Pockets of weakness persist in emerging markets where real interest rates are deeply negative – and risks for those countries are rapidly mounting.
Latest increase in reference interest rate follows raise from 2.5% from 2% in June as inflation continues to accelerate.
Romania’s retail sales up 8.1% y/y in May, pushed up by refugees' spending as well as households front-loading planned expenditures before expected price rises.
Growth is expected to slow later in the year, with the World Bank projecting that Bosnia’s economy will rise by just 2.7% in 2022.
Industrial, or factory-gate, prices in Romania have increased by 46.6% y/y in May, driven up by the rising energy prices.
After the lifting of most coronavirus related restrictions and a period of low infections, several countries are now reporting the highest numbers of new cases for months.
The population in Serbia continuously decreased in 2002-2021, with the most pronounced decrease seen in southern and eastern Serbia.
Price rises and demand weakness combined to lead to softer new orders and scaling back of production.
The European Commission’s Economic Sentiment Indicators (ESI) for Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) fell in May as the polycrisis hitting the world took its toll on economies across the entire region.
Europe’s gas storage tanks were 58.23% full as of June 26 and are still on course to hit the EU target of 80% full by October 1, the traditional start of the heating season, despite Russian cuts in gas flows to Europe this month.
Kosovans who returned home when the pandemic spread across Europe in spring 2020 went abroad again in 2021.
PPI growth across all sectors continues trend present in North Macedonia since February 2021.
Serbia demonstrated resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic but the IMF has now cut its GDP growth forecast to 3.5% for 2022.
Bulgaria posted the highest level of inflation in Southeastern Europe amongst EU members after annual inflation hit 13.4% in May, as the whole world fights to avoid stagflation
Figures for industrial sectors vary widely with a 42.6% for food processing as Moldova substitutes for lost imports from Ukraine, and a 50% fall in production of electric equipment in January-April.
Rising cost of construction materials and the inelastic supply of workers are significant deterrents to the sector’s growth.
Most of the Bucharest Stock Exchange indices ended the first five months of 2022 in negative territory, as Russia's invasion of neighbouring Ukraine impacted the Romanian market.
Inflation has been rising for 15 consecutive months but started speeding up recently due to surging energy prices.
Three consecutive months of hikes bring the key rate to 2% in a bid to maintain price stability.
Food prices increased in line with the average, by 14.3% y/y, while prices of the non-food goods including energy and fuel advanced by 17.2% y/y.