Escaping Original Sin in Hungary?

by Claus Vistesen: Copenhagen

According to the well known textbook in international economics by Maurice Obstfeld and Paul Krugman [1] the notion of original sin refers to the fact that many developing economies are not able to borrow in their own currencies but are forced to denominate large parts of their sovereign debt in order to attract capital from foreign investors. The argument then goes that if and when the goings get tough those countries will face difficulties paying off their liabilities and once the dust have settled the sin, as it were, has only become more binding when these same economies yet again venture onto international capital markets.

It is interesting to ponder this story in relation to Eastern Europe where far from being a sin the ability to denominate liabilities in foreign currencies such as Euros and Swiss Francs was almost seen as a virtue of modern capital markets during the boom years which followed the famous meeting in Copenhagen which saw the European family expand to 25 countries, a number which now has risen to 27. On the face of it, it is not difficult to see where this virtue came from. Aggressive expansion by western European banks into the CEE and a low volatility environment ultimately driven by the notion of a road map towards convergence bound to bring forth an equalization in living standards and, in the case of many CE economies, a certain membership into the Eurozone underpinned the fact that the ability to shop foreign currency loans was hardly a sin, but a natural counter product of the newly formed European community.

Now, all this has capsized and those economies who where so busy raising rates going into crisis in order to quell the massive inflationary pressures, which further intensified the flow of foreign currency loans, are now effectively stuck with no ability to tweak monetary policy since the low rates which are needed are either impossible (in the case of the Baltics and their Euro pegs) or de-facto impossible in the context of e.g. Hungary and Romania. Moreover, and in a world where major central banks are stuck at the zero bound and where the level of volatility may itself be volatile as we move from optimism to pessimism all that liquidity may yet again prove to be a destabilising factor in the context of Eastern Europe where we were all, I am sure, amazed, to learn a couple of months ago how some analysts were advising clients to play the carry trade with Eastern European economies as designated targets, for more on this see this post.

So what does all this has to do specifically with Hungary? Well, today we learned from Finance Minister Peter Oszko that Hungary would certainly prefer to issue local currency debt in the future, but given the fact that the IMF loan is not, by nature of it being a loan, permanent Hungary also need to find a viable way to make its policy tools work most effectively. The following excerpt is from Bloomberg;

Hungary doesn’t plan to raise foreign-currency debt in the “near future” and will increase sales of forint-denominated bonds to finance the budget, Finance Minister Peter Oszko told Nepszabadsag. “In the short term, the budget doesn’t need foreign- currency denominated financing sources,” Oszko said in an interview with the Budapest-based newspaper. The Finance Ministry has confirmed the comments to Bloomberg. “Increasing forint-based issuance is more worthwhile.”

Hungary sold 1 billion euros ($1.42 billion) of debt last week in its first offering since the flight of investors forced it to take a 20 billion-euro bailout from the International Monetary Fund, the European Union and World Bank in October. The country is working to wean itself off emergency financing. The IMF-led loan, which “secures a comfortable situation,” runs out in March 2010 and the government must work to ensure the country can finance itself from the market at lower rates by then, Oszko said.

“The July auction’s primary importance wasn’t to secure financing but rather to strengthen confidence in the country,” Oszko said. A “smaller” foreign debt sale is possible in the future as “it’s our basic interest to be active in the market.” Hungary could next target U.S. investors with the sale of dollar-based bonds, the newspaper Napi Gazdasag reported today, citing Laszlo Balassy, a Budapest-based executive at Citigroup Inc., which helped organize last week’s sale.

It should immediately be clear that this represents the original sin issue in full vigour although somewhat in reverse one could argue. Consequently and notwithstanding the obvious problems facing Hungary in the context of lowering rates, the country needs to balance the between issuing debt in foreign currency which would mean further currency translation risk and an even further entrenchment of the high domestic interest rates or issuing in domestic currency which might not be possible at current rates (i.e. rates would need to go up further) or simply not viable given the future financing needs.

To put all this in the context of a solid macroeconomic analysis I am in luck since Edward has just dished out an up to date look at Hungary's economy. As Edward notes straight away, Hungary has now embarked on the great experiment also currently being tested in Latvia of internal devaluation and the long hard climb, through deflation, towards the competitiveness Hungary so badly needs. Now, I know that I tend to move closely together with Edward on many accounts but I dare anyone not to share the sentiment expressed by Edward as he points to the obvious point. The current strategy taken in Hungary to battle the crisis is not working and at some point one really has to stop to ask why.

One striking data point is the fact that while the real economy seems in absolute free fall real wages are still rising and given the inevitable point that Hungary needs wages to fall, and a lot, absent devaluation one wonders silently what kind of contractory jolt the real economy needs in order to engender this effect. Meanwhile, Hungary has also recently pulled out the good old trick of raising the VAT something which will surely to push up the main inflation index, once again pulling in the wrong direction.

As usual Edward is thorough, very thorough, and I can only suggest to spend the 20 minutes it takes to superficially digest his points. Especially the point about a monetary policy trap is mandatory reading. In terms of a summary of the situation the following gets to the heart of the matter;

And in case you had forgotten, here is what is happening to Hungarian GDP: while wages and prices are rising steadily, GDP is in free fall. Year on year it was down 4.7% in Q1 and Hungary’s government currently expects the economy to contract 6.7 percent this year, the most since 1991. My view is a total policy trap is in operation here, since neither monetary (interest rates are currently 9.5%) or fiscal policy are available, so there is little support to put under the economy at this point. The only way to break the circle in my opinion is to let the forint drop, bring down rates, and restructure the CHF loans.

