The Czech koruna was little changed, but kept its negative bias on Thursday. CNB announced that it expects the VAT hike to have 0.8% impact to CPI over 2012 and 2013. Nevertheless it did not change the current prevailing dovish assessment of the market. Hence the koruna continues to trade near weakest levels of the year around 24.65 EUR/CZK. We continue to believe that combination of negative interest rate differential and mounting global uncertainty may push the pair as high as 25.00 EUR/CZK. In this respect, its worth noting that short term rate expectations represented by FRA rates have been drifting lower.
The Hungarian debt agency sold HUF 60B of 12-month treasury bills, HUF10B more than planned, and HUF 7.5B of floating-rate bonds (HUF 5B planned) maturing in 2015 at an auction yesterday.
The Hungarian forint continued to trade in narrow range between the 269.00 and 271.00 level.
Hungarian central bank governor Simor said that Hungary’s losse market conditions will curb wage rises and cost-side inflation pressures in the next years. He also pointed out that the government’s spending cut measures announced in March could lead to a budget deficit of 3.6% of economic output in 2012, above the government’s target of 2.5%. However, he added that further belt-tightening measures detailed in Hungary’s later euro convergence plan can keep the deficit at 3% next year.
The Polish zloty was trading in a narrow band between 3.96 EUR/PLN and 3.97 EUR/PLN for the most of the session yesterday. Nevertheless, after comments made by EU’s Juncker, the EUR/PLN currency pair soared and even touched 3.99 EUR/PLN. Juncker was quoted as he indicated that the IMF expected the EU to step in if the Fund could not make the planned disbursement on June 29 which suggested that the IMF payment might be at risk.
Head of the Polish statistical office Janusz Witkowski said yesterday that year-onyear inflation in May might remain at 4.5% and that in the summer might slightly moderate. His comments are basically in line with our expectations.
We think that the zloty could dip back below 200 days average. On the other hand, swift reaction to Juncker’s words reminded us that the zloty is vulnerable as far as the European sovereign debt crisis is concerned.