the Monetary Council left the base rate unchanged at 6.5% and the interest rate corridor also an unchanged +/-1%-point around the base rate. After the meeting, governor Varga spoke about the main points of the Q2 inflation report, which is set to be presented in detail on Thursday this wee...
The MNB’s tight policy course is vindicated—once again
HUNGARY · Report · 23 Jun 2025
In the past few weeks, this is the second time we are giving this title to a piece of research. The first occasion was when the May inflation data came out with an unexpected rise in the headline rate. But we are coming back to this same conclusion again, after all that has happened, and in view ...
No base rate change is likely at Tuesday's Monetary Council meeting
HUNGARY · In Brief · 22 Jun 2025
The Council is set to hold its regular monthly rate-setting meeting on Tuesday, June 24. So far this year. all decisions, and indeed all votes within the Council, were for holding the base rate at 6.5%. Last time, on May 27, the Council concluded that neither domestic inflation, nor external cond...
May CPI data out, MNB's tight policy course vindicated
HUNGARY · In Brief · 11 Jun 2025
The headline rate of CPI-inflation surprised on the upside in May. Against 4.2% yoy expected by analysts (their median forecast), the actual number was 4.4% yoy, with 0.2% inflation in May alone. The yoy rate rose from 4.2% yoy in April. Non-fuel inflation backed up to 5.2% yoy from the previous ...
May inflation data due tomorrow, and some fiscal data reported
HUNGARY · In Brief · 10 Jun 2025
For headline CPI-inflation, analysts in Portfolio.hu's monthly poll expect 4.2% yoy, unchanged from April, as regards the median forecast recorded by the survey. For end-2025, the headline rate is expected to decrease to 3.9% yoy. We fully agree with this forecast for May, and also with the expec...
Fitch affirmed their BBB/Stable sovereign debt rating on Friday
HUNGARY · In Brief · 08 Jun 2025
Just one week after the latest review by a Top-3 rating agency, Fitch Ratings affirmed their BBB/Stable mark on Hungary on June 6. The report was quite negative in the sense that it identified three key areas where the agency saw deterioration since their previous review: growth outlook, short-te...
Relatively good industry and retail sales data for April
HUNGARY · In Brief · 06 Jun 2025
At last, we see a month in which both industrial output and retail sales grew materially, in month-on-month volume terms, on seasonally and day-adjusted basis. As for industry, output was up 1.5% mom. Year on year, this still meant a decrease of 2.6%, but even that was way better than the -6% yoy...
Moody's affirmed their Baa2/Negative sovereign rating to Hungary on Friday
HUNGARY · In Brief · 01 Jun 2025
This means that the government has escaped a downgrading from a key rating agency for now. But the negative outlook was maintained, and Moody's will review their rating again no later than November 28. The next review by a top-3 agency is due in a week's time, by Fitch Ratings, currently rating H...