Slovakia has increased the central parity of its currency band from 35.44 to 38.45 to the EUR, according to business daily Vilaggazdasag.
Our view: We believe that central parity revaluation in Slovakia might support speculation that the similar step will be done in Hungary, which would lead in a short run to further gains of the forint. On the other hand recently central bank representatives claimed that abandoning of the +/- 15% floating band of the forint is currently on agenda. We believe that although current levels of the forint are getting nearer to lower limit of the band 240.01 EUR/HUF the NBH will hesitate with abandoning the trading band. The stronger forint against the euro would hurt exports, which are currently the main driver of Hungary's economic growth and on the top of it strong forint would also support household's will to extend its foreign currency loans, which are already very high and might represent the risk in case some negative swing of the forint, which we have seen in the past quite often.