As will no doubt come as a big surprise, I completely agree. Hungary needs to address the already existing asymmetry inherent in the economic edifice which should entail a strategy on how to deal with the stock of CHF loans on the households' and corporates' balance sheet. This also gives a final spin on the actual topic of play in this entry.

In all probability the dilemma difficulties facing the Hungarian treasury in terms of constructing a viable and solid platform on which to finance its operations is greatly dependent on the issue with the already existing fx denominated loans. If Hungary were to construct a credible and realistic solution to the issue of how to write down/pay off the stock of CHF loans my guess is that the original sin would be a little easier to escape even if not all together.

---

[1] Who follow the lead of Eichengreen and Hausmann.

Escaping Original Sin in Hungary

By Claus Vistesen: Copenhagen

According to the well known textbook in international economics by Maurice Obstfeld and Paul Krugman [1] the notion of original sin refers to the fact that many developing economies are not able to borrow in their own currencies but are forced to denominate large parts of their sovereign debt in foreign currency in order to attract capital from foreign investors. The argument then goes that if and when the goings get tough those countries will face difficulties paying off their liabilities and once the dust have settled the sin, as it were, has only become more binding when these same economies yet again venture onto international capital markets.

It is interesting to ponder this story in relation to Eastern Europe where far from being a sin the ability to denominate liabilities in foreign currencies such as Euros and Swiss Francs was almost seen as a virtue of modern capital markets during the boom years which followed the famous meeting in Copenhagen which saw the European family expand to 25 countries, a number which now has risen to 27. On the face of it, it is not difficult to see where this virtue came from. Aggressive expansion by western European banks into the CEE and a low volatility environment ultimately driven by the notion of a road map towards convergence bound to bring forth an equalization in living standards and, in the case of many CE economies, a certain membership into the Eurozone underpinned the fact that the ability to shop foreign currency loans was hardly a sin, but a natural counter product of the newly formed European community.

Now, all this has capsized and those economies who where so busy raising rates going into crisis in order to quell the massive inflationary pressures, which further intensified the flow of foreign currency loans, are now effectively stuck with no ability to tweak monetary policy since the low rates which are needed are either impossible (in the case of the Baltics and their Euro pegs) or de-facto impossible in the context of e.g. Hungary and Romania. Moreover, and in a world where major central banks are stuck at the zero bound and where the level of volatility may itself be volatile as we move from optimism to pessimism all that liquidity may yet again prove to be a destabilising factor in the context of Eastern Europe where we were all, I am sure, amazed, to learn a couple of months ago how some analysts were advising clients to play the carry trade with Eastern European economies as designated targets, for more on this see this post.

So what does all this has to do specifically with Hungary? Well, today we learned from Finance Minister Peter Oszko that Hungary would certainly prefer to issue local currency debt in the future, but given the fact that the IMF loan is not, by nature of it being a loan, permanent Hungary also need to find a viable way to make its policy tools work most effectively. The following excerpt is from Bloomberg;

Hungary doesn’t plan to raise foreign-currency debt in the “near future” and will increase sales of forint-denominated bonds to finance the budget, Finance Minister Peter Oszko told Nepszabadsag. “In the short term, the budget doesn’t need foreign- currency denominated financing sources,” Oszko said in an interview with the Budapest-based newspaper. The Finance Ministry has confirmed the comments to Bloomberg. “Increasing forint-based issuance is more worthwhile.”

Hungary sold 1 billion euros ($1.42 billion) of debt last week in its first offering since the flight of investors forced it to take a 20 billion-euro bailout from the International Monetary Fund, the European Union and World Bank in October. The country is working to wean itself off emergency financing. The IMF-led loan, which “secures a comfortable situation,” runs out in March 2010 and the government must work to ensure the country can finance itself from the market at lower rates by then, Oszko said.

“The July auction’s primary importance wasn’t to secure financing but rather to strengthen confidence in the country,” Oszko said. A “smaller” foreign debt sale is possible in the future as “it’s our basic interest to be active in the market.” Hungary could next target U.S. investors with the sale of dollar-based bonds, the newspaper Napi Gazdasag reported today, citing Laszlo Balassy, a Budapest-based executive at Citigroup Inc., which helped organize last week’s sale.

It should immediately be clear that this represents the original sin issue in full vigour although somewhat in reverse one could argue. Consequently and notwithstanding the obvious problems facing Hungary in the context of lowering rates, the country needs to balance the between issuing debt in foreign currency which would mean further currency translation risk and an even further entrenchment of the high domestic interest rates or issuing in domestic currency which might not be possible at current rates (i.e. rates would need to go up further) or simply not viable given the future financing needs.

To put all this in the context of a solid macroeconomic analysis I am in luck since Edward has just dished out an up to date look at Hungary's economy. As Edward notes straight away, Hungary has now embarked on the great experiment also currently being tested in Latvia of internal devaluation and the long hard climb, through deflation, towards the competitiveness Hungary so badly needs. Now, I know that I tend to move closely together with Edward on many accounts but I dare anyone not to share the sentiment expressed by Edward as he points to the obvious point. The current strategy taken in Hungary to battle the crisis is not working and at some point one really has to stop to ask why.

One striking data point is the fact that while the real economy seems in absolute free fall real wages are still rising and given the inevitable point that Hungary needs wages to fall, and a lot, absent devaluation one wonders silently what kind of contractory jolt the real economy needs in order to engender this effect. Meanwhile, Hungary has also recently pulled out the good old trick of raising the VAT something which will surely to push up the main inflation index, once again pulling in the wrong direction.

