Filtered by Topic: Monetary Policy Use setting Monetary Policy
Current account deficits have widened to alarming levels in Poland, Hungary, Turkey and, most of all, Romania, in recent months which has contributed to the downward pressure on currencies this year – the Turkish lira, Hungarian forint and Polish zloty …
26th October 2022
The reversal of Truss/Kwarteng’s fiscal policies and Rishi Sunak’s appointment as the UK’s new Prime Minister has ushered in a period of calm in UK financial markets after the recent storm. Indeed, much of the extra political risk premia on gilts that …
Brazilians head to the polls on Sunday to decide who’ll become the country’s next president in a heated run-off election between incumbent Jair Bolsonaro and his left-wing rival Lula. Lula is still the front runner, but the race is looking much tighter …
25th October 2022
EM tightening cycles have continued apace but, having started raising rates much earlier than their DM (and Asian) peers, some central banks in Latin America ( Brazil , Chile ) and Emerging Europe (Czech Republic, Poland) are drawing their hiking cycles …
19th October 2022
The RBI continued frontloading policy tightening in its late-September meeting with another 50bp hike to the repo rate (to 5.90%) but communications since then suggest that some MPC members are ready to ease off the brakes. The minutes to that meeting …
With the yen currently trading just below 149, it now appears to be a question of when and not if policymakers step in again. But as recent weeks and the Asian Financial Crisis have shown, such interventions alone can’t reverse yen weakness. An even …
17th October 2022
It has been five years since the People’s Bank last dipped into its own foreign exchange reserves on a significant scale to support the currency. Since then, it is widely believed …
3rd October 2022
While the Bank of England’s temporary U-turn on its balance sheet has caused Gilts to rally strongly, we suspect their yields will remain high for some time yet. The Bank of England dramatically intervened in the Gilt market on Wednesday in response …
29th September 2022
The Bank of England appears to have prevented the financial market fallout from the loose fiscal plans revealed in the Chancellor’s mini-budget from escalating into a full financial crisis. Since it committed to buy £65bn of long-dated gilts on …
Just like their peers in advanced economies, monetary policymakers across Sub-Saharan Africa have turned more hawkish recently. Central banks in South Africa and Nigeria hiked interest rates aggressively this month. Reining in inflation is clearly the …
The ramping up of the US Fed’s hawkish rhetoric has turbocharged the dollar’s appreciation against EM currencies, with most falling by 2-6% against the greenback since the start of the month. (See Chart 1.) Reluctant to allow currencies to slide too …
27th September 2022
Latin American currencies have come under pressure this month which will put further upward pressure on inflation, but the bigger picture is that headline rates are at, or close to, a peak across the region. Indeed, headline rates in Brazil and Peru are …
The RBI this month asked four public-sector banks to trial its central bank digital currency (CBDC) before year-end, keeping to the timeline that it set out when plans were first announced in the FY22/23 Union Budget. As our CBDC handbook explains, any …
21st September 2022
The Fed looks set to deliver a third consecutive 75bp rate hike tomorrow, but if we’re right that inflation will fall back soon, officials will quickly pivot to much smaller hikes. The continued drop in gasoline prices and easing food inflation will …
20th September 2022
Monetary policy makers across Emerging Asia remain in hawkish mode – every central bank in the region with the exceptions of China and Vietnam has now raised interest rates this year – and further hikes are likely over the next couple of months. …
15th September 2022
The latest data have revealed that the world’s major economies are all struggling, but for different reasons. In Europe, the energy crisis is largely behind the recent softness in consumer and industrial activity. In the US, higher interest rates are …
14th September 2022
Relatively peaceful election proceedings in Kenya and Angola this month have provided a lift to investor sentiment. But with the respective losing presidential candidates challenging official results through the courts, the risk of violence lingers. …
31st August 2022
Resilience so far, but much tougher times ahead Economies across the region were generally resilient in Q2 despite tightening financial conditions and the war in Ukraine. Russia’s downturn was milder than expected as it was able to re-orientate trade to …
We think developed market (DM) monetary policy may be a threat to emerging market (EM) assets for some time yet . Hawkish monetary policy has arguably been the biggest headwind for global financial markets this year. Rapid upward revisions to …
The region faces a busy political calendar. Chileans head to the polls on Sunday to vote on a new constitution which would usher in sweeping changes to the country’s current economic model. While the latest polls suggest that the charter will be …
30th August 2022
GDP data for Q2 (Q1 of FY22/23) due next week should show that the economy grew at a robust pace last quarter despite the onset of monetary policy tightening. And more timely indicators suggest that the economy has held up well so far in Q3 too. The …
26th August 2022
The rebound in the prices of “risky” assets has stalled recently and we expect it to go into reverse over the rest of this year as economic growth in many major DMs disappoints and appetite for risk deteriorates. Risky assets generally continued to …
The growth outlook for the emerging world has taken a turn for the worse. The latest activity data for China suggest that the post-lockdown recovery has lost steam. The PBOC has responded by lowering interest rates and we expect further easing, but we …
23rd August 2022
Australia’s house prices are now falling at a similar rate as they did during the 2017-19 downturn, which was the largest in the country’s modern history. (See Chart 1.) Home sales remain well above pre-pandemic levels, building activity is holding up …
22nd August 2022
We’ve been warning for some time that CPI inflation would rise further than most people expect, triggering a recession. The prospect of even bigger rises in utility prices on 1 st October and in the first half of 2023 than we have pencilled in suggests …
10th August 2022
