CdM | The Bank of Canada hiked +25 bps to 4.5%, the eighth in a row, and intends to pause to see the impact of its monetary tightening in the face of a slowing economy (consumption, housing sector) and moderating inflation. This pause in rate hikes, the first by one of the major central banks, suggests that they consider current rate levels to be restrictive, but in any case say…
Técnicas Reunidas (TRE) has won a contract to engineer an ammonia, urea, nitric acid and ammonium nitrate production complex owned by Kazazot, Kazakhstan’s leading fertiliser company. With a total planned investment of around $1 billion, the plant will be located in the town of Aktau, capital of the Mangystau province, in the southwest of the country. Técnicas Reunidas will initially carry out the engineering of the facility under a FEED-OBE…
Alicia Garcia Herrero & Jianwei Xu (Natixis) | Chinese economy ended 2022 by growing only 3% YoY, with the last quarter GDP slowing further to 2.9% YoY. The figure was finally much lower than the target set during the Two Sessions by the Chinese government mainly because of the heavy mobility restrictions imposed under zero-Covid policies since the Shanghai lockdown. The slowdown in Q4 was particularly reflected in the decelerating consumption…
Bankinter| Holiday Season sales (1 November to 31 December) increase +5.3% vs +13.5% in 2021 according to the National Retail Federation. The figure falls short of the latter’s forecast of +6%/+8%. They amount to 936,300 M$ vs 942,600/960,400 M$ expected. According to the Association, part of the purchases were brought forward to October to take advantage of the promotions that were launched across the board that month to reduce inventories….
Crédito y Caución (Atradius) | In India, GDP growth slowed to 7.0% in 2022, down from 8.3% in 2021. In 2023, GDP growth is likely to slow even further to 4.4%, owing to a rapidly weakening global backdrop and slackening domestic demand. There is widespread weakness in the manufacturing industry. Industrial production fell month-on-month on a seasonally adjusted basis in July and August. These trends, in combination with a manufacturing…
F. Rodríguez| According to the conservation organisation World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the think tank Climate & Company, the European taxonomy is one of 29 being developed around the world, 14 of them, including that of the EU, within the group of G20 countries: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey and the United Kingdom. Its report last year, When finance…
Link Securities| In the latest quarterly survey conducted by The Wall Street Journal, economists indicated that, although inflation has started to decline, they still expect high interest rates to push the US economy into recession in 2023. On average, business and academic economists put the probability of a recession in the next 12 months at 61%, down slightly from 63% in the October survey. Both percentages are historically high outside…
Bankinter| China’s December Trade Balance records a surplus of +$78B vs +$76.9B estimated and +$69.84B previous. Exports decelerate -9.9% vs -11.1% estimated and -8.7% previous. Imports also, but less: -7.5% vs -10% estimated and -10.6% previous. Opinion: The trade surplus widens, which is good news, but it is due to lower imports (a symptom of weak domestic demand) and not to a rise in exports. In fact, exports are falling,…
Alicia García Herrero (Natixis) | Financial markets were caught off guard when the Bank of Japan (BoJ) adjusted its monetary policy on December 20th, 2022. The Bank decided to lift the ceiling on the 10-year JGB yield to 0.5% from 0.25% under the yield control (YCC). One interesting point to make is that the BoJ did not take the decision against the wall. In fact, the upward pressure on the…
The UK announced on Monday that it will cut its business energy subsidies by 85%, deeming the current subsidy package “unsustainably expensive”. The current subsidy package ends in March 2023 and costs £18.4 billion. It will then abandon caps of £75 per MWh for gas and £211 per MWh for electricity and give a discount of £6.97 per MWh for gas and £19.61 per MWh for electricity from April 2023…