As usual Edward is thorough, very thorough, and I can only suggest to spend the 20 minutes it takes to superficially digest his points. Especially the point about a monetary policy trap is mandatory reading. In terms of a summary of the situation the following gets to the heart of the matter;

And in case you had forgotten, here is what is happening to Hungarian GDP: while wages and prices are rising steadily, GDP is in free fall. Year on year it was down 4.7% in Q1 and Hungary’s government currently expects the economy to contract 6.7 percent this year, the most since 1991. My view is a total policy trap is in operation here, since neither monetary (interest rates are currently 9.5%) or fiscal policy are available, so there is little support to put under the economy at this point. The only way to break the circle in my opinion is to let the forint drop, bring down rates, and restructure the CHF loans.

As will no doubt come as a big surprise, I completely agree. Hungary needs to address the already existing asymmetry inherent in the economic edifice which should entail a strategy on how to deal with the stock of CHF loans on the households' and corporates' balance sheet. This also gives a final spin on the actual topic of this entry.

In all probability the difficulties facing the Hungarian treasury in terms of constructing a viable and solid platform on which to finance its operations is greatly dependent on the issue with the already existing fx denominated loans. If Hungary were to construct a credible and realistic solution to the issue of how to write down/pay off the stock of CHF loans my guess is that the original sin would be a little easier to escape even if not all together.

---

[1] Who follow the lead of Eichengreen and Hausmann.

Hungary Struggles To Apply Its Own Unique Version Of "Internal Devaluation"

Just what the hell is going on in Hungary? This is the question which even the most cursory inspection of the latest round of data coming out of the country leads me to ask myself. What the hell is going on and just what kind of correction is this the IMF are presiding over here?

In May, according to the latest data from the Hungarian statistics office, in the Hungarian private sector real wages were up, and employment was down. Meanwhile in the public sector, real wages were down, but employment was up (contrary to what was supposed to be happening). A recent programme to get workers off the unemployment roles and back to work seems to have had the perverse and contradictory impact of offsetting the fall in private sector employment by giving a sharp boost to public sector employment. So while total employment has remained more or less stable, the balance has shifted, and in the wrong direction. Meanwhile, in an attempt to stem the bloodletting in public finances (the economy remember will probably contract by about 7 percent this year) VAT was raised - by the significant margin of 5 percent (from 20% to 25%) on July 1st, giving consumption, which was already falling sharply, another sharp jolt downwards. Not only that, the Hungararian economy, in order to maintain the value of the forint more or less where it is (all those forex loans) was supposed to be having a major downward correction in wages and prices, yet inflation (which was already at an annual 3.7 percent in June) will surely now be given a hefty kick upwards. So, I ask myself, how does any of this actually make sense, and to who? And meantime the problem of the forex denominated loans remains, and goes jangling around (like any good jailor does) in the background, putting an effective stop on monetary policy just as fiscal policy switches over to complete contracton mode. This is why I talk of "internal devaluation", since the Hungarian authorities (with the agreement of the IMF and the EU Commission) seem to have decided that, rather than resolving the issue of the CHF loans once and for all, they will down the same road that is proving to be so disastrous in Latvia, even though they have their own currency to devalue, should they choose to do so.

At the end of the day, the big question which we are all left with is, whether this structural shift in employment, away from the private sector and towards the public sector, and the increase in the consumer price index to be caused by the sharp VAT hike, plus the ongoing rise in real wages, really is the outcome the IMF support programme was intended to achieve?

Wages Up, Employment Down

Amazingly, with an economy contracting at at least a 7% annual rate, Hungarian real private sector wages aren't falling, they are still rising. They were up (over and above inflation) by 1.7% in May. Evidently those who are still in employment say, crisis, what crisis?



Unsurprisingly Hungary’s consumer confidence index rose in July for a third month (to minus 63.1) after hitting a record low in April.



“Consumers’ perception of their ability to save in the short-run is what improved the most from June,” GKI said in their statement. Well certainly a 5 point hike in VAT is unlikely to encourage them to spend. In fact, paradoxically, saving is what Hungarians collectively really need to do, to reduce the ballooning government debt and pay down the level of net international indebtedness. But all this simply means is that to get the economic growth necessary to do all the required saving Hungary is going to need to export, and a lot more than it was doing previously, which is why the shift towards public sector employment is so serious.

As I say, private sector employment is down in Hungary, by 4.8% y-o-y. While industrial output was down 22.1% in May over a year earlier. Something just doesn't seem to be working as it should be here.



On the other hand, public sector employment is on the up and up in Hungary, due to job creation under the short term stimulus programme, courtesy indirectly of the IMF, who have permitted a large than anticipated budget deficit. Don't get me wrong, it's not the stimulus I am quibbling about, it is what it is being used for. The outcomes we are seeing at present don't seem to me to be producing a large structural change in the right direction.



Actually the rise in public sector employment is not a direct result of the increase in the IMF permitted deficit, but rather comes from restructuring funds earlier used to finance social assistance payments. The same ammount of money (at about 100 billion HUF) was used to provide public work opportunities for people who before April were entitled to receive social assistance for staying at home. Now those considered capable of working can only receive benefits if they are registered as public workers and if they are offered a job opportunity by local governent they are compelled to accept it. Thus, like so many things in Hungary, the intention was good even if the execution wasn't.


Meanwhile, far from the current recession leading to a significant downward shift in wages and prices, real wages are - as we have seen - still rising, and Hungary's consumer prices were still running year on year at 3.7% in June, down it is true from 3.8% in May, but still far to high to start restorting competitiveness. And of course, the July 1st VAT rise will give consumer prices another stout kick upwards, with some analysts suggesting that year end inflation could be running as high as 6%. If this is anywhere near accurate, and the HUF stays in the region of its current euro parity, then Hungary's agony looks set to continue unabated into 2010.



