Turkey’s currency crisis became full-fledged in August as US sanctions on the country unnerved investors who were already concerned about weak macro funda-mentals. The TRY lost -24% vs. the USD in that month.

Recently released trade figures for September continued to prove resilient.

Foreign currency debt increased markedly during the last years to some 45% of GDP in 2018.

First estimates indicate that the current account posted a surplus of +USD26bn in Q3 2018, taking the surplus in Q1-Q3 2018 to +USD76bn (compared to +USD20bn in Q1-Q3 2017).

Retail sales are running at a solid +4.7% y/y growth rate despite softness in September which may have been caused by Hurricane Florence. Gasoline sales fell -0.8% m/m, but after three months of weakness, auto sales gained +0.8% m/m.

Recently released official data show that real GDP rebounded to growth of +2.4% y/y in Q2, after a decline by -1.2% y/y in Q1.

The Monetary Council (MC) of Hungary kept its key policy interest rate (3-month deposit rate; +0.9%) and the overnight deposit rate (-0.15%) again unchanged this week despite market concerns about rising inflation.

Consumer price index (CPI) growth slowed down to 2.2% y/y in September from 2.4% in August.