Latin America Economics Update Colombia: strong start to the year unlikely to be sustained The stronger-than-expected Q1 GDP data from Colombia suggest that the risks to our forecast for the economy to expand by 0.8% over 2023 as a whole are skewed to the upside. That said, there were signs... 16th May 2023 · 2 mins read
China Rapid Response Activity & Spending (Apr.) Growth on most indicators accelerated in y/y terms in April. But this was due to a weak base for comparison from a year ago when Shanghai and several other cities went into lockdown. In seasonally... 16th May 2023 · 3 mins read
Event Asia Drop-In: Chinese economic growth at 2% – Revisiting our 2018 call 1685001600 Five years ago, we forecast that China’s trend economic growth would be as little as 2% by the end of this decade. At the time, it was a decidedly minority view.
Asia Data Response Thailand GDP (Q1) GDP figures released earlier today show the economy bounced back strongly in the first quarter of the year. Provided political stability is maintained, the economy is well placed to grow strongly in... 15th May 2023 · 3 mins read
Australia & New Zealand Chart Pack Housing downturn not over yet Australia’s house prices have rebounded over the last couple of months and most leading indicators suggest that the recovery has legs. However, we doubt that a sustained recovery is on the cards... 15th May 2023 · 11 mins read
China Economics Weekly Making sense of the reopening recovery After a string of underwhelming but inconclusive data releases, we should have a better sense of the strength of China’s post-zero-COVID rebound next week with the release of the April activity and... 12th May 2023 · 6 mins read
Africa Economics Weekly South Africa entering a perfect storm It’s been a week to forget for South Africa, in which fears emerged that the improvement in the public finances is stalling and concerns about (even more) intense loadshedding surfaced. That was... 12th May 2023 · 7 mins read
UK Economics Weekly Doubting the BoE’s improved outlook for activity The most striking thing about the Bank of England’s policy meeting yesterday was the big upward revisions to the Bank’s real GDP forecasts. It makes sense that the Bank has become less downbeat... 12th May 2023 · 6 mins read
Europe Economics Weekly France’s improving labour market There is no sign yet that the remarkable improvement in France’s labour market is going into reverse. But we suspect it will do later this year as monetary policy tightening takes effect. Meanwhile... 12th May 2023 · 6 mins read
Latin America Data Response Brazil IPCA (Apr.) & Mexico Ind. Production (Mar.) The sharp fall in Brazilian inflation, to 4.2% y/y last month, was encouragingly broad based among the sub-categories of the CPI basket. But we think the central bank will want to see more evidence... 12th May 2023 · 2 mins read
Nordic & Swiss Economics Weekly Sweden’s property issues flare up again The fragility of Sweden’s property sector hit the headlines again this week as commercial real estate firm SBB suffered a downgrade of its credit rating to “junk” status and cancelled its dividend... 12th May 2023 · 6 mins read
Global Economics Chart Pack Surveys giving mixed messages at start of Q2 Q1 GDP releases have confirmed that the major economies avoided recession at the start of the year and some of the more recent survey data suggest that this resilience continued into Q2. The composite... 12th May 2023 · 12 mins read
Japan Economics Weekly Next year’s Shunto will disappoint the BoJ Ueda’s speech in the Diet on Tuesday left open the possibility of the Bank adjusting monetary policy before the policy review announced at the April meeting is completed next year. However, given that... 12th May 2023 · 7 mins read
UK Data Response GDP (Mar. & Q1) The news that the economy contracted by 0.3% m/m in March and grew by just 0.1% q/q in Q1 as a whole (consensus +0.1% q/q, Bank of England 0.0% q/q, CE +0.1% q/q) suggests that lower real household... 12th May 2023 · 5 mins read