And in case you had forgotten, here is what is happening to Hungarian GDP: while wages and prices are rising steadily, GDP is in freefall. Year on year it was down 4.7% in Q1 and Hungary’s government currently expects the economy to contract 6.7 percent this year, the most since 1991. My view is a total policy trap is in operation here, since neither monetary (interest rates are currently 9.5%) or fiscal policy are available, so there is little support to put under the economy at this point. The only way to break the circle in my opinion is to let the forint drop, bring down rates, and restructure the CHF loans.



The result of all this botched policy - Hungary’s unemployment rate rose to the its highest level in at least a decade in May. The rate rose to a seasonally adjusted 10.2 percent, the highest since at least 1996. And the situation is more likely to deteriorate than improve, with the central bank forecasting lay-offs of around 180,000 in 2009-2010, nearly 5% of the total number of employed.


One of the important things to grasp about the current situation in Hungary is that this is not a constant size wheel running constantly around the same spindle. The long run outloook is steadily deteriorating as population falls and ages. The same is also true of the working age population, which has now been falling steadily for some years (see chart below).Unsurprisingly therefore the NBH now project that employment will fall by 3.2% this year, followed by a 1.7% contraction in 2010, notably primarily due to layoffs in the private sector.



Hungary’s industrial output fell at a slower annual pace in May than it did in April as stimulus plans in the European car industry added to demand, but production was still down 22.1 percent on May 2008 (following a 25.3 percent annual decrease in April). Output rose 2.6 percent over the month.





Hungary's contraction seems to be more or less moving sideways at the moment, and the June PMI came in at 45.8, a slight uptick from 45.4 in May, but hardly a seismic shift. The output improvement was almost all due to the export sector.



Exports

Hungary recorded its fourth monthly trade surplus in May, and came in at 497.7 million euros as compared with 430.3 million euros in April and a deficit of 30.3 million euros in May last year.



Now good news is always good news, but it is important to understand that this result was almost entirely achieved via a dramatic drop in imports, which plunged 32.3 percent in May (following a 35.4 percent decline in April). It is impossible to talk of any marked improvement in exports, since these fell by an annual 24.1 percent, accelerating from a 29.4 percent drop in April. While in the short term this substantial drop in imports (and hence rise in the trade balance) is GDP positive, it is very negative for living standards in the longer term, and the whole situation needs to be reversed by a large boost in exports leading imports as the eurozone economy eventually recovers. But to be able to achieve this Hungarian industry needs to do more, much more, to achieve competitiveness.




Investment Activity


Hungary is suffering from a generalised drop in demand - domestic, export, government, and investment - for which it is difficult to see any short term remedy. In the first quarter of 2009 investments fell by 7.7% compared to the same period of 2008, while they decreased by 1.1% in comparison with the previous quarter (according to seasonally adjusted volume indices). Within this fall machinery and equipment decreased by 9.9%, while investment in manufacturing industry was down by 6.8%. Evidently the first sign of any real recovery in the Hungarian economy will come when investments stabilise and even start to increase, since that will be a reflection of the expectation of future demand arriving further down the pipeline.



Construction

Construction activity was down by 10.1% compared to May 2008. In the first five months of the year, output decreased by 6.9%. In comparison with April production decreased by 3.3%. Construction output showed a decreasing trend in connection with the global economic crisis in the past months. In fact there was a significant difference between the performance of the two construction branches, with buildings activity falling by nearly a quarter, while civil engineering works were up by 7.9%. On a seasonally adjusted basis, building activity was 8.6% lower in May over April, while civil engineering was up one percent on the month.





Retail Trade

Retail sales fell 3.4% year-on-year in the first four months of 2009. In April the fall in retail sales accelerated, and the volume index was down 4.1% compared with April 2008. Retail sales decreased by 0.3% over March according to seasonally and calendar adjusted data.



But the real problem is that Hungary's retail sales are now in long term decline, and it is hard to see this situation turning round as the population declines. The peaked in mid 2006, and it has been downhill ever since. This highlights the important point that Hungary's economic difficulties - like Italy's, which bear some resemblance, are not of recent origin, but go back to the adjustment process that started following the mini crisis of June 2006, an adjustment which has never, at the end of the day, achieved the results which were expected of it, and the real question is, why not?



Monetary Policy Trap

Back in April, the Hungarian Finance Ministry were expecting a 155 billion forint budget surplus for the second half of this year, but since then the economic outlook has continued to deteriorate, and according to their latest estimate there will actually be a 149.6 billion forint deficit in H2. This anticipated shortfall is the principal reason why the IMF and the European Commission recently agreed to let Hungary raise its deficit target to 3.9% of GDP for 2009 from the 2.9% previously agreed. They did this in response to the larger-than-expected economic recession, thus avoiding the additional fiscal tightening measures which would have been needed to hold the deficit below the Maastricht 3.0% target level. The gap in 2010 is now expected to come in only a tad lower than this year at 3.8% of gross domestic product (although this number is subject to considerable revision given the levels of uncertainty facing the economy and hence government revenue and spending). As a result, the EU Commission in their latest forecast suggest gross government debt to GDP will reach 80.8% in 2009, and 82.3% in 2010, way above the 60% euro adoption level.

Nonetheless the Hungarian government is in bullish mood. According to Finance Minister Peter Oszko in a Bloomberg TV interview “Recently there has been a turning point......Financial risks are very quickly decreasing in terms of the whole budget. The Hungarian government is committed to implementing a reform program quite quickly.”

Capital Economics' Neil Shearing isn't so convinced:

But is this new-found optimism justified? Possibly. The National Bank will certainly take heart from the fact that the bond market is functioning once again following a complete freeze late last year. This adds weight to the case for interest rates to be gradually lowered, with a 50bps cut to later this month looking increasingly likely. But amongst all the euphoria, it is important to keep some sense of perspective. First, while the government managed to complete the bond auction successfully, it came at a price. At 6.79%, the yield on the new bonds is around 90bps higher than what existing 2014 euro-bonds currently trade at.

