Weekly

There are four items on the domestic economic calendar for the coming week: the publication of preliminary March inflation on Monday, the March manufacturing PMI and the preliminary estimate of the public finance deficit for 2024 on Tuesday, the decision of the Monetary Policy Council on Wednesday. 
Our CPI forecast points to stabilisation at the January-February level, i.e. 4.9% y/y, with consumer prices rising by 0.2% m/m. Such a result consists, among others, of a rather low change in food prices for this month (according to our estimates, 0% m/m) and a drop in fuel prices by around 2% m/m, with increased price momentum in core categories (around 0.6% m/m). The median forecast in the Bloomberg survey is 5.1% y/y, with a forecast range from 4.8% to 5.6% y/y (...)
 

Spring has arrived , consumer and business sentiment is improving, but there was a chill in the latest ‘hard’ data from the economy - industrial and construction output and wage growth in February were noticeably weaker than forecast, which (combined with earlier news of lower-than-expected inflation) has rekindled market expectations of rate cuts. After the weekend, there will be a few more economic indicators from February, including retail sales and money supply on Monday, registered unemployment on Tuesday. We expect sales growth to moderate slightly after a surprisingly strong rise in January, to a still decent level of around 3% y/y