Filtered by Topic: Monetary Policy Use setting Monetary Policy
Local governments have stepped up their borrowing since the start of the year. They issued RMB860bn in special bonds over the course of January and February, up from an average of RMB105bn per month during the second half of 2022. Special bonds are …
28th February 2023
Asian currencies have dropped back over the past few weeks against the US dollar, with the two worst hit currencies (the Thai baht and the Korean won) down around 6% against the greenback since the start of the month. Renewed concern about inflation in …
27th February 2023
Sub-Saharan Africa’s two biggest economies, Nigeria and South Africa, are both facing slow-burning debt problems. In Nigeria at least, elections on Saturday offer an opportunity to shift towards greater fiscal discipline – especially if opposition …
24th February 2023
Investors seem to have become more worried about inflation recently, with evidence that the global economy is holding up better than expected suggesting underlying price pressures might prove more persistent than hoped. That’s taken a toll on both “safe” …
23rd February 2023
The recent resilience of economic activity has left us comfortable with our view that the Bank of England will raise interest rates from 4.00% now to a peak of 4.50%, rather than to 4.25% as analysts expect, and keep rates at that higher level all year. …
After a stellar performance for most of 2022, the Gulf economies are slowing. Primarily, that has reflected the impact of oil production cuts agreed with the rest of OPEC+ which is weighing on growth in oil sectors. And in the UAE and Qatar at least, the …
The latest data suggest that current account deficits in the region’s major economies narrowed towards the end of last year, which is particularly good news for Colombia and Chile. Both were running alarmingly large shortfalls last year which helps to …
22nd February 2023
The January CPI data provided mixed signals about developments in underlying inflation. The CPI excluding food and energy and the CPI excluding the eight most volatile components each rose by just 0.1% m/m, which were the lowest gains since early 2021. …
The first year of the war in Ukraine has had an enormous impact on the country’s economy and left it highly dependent on financing from allies. Russia’s economy has contracted too, but it weathered the impact of Western sanctions better than expected and …
The war in Ukraine, which marks its one year anniversary on Friday, has had a profound impact on the emerging world. Ukraine’s economy has collapsed, while Russia’s has contracted too even though the imposition of sanctions has not been as severe as …
In a crowded field given the FY23/24 Union Budget and the RBI’s more-hawkish-than-expected policy announcement, the Adani short-selling crisis has been the main story over the past month. So far at least, there are few signs of broader contagion. Foreign …
21st February 2023
A raft of strong data out of the US have poured cold water on the idea that its economy has tumbled into recession at the start of 2023. And this comes after GDP data revealed that the euro-zone and UK economies (narrowly) avoided outright contraction …
16th February 2023
The 6.9% annual rise in Australia’s trimmed mean CPI in Q4 was stronger than the RBA’s November forecast and has prompted some hawkish rhetoric from the Bank at its February meeting. Indeed, we now expect the cash rate to peak at 4.10% in May instead of …
15th February 2023
The government formally nominated Kazuo Ueda as the next Bank of Japan Governor at yesterday’s Diet session. Since the initial announcement of his candidature last Friday , analysts and investors have been looking for clarity on Mr Ueda’s views. So far …
Since the full effects of the previous surge in energy prices and the hike in interest rates have yet to be felt, we still think the economy will succumb to a recession this year. Admittedly, pandemic savings and the government’s handouts appear to have …
8th February 2023
The latest business surveys suggest that the euro-zone will stagnate or suffer only a mild recession, but the money and credit data paint a much gloomier picture. Net lending was negative in December and lower than in any month since 2014, when the …
7th February 2023
While the economic outlook in much of the world has turned less downbeat in recent weeks, the prospects for Sub-Saharan Africa’s two biggest economies have, if anything, got gloomier due to homegrown economic troubles. In South Africa, power cuts – a …
31st January 2023
The further falls in the Egyptian pound over the past month will push up inflation and prompt the central bank to deliver more monetary tightening, but there are already signs that the benefits of a weaker currency are materialising. The government …
The outlook for Latin America has turned more positive at the start of the year as China has shifted away from its zero-Covid policy and commodity prices have rallied. But this comes against a backdrop in which regional growth is showing clearer signs …
30th January 2023
The Lunar New Year holiday wasn’t quite back to normal this year as fears of spreading COVID to elderly relatives prevented many households from returning to their hometowns – long-distance journeys, while the highest since the start of the pandemic, …
Asian currencies have continued to rebound against the US dollar over the past month, and most are now up by around 5-15% against the greenback since early November. Optimism around China’s reopening and expectations for a Fed policy pivot have been the …
The outlook for emerging markets is looking better than it did just a few weeks ago. Most obviously, China’s shift to living with COVID means that its economy will rebound far sooner than we had previously thought. That will provide a lift to countries …
24th January 2023
The sharp fall in hiring intentions in the Bank of Canada’s Business Outlook Survey suggests that the 104,000 surge in employment in December is not a sign of things to come. The survey points to a slowdown in average monthly employment growth to just …
23rd January 2023
India has historically remained unaligned geopolitically but we made the case last year that, in a fracturing global economy , it was more likely to lean towards a US-led bloc and away from a China-led bloc. Events over the past month have strengthened …
18th January 2023
There has been a further slight improvement in prospects for the euro-zone in recent weeks. Business surveys suggest that activity is no longer contracting sharply, headline inflation seems to be past its peak, and wholesale gas prices have plunged. …