There is indeed a general feeling in the air that monetary easing is coming, and in fact three members of the central bank's Monetary Council voted even at the last meeting to lower the key policy rate by 50 basis points, according to minutes of the 22 June rate setting meeting. The MPC is set to hold its next policy meeting on 27 July, and is widely expected to start a monetary easing cycle. My view: just watch out what happens next.



Basically the problem is the value of the forint. My opinion is that the recent recovery in the currency value (see chart below) has been almost entirely driven by yield differentials, and by self-fulfilling expectations (traders expect the currency to rise), rather than by any change in the underlying economic fundamentals, which as we have seen, has not taken place.



And if you are in any doubt about the extent to which Hungary has lost competitiveness since the start of the century, just take a look at the comparative REERs for Germany and Hungary below (REERs are trade weighted, and take account not only inflation but also movements in unit labour costs, ie productivity).



The problem the central bank and the Finance Ministry have to address is the ongoing issue of the mountain of Swiss Franc denominated mortgages (see chart).



These have stopped increasing in recent times, but still constitute a serious obstacle to any devaluation of the HUF, due to the non performing loans issue this would create for the banking sector. Not only has money been borrowed against homes for to fund house purchases, it has also been loaned for consumption (see chart below), so indeed the fact that even these loans are stagnating hardly bodes well in any way for domestic demand.



The thing is, as long as the interest rate differential remains as it is, there is no possibility of convincing people to take out HUF denominated mortgages. So domestic rates have to come down, but as they come down the forint will fall, and the number of distressed loans will spiral up. So the authorities are stuck in a real policy trap, where they have to wriggle uncomfortably around, carrying out what can only be described as a weird variant of voluntary internal devaluation, an intenral devaluation which again, as we have seen from the wage and price data, just isn't happening.

Obviously the whole idea IMF idea here was some sort of long term "play" - moving the focus of taxation from employment to consumption (addressing the tax wedge issue). Initially this shift was supported by the argument, that, amidst a deflationary backdrop, businesses wouldn't be able to pass the tax increase on to consumers in its entirety. At this point it would seem the Hungarian government has no real room for manouver and are desperate to implement the tax restructuring, therefore they opted for the significant VAT raise.

Part of the thinking which lies behind the present approach seems to be some new concept of financial orthodoxy. The IMF put it like this in the Hungary Standby Loan Report

In emerging market countries with debt overhangs, the “Keynesian” effect of fiscal adjustment is likely to be outweighed by “non-Keynesian” effects related to expectations and credibility. Non- Keynesian effects have to do with the offsetting response of private saving to policy-related changes in public saving. In particular, if fiscal adjustment credibly signals improved public sector solvency, a fiscal contraction could turn out to be expansionary, as private consumption rises based on the view that future tax hikes will be smaller than previously envisaged.
IMF - Hungary, Request for Stand-By Arrangement, November 4, 2008

So from Tallinin, to Riga, to Budapest, to Bucharest, the same sonata on a single note is being played, and the message is a clear one - cut spending and you will expand.

But with consumption sinking, government spending falling and exports insufficiently competitive to drive the necessary surplus, the whole thing is now becoming rather a mess, with no clear economic policy objective in the short term (except, of course, maintaining a strong exchange rate) and while in the long term the emphasis is rightly on export. But no one has any idea of how exactly to correct prices sufficiently with the CHF mortgages stuck in the middle.

And the new bond issue only makes things worse here, since as Neil Shearing emphasises:

it is worth noting that the latest euro-bond issue only adds to the mountain of foreign currency denominated debt that lies at the heart of Hungary’s current woes. With the banking sector still in deep trouble and fiscal policy set to tighten, the recession is likely to intensify over the coming quarters.

So, with the Hungarian government currently forecasting a GDP contraction of 6.7 percent,this year, and the likelihood being of further contractions next year and possibly even in 2011, something somewhere is going to give here.

And among the casualties, well why not Hungary's unborn children, the ones she needs to start turning round that population decline I started this post with.



According to preliminary data from the stats office, in the first five months of 2009 38,964 children were born, 1.9 percent less than in the first five months of 2008. But that isn't all, if you look carefully at the chart you will see that the number of children born fell substantially from about March 2007, just nine months after the first financial shock hit Hungary in June 2006. So here's a nice prediction, if economic conditions do work as a short term influence on fertility, then we should see another sharp drop in Hungarian births starting in from July, just nine months after the last financial crisis hit the Hungarian economy. There, I bet you never imagined that the collapse of Lehman Brothers could have such far reaching consequences, now did you?

IMF Imposes New Conditions On Latvia

Izabella Kaminska at FT Alphaville has the story (via Reuters):

The International Monetary Fund has put forward new, difficult conditions for Latvia to receive further loans, the prime minister said on Wednesday in a further sign the Fund is being tougher than the European Commission.

It isn't clear at this point what these conditions are. Rumour has it they may be an end to the flat income tax, or a hike in VAT. A hike in VAT would be more hari-kiri, since this would again hit consumption AND would boost inflation at a time when they are trying to deflate to carry through an internal currency correction. It also isn't clear whether this is a serious attempt to add new conditions (which I find unlikely, given how advanced the distemper is) or whether this is a way for the IMF to get themselves off the hook (ie leave the EU Commission to stew in its own juice) without having a public and potentially damaging break with the EU. The IMF need to find some sort of exit strategy I think (since Latvia evidently at this point doesn't have one), or it risks losing its own credibility if it puts a seal of approval (by granting the next tranche) on something which most external specialists now think could end up in a very messy grande finale. Argentina ghosts are stalking the corridors in Washington, not because of the similarities between the two countries (they are, at the end of the day pretty different), but because of the way giving a final "kiss of death" loan to a country can ultimately come back and haunt you.

