FocusEconomics Insights - Latest Posts
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Crisis? What crisis? For this region, economic prospects just keep getting better
May 16, 2022
The majority of economic news has been decidedly gloomy in recent months, with the war in Ukraine, surging inflation, tightening monetary policy and a slowdown in China all putting a dampener on the global mood.
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Inflation: how high will it go?
May 6, 2022
Inflation has been on a relentless upward march in recent months in developed economies, on the back of supply chain tightness, the impact of the war in Ukraine on commodity markets, and recovering economic activity. The analysts that we poll have raised their forecasts in tandem: Consumer price inflation is now expected to average 7.1% in the UK and U.S. this year, and only slightly lower than that in the Euro area.
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China’s economy: Heading for a hard landing?
April 29, 2022
Covid-19 has ravaged Chinese economic activity in the last few weeks as large swathes of the country entered a painfully strict lockdown, with tens of millions of residents trapped at home, factories closing and logistics and port activity snarling up. This has come on top of an already deep property market downturn, with property sales and funding in sharp decline and developers laboring under heavy debt burdens.
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Will Mexico’s economic outlook continue to darken?
April 25, 2022
Mexico’s economy continues to grapple with political uncertainty, runaway inflation and weaker growth prospects in the U.S., all of which have led our panel of experts to lower their GDP forecasts in recent months. With little to no progress having been made on passing key energy reforms and as the war in Ukraine rages on, the outlook for the economy could deteriorate further.
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Energy Prices Outlook
April 14, 2022
Energy prices continued to increase in March, and they did so at a faster rate than in the prior month. The West changed its tactics and unleashed a slew of sanctions on the Russian energy sector, having previously spared it from the measures taken in response to the country’s invasion of Ukraine. Heading into April, oil and coal prices have eased somewhat from their mid-March highs but remain extremely elevated.
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Euro area prospects grow bleaker: Is there light at the end of the tunnel?
April 11, 2022
The war in Ukraine has led our analysts to massively downgrade their forecasts for Euro Area GDP growth in 2022, due to the severing of trade relations with Russia, and surging food and fuel prices. The current Consensus Forecast is for a mere 3.2% expansion this year, down from the 4.2% growth projected as recently as three months ago. At the same time, our analysts have raised their 2022 average inflation forecasts from 2.5% to 5.5%.
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Are stagflation and recession on the horizon for G7 economies?
April 1, 2022
Inflation forecasts for G7 countries and the Euro area skyrocketed over the past month, which, coupled with an expected higher interest rate environment, the ongoing pandemic, China locking down to contain fresh waves of Covid-19, and conflict in Ukraine, is weighing heavily on GDP growth. Although stagflation—elevated inflation in a low-growth environment—and a recession are not in the cards at the moment, the global GDP outlook has continued to darken in recent weeks.
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Covid impact on East Asia's GDP
March 25, 2022
China, Hong Kong and Korea have all experienced fresh waves of Covid-19 cases in recent weeks, which have resulted in tighter restrictions on mobility and renewed supply chain disruptions, clouding the countries’ respective economic outlooks and prospects for the region as a whole.
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How will LATAM fare amid the Russia-Ukraine war?
March 17, 2022
On the one hand, a prolonged Russia-Ukraine war is expected to weigh on external demand as both countries’ economies implode and Euro area economic growth takes a hit, with higher energy prices and renewed supply chain disruptions set to stoke price pressures. On the other hand, surging commodity prices are set to benefit specific LATAM countries’ terms of trade, which could more than offset weaker external demand ahead.
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Iranian nuclear deal held hostage by Russia
March 10, 2022
In the West’s latest attempt to destabilize the Russian economy, officials looked to end an over three-year standoff between the U.S. and Iran to bring both parties back into the 2015 nuclear accord, which would lift restrictions on Iranian oil sales and therefore support Western economies’ shifts away from dependence on Russian oil. The nuclear deal was spoiled under the Trump administration in May 2018, for reasons not clearly understood by the UN nuclear watchdog at the time. After 11 months of negotiations, Iran and other major world powers were almost certain to sign off on an agreement that would have removed economic sanctions on Iran in the near future. However, Russia, a key signatory required to revive the 2015 agreement, vetoed the deal in its final stages, due to its demand that U.S. economic sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine not impede Russian-Iranian trade.
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Featured Posts
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Inflation: how high will it go?
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Euro area prospects grow bleaker: Is there light at the end of the tunnel?
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Covid impact on East Asia's GDP
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Iranian nuclear deal held hostage by Russia
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Sanctions leave Russian rouble routed
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China and the world: a slow goodbye?
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Fertilizer prices are hammering farmers: What does that mean for agricultural prices?
Twitter @FocusEconomics
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Economic prospects have plummeted for both Russia and Ukraine since the outbreak of the war, with Ukraine's economy… https://t.co/JDeVa438zG
18 hours ago
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The majority of economic news has been decidedly gloomy in recent months. However, there is one region we cover whi… https://t.co/V1w1T2digf
1 day ago
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Regional GDP is forecast to contract markedly this year as the war devastates the Ukrainian economy, while the Russ… https://t.co/4Ut9QNYdvK
4 days ago
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The base metals price outlook improved further this month, although prices are still expected to fall from their cu… https://t.co/MkkbfNgkFj
5 days ago
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The downturn in precious metal prices in April was broad-based, with all four metals tracked by our analysts postin… https://t.co/TKHmYXXHqb
6 days ago
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