Yesterday the zloty, the koruna as well as the forint strengthen in the morning, but it was only the Hungarian currency which retained its gains. The forint did not frighten even Hungary’s government plans to raise public sector wage next year, when the election will take place. It is worth adding that the European Commission had proposed to the Council in May to release Hungary from the excessive deficit procedure, which brought concerns about fiscal discipline of the current government.
Today the attention will be paid to the meeting of the National Bank of Poland. NBP evidently continues to be troubled by the rapid inflation fall below the target, as well as by the adverse structure of GDP growth, which was again driven only by net exports. Although these factors had been evident for a longer time, the NBP hesitated to take aggressive steps. Nevertheless, this has changed and, given the poor start of the second quarter (and the prospects for inflation staying below the target because of the regulation of energy prices), we believe that with the release of a new forecast, the NBP will decide to cut rates by 25 bps to new historical lows at 2.5%. Nevertheless, we believe that this will be the last expansive move in this cycle, and we would not be surprised if it affected the zloty, at least temporarily,as the Polish currency has not appreciated at all the rising interest rates in the leading markets in the past few weeks.