Update One

The local Latvian news agency is saying that if Latvia and the IMF do not sign the new agreement by Friday, Latvia may not see the next chunk of the IMF loan and it could jeopardize the further funding from the EC. This could be brinksmanship, but even brinkmanship can go badly wrong if the other party can't concede. And who is the other party here? Latvia or the EU Commission, since they already said they are happy with progress. What a muddle!

Update Two - Thursday Afternoon

Bloomberg's Aaron Eglitis reports this afternoon that Friday may in fact not be any kind of deadline. He quotes Caroline Atkinson, head of external relations at the IMF, in Washington, to the effect that the head of the IMF mission in Riga is returning to Washington this weekend as scheduled, while the mission itself would “continue its work.” This suggests there will be no final decision this week. She also said there was “broad consensus among all the parties involved” about the goals for Latvia, declining to go into specifics.

Rumourology has it that the IMF wants the government to become more effective in revenue collection, with the fear that the current contraction may be so strong due to the fact that part of the economy is disappearing back into a "grey area" as a backdrop. Various proposals are being floated around, but perhaps it would be better to wait for some concrete information before speculating about this.

Latvian central bank Governor Ilmars Rimsevics has also been holding a press conference in Riga today, and he took the opportunity to suggest that the country’s budget deficit was likely to grow to between 9.5 percent and 10 percent this year. If this is the case, then this would obviously put Latvia outside the 60% gross debt to GDP criteria by 2010, which would make euro membership as an exit strategy non viable over the relevant horizon in my view. Just a long shot, but maybe that is what they are all arguing about. The EU clearly has to offer the four peggars more in the way of a carrot, although they themselves need to remember - looking over at Slovakia and Slovenia - that mere euro membership is no panacea to cure all ills.

Russia's Contraction Eases But Knife-edge Risks Remain For 2010

The Russian ruble strengthened the most in more than three months against the dollar yesterday (gaining 1.7 percent to 32.2247 per dollar at one point) as oil rebounded above $60 a barrel and OAO Sberbank reported better-than-expected earnings. Sberbank shares jumped 5.1 percent after first-quarter net income turned out to be above analyst estimates. But the rise was also helped by the fact that Russia’s central bank spent approximately $2 billion from reserves to try to stop the ruble from falling yesterday, taking central bank reserve spending over the two working days since they lowered interest rates half a percantage point on Friday to around $4 billion, according to reports in the newspaper Kommersant.

Russia’s central bank cut its main interest rates for the fourth time in less than three months at the end of last week after the government estimated the economy contracted an annual 10.2 percent in the January-May period. Bank Rossii lowered the refinancing rate to 11 percent from 11.5 percent following on initial reduction on April 24 and two further cuts on May 13 and June 5.

But the striking thing here is that today's ruble surge followed seven consecutive days when it fell - including yesterday when it dropped 0.5 percent against the euro and 0.1 percent against the dollar to hit the lowest close against the central bank's currency basket since May 4. Indeed only last week the ruble posted its steepest slide against the euro and dollar since January as oil prices fell and Russia's budget deficit contined towiden. And to top it all, as I say, the central bank reduced interest rates for the fourth time in less than three months.

Indeed just after the rate cut Alfa Bank’s Chief Economist Natalia Orlova commented that she was seeing a “very fragile trend” in the ruble, with a lot of downside potential: and I completely agree with her. What we have is a lot of volatility and a lot of market nervousness. Just this morning Bloomberg cited a research report from the ING Group warning that "the ruble may drop as much as 5.8 percent to the weakest end of Russia’s target exchange-rate basket as the central bank aims to revive credit by lowering key interest rates by up to 4 percentage points.” (research note here).

My feeling is that a 400 basis-point reduction would have an even bigger impact than even ING expect. Basically central banks in a number of central and east European countries are caught in a kind of trap, where the high level of forex borrowing both households and companies have engaged in makes local monetary policy rather impotent, and worse, this impotence itself becomes a self perpetuating situation. The trap perpetuates itself since people become reluctant to take out local currency denominated loans due to the high interest rate they carry, so they take out either dollar- or euro-denominated ones and thus make matters even worse, making the possibly erroneous assumtion that end game of all this will be either a dollar collapse (the Russian view) or eventual euro membership (in places like Hungary and Romania). Those doing the borrowing thus feel themselves to be completely covered, and fail to take into account the capital loss that could follow a large correction in their own local currency.

Slowly monetary policy makers in the most affected countries are coming to recognise that they need to address the issue, and somehow or other to get rates down, since the problem is not going to simply go away, and the meanwhile the respective economies keep on shrinking, with no positive boost from local monetary policy. But it is just when they start to lower rates that things start to turn nasty on them, since the whole situation is non-linear. Supporting a currency with high interest rates works for as long as it does on the win-win dynamic of yield differential AND a rising currency, but once the so called carry trade "punters" get the idea that political pressures to address the economic contraction may force substantial rate cuts on the government and the monetary authorities, and that the expectation of such rate cuts may lead the other "punters" to sell local instruments and exit the market, then the "thinking punter" finds he or she also needs to sell, and this is how we get to see that "will the last one out of the door please turn the lights off" type of self fulfilling herd behaviour.

I would say Serbia, Ukraine, Hungary, Romania and Russia are all vulnerable to this kind of outcome. Of course, from a macro economic viewpoint they can all start to bring interest rates down as inflation steadily drops, but I'm not sure that the inflation element is an important consideration for the short term carry-trade people, since it is the absolute yield differential, and the currency dynamics that would seem to matter most.


