Markets in Central Europe have to digest key eco figures from the whole region. Already yesterday, a historically first flash estimate of the Polish GDP showed that the Polish economy most probably grew less than expected. Polish statistical office reported that the GDP growth in the 1Q2013 was only 0.4% y/y, compared to market consensus of 0.7%. Low growth ensured market that the expectations of further rate cuts are justified, so as a result the Polish zloty slightly weakened.
Moreover, more bad news for the zloty could be in the pipeline as inflation data will be released this afternoon. The April year-on-year inflation rate likely continued to fall and hit 0.7%, while prices were up by 0.3% month-on-month.
The inflation below 1% is not only a seven-year low but also another disinflation divergence from the NBP target, thus we can really expect further rate cuts.
Today, other GDP preliminary figures have been released Central Europe. In the Czech Republic GDP figure surprised negatively as the economy fell by 0.8% q/q and 1.9% y/y, signalling that the economy did not emerge from the recession in the first quarter of the year and moreover the recession deepened. The Czech economy has been still waiting for stimuli which would help the economy to bottom out, but with surprisingly bad numbers from Germany it will be hard to find it. The Czech koruna has reacted immediately to the poor growth figures and
the EUR/CZ pair has broken above the 26.0 level.
On contrary it seems that the Hungarian economy is doing better. According to preliminary data GDP grew by 0.7% q/q and contracted ‘just’ by 0.9% y/y (compared to market estimate of decrease of 1.3% y/y). In addition, seasonally and calendar effect adjusted data show annual decrease of only 0.3%. Although detailed figures are not known yet according to the KSH the growth is due to agriculture (which is not surprising after last year bad crops) and construction increase. It is important to add that high quarterly growth is partly given by a base effect and it seems that Q42012 fall might have been due to one-off-effect.