10th January 2023
In less than two months, we should know who will replace Bank of Japan Governor Kuroda Haruhiko, whose term ends on 8 th April. Whoever replaces him will be under increasing pressure from the government to abandon Yield Curve Control (YCC), which has an …
9th January 2023
The 0.3% q/q contraction in Q3 left real GDP 0.8% below its Q4 2019 pre-virus level and the UK economy lagging even further behind its major counterparts. In contrast, GDP has risen above its pre-pandemic level in all G7 economies, including the US …
5th January 2023
It is three years since a cluster of cases of severe pneumonia started to draw attention in Wuhan. Chart 1 maps economic developments in China since then. The blue bars show cumulative growth since the end of 2019 and the black outlines show growth over …
4th January 2023
We think investors are still too optimistic on global growth, and that “risky” assets will struggle over the first half of 2023 as a result. Investors seem increasingly to have come around to our view on inflation over the past couple of months, namely …
22nd December 2022
Even though we expect the Bank of England to raise interest rates further from 3.50% now to a peak of 4.50%, we doubt the recent increase in gilt yields will be sustained. Instead, we think yields may fall from 3.60% currently to 2.75% by the end of 2023 …
21st December 2022
The November CPI report marked the second successive undershoot in inflation and there is mounting evidence that it will continue to fall sharply in 2023. (See Chart 1.) Core goods prices are coming under broad-based downward pressure, as easing supply …
The renewed rise in the three-month annualised rates of CPI-trim and CPI-median inflation in November call into question the idea that the Bank of Canada has already finished its tightening cycle. Those rates are not published by either Stats Can or the …
Tightening cycles have been a key feature of 2022 across the emerging world, but the end is in sight as we enter 2023. Some EM central banks that began tightening early – for example Brazil, Chile and Czech Republic – have already brought an end to …
The government’s reform agenda struggled for momentum in 2022 as key state elections (notably in Uttar Pradesh in March and Gujarat in December) dominated the calendar, and surging food and fuel prices set a tricky political backdrop. But the results of …
20th December 2022
The performance of African economies diverged early this year, but the latest data provide clearer signs that growth across the region is now slowing. Economic weakness seems most pronounced in Ghana, where the impact of the country’s sovereign debt …
Central banks across Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have left interest rates on hold over the past month or so but their communications have continued to strike a relatively hawkish tone. Hungary’s central bank has suggested that interest rates may be …
19th December 2022
Peru ’s newly-inaugurated President Boluarte’s call to bring forward the next general election to 2024 has failed to pacify protesters who took to the streets following the impeachment of President Castillo last week. The unrest is already causing …
14th December 2022
Concrete signs of an effort to exit from zero-COVID are emerging, with a notice today of a push to vaccinate the elderly. The low level of vaccine coverage of the most vulnerable is, along with a lack of healthcare capacity, the major constraint on …
29th November 2022
Most central banks across Sub-Saharan Africa raised interest rates over the past month and, in contrast to many other parts of the emerging world, we think tightening cycles will last a while longer. Interest rates were hiked in Nigeria, South Africa, …
Most countries in the region have now reported GDP figures for the third quarter, and growth was generally faster than we (and the consensus) had expected. One factor behind this resilience was the strength of private consumption, which held up well in …
The big surprise so far this year has been the resilience of housing starts which, despite falling from their 10-month high of 300,000 annualised in September, remained at a relatively strong 267,000 in October. While developers have largely shrugged …
24th November 2022
Having surged for the best part of two years, EM inflation appears to have passed the peak in this cycle. Our measure of aggregate EM inflation dropped from 7.8% y/y in September to 7.4% y/y in October. (See Chart 1.) Looking ahead, we think that …
23rd November 2022
The resilience of consumer spending is keeping hopes of a soft landing alive. Although GDP growth looks to have slowed in the fourth quarter, and most leading indicators of recession are flashing red, solid retail sales and a jump in vehicle sales …
22nd November 2022
The RBI has hiked interest rates by 190bps since May and, while that is relatively benign compared to the moves seen in many other EMs, this tightening is now feeding through to the economy. Purchases of big ticket items such as passenger vehicles have …
21st November 2022
Headline inflation shot up to 3.7% y/y in October , the strongest since December 1990 while inflation excluding fresh food and energy rose from 1.8% to 2.5%. Although this puts inflation well above the Bank of Japan’s target, the case for tightening is …
While the risk premium that pushed gilt yields up and the pound down after the mini-budget has mostly been reversed under the stewardship of Sunak and Hunt, the fear that the markets will baulk at any fiscal indiscipline means that the Chancellor will …
10th November 2022
The latest activity indicators show that the economy contracted in October, and the forward-looking measures of new orders and expectations suggest that the downturn will get worse. We have pencilled in a contraction in GDP of 0.5% q/q for the fourth …
8th November 2022
On some measures China’s current COVID situation is about as bad as it has ever been. While far fewer infections are being found daily than at the peak of the Omicron wave, new cases are geographically spread just as wide, with the result that the …
1st November 2022
Central banks across the region have been stepping up the pace of intervention in foreign exchange markets to support their currencies, resulting in a drop in FX reserves. In most countries, reserves are down by around 10% from their recent peaks, and …
31st October 2022
The past month has brought further signs that economies across Sub-Saharan Africa are in the midst of a slowdown. The latest activity data out of South Africa suggest that, after GDP contracted in Q2, its economy fell into a technical recession in Q3. …