Sharp GDP Contraction

Evidently the background to all this nervousness is last week's announcement from the economy Ministry that Russia’s economy may shrink by as much as 8 to 8.5 percent this year. Gross domestic product probably contracted by an annual 10.2 percent in the first six months and may slump at a 6.8 percent annual rate in the second half, according to the latest Ministry forecast.

Behind this drop in GDP lies the fact that Rusia's exports were down by 47.4 year on year in the January to May period, largely due to falling prices for oil and raw materials. The economy ministry also said it expected capital investment to fall by around 21 percent this year as utility and energy companies, which account for about a third of total investment, cut spending programs. The ministry forecast is based on an oil prices scenario of an average $54 a barrel in 2009.

Further, industrial production is expected to shrink between 11 percent and 13 percent as manufacturing falls by as much as 17 percent. Inflation of between 12 percent and 12.5 percent is forecast, down from last year’s 13.3 percent. And retail sales are expected to suffer an annual contraction of 5.8 percent.


For the 2010 to 2012 period the ministry currently predicts a 1 percent expansion next year, followed by a 2.6 percent one in 2011 and 3.8 percent one in 2012. This “moderately optimistic" scenario would produce a deficit of 6.5 percent in 2010, followed by further deficits of 4 percent and 3 percent over the following two years. Government officials have recently stated they expect Russia to have a budget deficit of around 9% of GDP in 2009, up from an earlier 7.4% estimate.

Short Term Indicators Show Continuing Contraction

Industrial production shrank a record annual pace of 17.1 percent in May, while capital investment fell the most since December 1998, dropping an annual 23.1 percent.

Russian unemployment fell back for the first time in 10 months in May, but despite the positive effect this may produce on confidence the rate is sure to rise further in the months to come.





Retail sales fell the most in almost a decade in May, sliding an annual 5.6 percent, the fourth consecutive decline and the biggest since September 1999. The average monthly wage decreased an annual 3.3 percent in May, while real disposable incomes dropped 1.3 percent.

From Inflation To Deflation?

After all the inflation which seems to have become endemic in Russia, deflation would seem to be the most unlikely of scenarios, and indeed it is not the most likely of out comes, given the capacity of the authorities to allow the value of the ruble to fall. However, downward pressure on producer prices is evident at this point, and the cost of goods leaving Russian factories and mines dropped an annual 6.5 percent in May after falling 4.1 percent in April, according to the Federal Statistics Service. Prices rose 0.6 percent from April.

Russia’s inflation rate - which fell to an 18-month low in June - is still far too high. The rate dropped to 11.9 percent from 12.3 percent in May. Consumer prices rose 0.6 percent in the month, the same rise as registered in May. Russia’s inflation rate has averaged more than 14 percent a year since the country’s 1998 default and is certainly one of the biggest headaches facing the country.

Some Rebound In June

Russia’s manufacturing industry shrank last month at the slowest pace since September, and VTB’s Purchasing Managers’ Index advanced to 47.3 from 45.3 in May. So the rate of contraction is easing.

Further Russia's service industries shrank in June at the slowest pace since the contraction began in October, according to the VTB Capital Purchasing Managers’ Index which rose to 49.7 from 46.6 in May.




As a result the VTB Capital GDP indicator showed an annual 6.4 percent rate of contraction in the second quarter following a 5.4 percent decline in the first three months of the year. But output was shown shrinking at a 4.8 percent rate in June (from a year earlier) as compared with 6.8 percent contraction rate in May.

“The GDP indicator suggests that the economic decline in the second quarter of 2009 is likely to be similar to, or slightly worse, than in the first quarter,” Aleksandra Evtifyeva, an economist at VTB Capital, said in the report. “However, the prospects for the second half look brighter.” The pace of Russia's economic contraction eased to a 5-month high of 4.8 percent year-on-year in June, compared with a 6.8 percent shrinkage in the previous month, VTB bank's GDP indicator showed on Monday. The June reading "suggests that the economic decline in the second quarter is likely to be similar to or slightly worse than in the first one," VTB Capital senior economist Aleksandra Yevtifyeva said in the report.

2009 Contraction In Double Figures?

According to the latest report from the World Bank collapsing industrial production, rising unemployment and ongoing capital flight will reduce Russia’s gross domestic product by 7.5 percent this year and restrain “intraregional trade flows and transfers,”. The Bank also highlighted that “Remittances to the broader CIS region are expected to decline for the first time in a decade, by 25 percent”.

Neil Shearing of Capital Economics forecasts a contraction of 10% this year, zero growth in 2010 and fears that Russia may be facing a kind of "lost decade", since it may well not recover the 2008 level of output till 2014, and there are still clear downside risks attaced even to this estimate.


Shearing identifies three main factors which may contribute to the lost decade. First and foremost, he notes, the banking sector remains under enormous strain. While official estimates put bad debt at around 12% of total loans this year, Shearing thinks the true figure is likely to hit something closer to 20%. On this basis, he estimates that the banking sector could require up to $60bn in additional capital – far more than the $30bn that has so far been allocated by the government.

Second, by using so much ammunition this year, authorities leave little scope for further policy stimulus. Monetary policy is somewhat hamstrung as we have seen earlier, and fiscal policy will have to be tightened over the coming years in order to rein in a ballooning budget deficit. Indeed, Laura Solanko of the Finnish Central Bank's Transition Economies Centre calls this "the largest fiscal stimulus ever" in the Russian context.

As Solanko points out, the current crisis has hit oil and gas exports particularly hard, leading to a 47% decline in export duties and a 53% decline in proceeds from taxes on natural resource extraction during the first four months of 2009. The drop in general economic activity has further reduced proceeds from all revenue sources. General government revenues in January–April were 20% lower than a year earlier. If current trends continue, Solanko estimates that general government revenues may drop to close to 35% of GDP this year - down from around 50% in 2008.

