The Polish zloty came under pressure along with other CE markets as the Turkish lira sell-off led emerging market down against core currencies on Monday morning. On the domestic front speculation that Finance Minister Zyta Gilowska might leave the government in order to run for the Warsaw mayor post electrified the market and added to the nervousness.
As time passed the news was denounced as just a rumor first by an anonymous government source, then by the government speaker and the PiS chairman Jaroslaw Kaczynski and finally by Gilowska herself. We believe that it’s highly unlikely that Gilowska herself will resign before she is able to put her public finance reform into action and surely not before the 2007 budget is passed on to the Sejm at the end of September. However, Friday’s events should act as cold shower for markets, and even if as we believe Gilowska will stay on for now, medium term concerns over the personal line-up of the government (and FinMin post, and fiscal prudency in particular) remain. Later in the day the zloty managed to recoup some of the earlier losses but eventually failed to move out of negative territory against the euro.
The regional sentiment will continue to drive the zloty today. On the domestic front the CPI data will be the highlight of the day. Our estimate is basically on par with the market consensus the figure should not bring about a more profound reaction from Polish bonds and should hence be neutral for the zloty.
(CSOB - Investment research)