Euro-zone GDP increased by more than we had expected in Q2 as reopening effects boosted the services sector, particularly in the southern countries. But things have already taken a turn for the worse. Business surveys are pointing to a big drop in …
4th August 2022
Given our forecast that the Bank of England will raise interest rates from 1.25% now to a peak of 3.00%, we still think that gilt yields have further to rise. However, with attention in the markets turning towards the prospect of lower inflation and …
29th July 2022
The economic outlook has deteriorated across the region. Inflation is soaring and monetary conditions are tightening, which is weighing on households’ real incomes and spending power. The latest surveys show consumer confidence tanking and economic …
28th July 2022
The mortgage boycotts are a double threat to developers and to the housing market. They have drawn attention to the problem of cash-strapped developers being unable to complete properties that they have already sold, which is putting off new homebuyers. …
27th July 2022
For a major net oil exporter, Nigeria’s worsening economic struggles in the current high oil price environment are striking. Low oil production, which was 30% below the country’s OPEC+ quota in June, has curbed oil export revenues. Coming alongside …
Latin American economies held up well in early part of this year, helped by the surge in commodity prices brought about by the war in Ukraine. But there are signs that activity is now weakening. Timely monthly activity indices fell in m/m terms in five of …
GDP figures for Korea released earlier today showed economic growth accelerated in the second quarter thanks to a strong rebound in private consumption as the economy enjoyed a reopening bounce. This follows the scrapping of most of the remaining COVID-19 …
26th July 2022
The latest population projections released by the UN this month show that India will overtake China as the world’s most populous nation in 2023 (see Chart 1), a touch earlier than previously expected. The UN also projects that India’s working-age …
21st July 2022
The incoming activity data now show clearer signs of weakness, particularly in the most interest-rate sensitive components of spending. But there are still few signs of that moderation morphing into a recession. The rise in mortgage rates has weighed on …
The minutes of the RBA’s July meeting showed that the Bank debated a smaller 25bp rate hike but ended up hiking rates by 50bp. Those minutes also included a discussion of the level of the neutral interest rate, which will come into touching distance …
Most large EMs are weathering the environment of rising global interest rates and a strong dollar relatively well. That said, countries with large current account deficits , most notably Chile and Hungary , are finding their currencies in the crosshairs, …
18th July 2022
Recent data suggest that global economic activity was even weaker than we initially thought in Q2, with GDP probably contracting in several major economies including the euro-zone, UK and China. The earliest signs for Q3 are not good, with business …
13th July 2022
The latest data suggest that underlying inflationary pressures in the euro-zone remain intense. Although core inflation edged down from 3.8% in May to 3.7% in June, this appeared to be down to temporary policy changes in Germany that will weigh on …
6th July 2022
The hawkish turn by DM central banks over the past month has further soured investor risk appetite, and capital inflows into African economies are likely to have slowed. Countries with large external financing requirements, and heavy debt burdens …
30th June 2022
Inflation has continued to beat expectations across Emerging Europe over the past month, reaching rates not seen in decades in most countries. It is now weighing more heavily on consumer confidence, and the surprise inflation releases for May prompted …
29th June 2022
The tight labour market is putting upward pressure on wages, with the Labour Force Survey showing a strong 1.0% m/m rise in average hourly earnings in May. While the annual rate of wage growth, at 3.9% y/y, remained lower than before the pandemic, base …
High inflation seems to be causing growing unrest in the region, which threatens to be economically disruptive and raise fiscal concerns. Recent protests in Ecuador have hit its oil sector hard, while truck drivers in Peru are about to embark on a strike. …
28th June 2022
The Omicron virus wave in China appears to have eased global shipping bottlenecks rather than worsened them as many had feared. Firms were able to re-route shipments through other ports to avoid disruption in Shanghai. And weaker goods demand domestically …
After more than two years in the doldrums, Thailand’s tourism sector is finally showing signs of life. Arrivals in May reached 520,000 – a 77% increase from the previous month and 19% of the level reached in the same month of 2019. Spending by foreign …
27th June 2022
Risk-off sentiment and the sell-off in EM financial markets have hit the Middle East and North Africa hard. Having been the top regional performer earlier in the year, the MSCI Arabian Markets Index has fallen by nearly 20% since mid-April. Sovereign …
24th June 2022
The surge in interest rates, plunge in the stock market and weakness of consumer confidence have fuelled fears of an impending recession, but there is still little sign of that in the incoming economic data. The coincident indicators used by the NBER to …
23rd June 2022
Having surged in recent months, there are some tentative signs that EM inflation is nearing a peak. Our measure of aggregate EM inflation was steady at 7.0% y/y between April and May and some indicators of pipeline price pressures have eased. But even so, …
The rupee has held up better than most EM currencies this month and the recent drop in FX reserves strongly indicates that this is in part because the RBI has once again ramped up its FX interventions. (See Chart 1.) RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das has made …
22nd June 2022
While inflation is still far lower in Japan than in most places, rapid increases in the prices of some everyday purchases have made it a political focus. A Nikkei poll following the Bank of Japan’s meeting at the end of last week found that nearly half of …
21st June 2022
Global economic activity might have contracted slightly in Q2, which would be the weakest outcome in recent history aside from the height of the pandemic and the Global Financial Crisis. Part of the weakness reflects a likely slump in Russian GDP, but we …
15th June 2022