Meanwhile, government expenditure has increased dramatically at all levels. In January–April this year, enlarged government expenditure increased by 23% to RUB 4,140 billion. The expenditure at the core of the Russian fiscal system, the federal budget, increased by an astonishing 37% compared with the same period a year earlier. Even taking the fairly high inflation into account, this equals a 20% increase in federal expenditure in real terms. Relative to GDP, general government expenditure has risen to 37% and federal expenditure to 23% of GDP, against 28% and 16%, respectively, a year earlier.

To sum up, public sector expenditure has nominally increased by 23%, and relative to GDP by a whopping 9 percentage points compared with the first four months of 2008. The sheer magnitude of such a fiscal stimulus is huge. During the 1990s, Russia’s public sector shrank dramatically, its GDP share decreasing by 12 percen-tage points to 26% of GDP in 1999. The current fiscal stimulus has shot public expenditure back to the level of the early 1990s.

As the automatic stabilisers in the Russian fiscal system are small, the expenditure increase largely reflects expenditure on anti-crisis measures and advance transfers to the regions by the federal government. The government’s anti-crisis measures announced by mid-March 2008 alone would increase federal expenditure by some RUB 2,000 billion, or 15%, in 2009. Roughly half of that is directed to strengthening the financial system, and the other half to supporting the real sector.

The current federal budget foresees a deficit of 7% of GDP, a figure only slightly larger than last year’s surplus – and only slightly smaller than the total assets of the Reserve Fund. This im-plies that most of the Reserve Fund will be exhausted by year end and the Russian government will have to reenter the domestic and external bond markets in 2010 at the latest.

And we should never forget that Russia remains in the grip of a pretty vicious credit squeeze. Bank lending to companies fell 1.5 percent in May compared with April, while retail loans dropped 1.9 percent. Overdue bank loans reached 4.6 percent of the total in May, versus 4.2 percent a month earlier. And while many Russian corporates may be restructuring their debt, the only deepening their longer term exposure to currency correction risk. As in the case of Moscow-based steelmaker OAO Mechel, who, according to Bloomberg, just agreed to refinance $2.6 billion of loans in the biggest foreign-debt restructuring by a Russian company since the credit crisis began. Such refinancing is not coming cheap - the rate was 6 percentage points over the London interbank offered rate - but even more to the point this type of restructuring may only to a certain extent postpone the inevitable, since the new debt now becomes due in December 2012. This is fine if everything is all hunky-dory come 2012, but if it isn't.....

As the OECD put it in their latest report on Russia

“The main threat to credit growth now appears to be solvency problems, arising from the declining capacity of borrowers to repay bank loans,” the bank said in an economic report released today. “The challenge is to maintain capital adequacy and prevent a sharp curtailing of lending flows.”

Lastly, Neil Shearing points out there remains little external support for the economy. With the global recovery likely to disappoint, export demand will remain weak. Oil could fall to $50pb by early-2010. As ING say:

"Oil price dynamics pose additional risks to RUB. Last week, oil prices plunged below the technically important EMA-200 level of US$63/bbl, indicating a potential further drop to US$47-54/bbl. If this happens, the RUB looks destined to weaken as well, given its greatly strengthened correlation with oil prices over the past two quarters".

And if oil does drop back to this range, and the ruble does weaken, and non performing loans rise above the 20% mark (pushed by that very same ruble weakening, and the rising unemployment), and the Russian Federal Government has to start issuing bonds in 2010, well watch out, is all I can say, since trouble will surely be in store. This is very much knife edge touch and go stuff from here on in. Grit your teeth everyone.

The IMF/EU Commission Rift On Latvia Seems To Be Deepening

Two weeks ago I drew attention to a revealing press conference given by IMF First Deputy Managing Director John Lipsky and European Central Bank governing council member Christian Noyer where it seemed a rather different posture was being taken on the Latvian question than that which is being transmitted from Brussels. Then P O'Neill found a message on Twitter which suggested the topic of the Latvian budget had been unexpectedly added to the EcoFin agenda.

Today Bloomberg report that Barclays Capital’s chief economist for emerging Europe Christian Keller thinks that the IMF's posture of continuing to withhold funds even after the approval of the spending cuts “signaled that the rift between the IMF and EU has widened” .

Now I don't want to see connections were there are none, but it is a coincidence that Christian Keller works for the same Barclays capital whose Head of Emerging Markets Strategy Eduardo Levy-Yeyati recently published a lengthy analysis on the influential Is Latvia the new Argentina? - where he argued that: "The strategy of engineering an “internal” depreciation under a peg in Latvia (via contractionary fiscal policy, wage cuts and price deflation) implicit in the IMF program is proving too painful, if not self-defeating as in the 2001 collapse of Argentina’s currency board"

Now the publication of this article was interesting since Eduardo Levy-Yayati is not just any old economist. Previous to joining Barclays Capital, as his Voxeu biography informs us, he was

"a Senior Financial Sector Advisor for Latin America & the Caribbean at The World Bank. Previously, a Senior Research Associate at the Inter-American Development Bank, the Director of Monetary and Financial Policies and Chief Economist for the Central Bank of Argentina, and the Director of the Center for Financial Research and Professor of Economics and Finance at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. He has also worked as consultant for the IMF, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Japan Bank for International Cooperation, among many public and private institutions. His research on emerging markets banking and finance has been published extensively in top international economic journals. "

That is, Señor Levy-Yayati is an extremely experienced economist, an old Argentina hand, and enjoys some considerable influence over emerging markets issues in Washington. So was the appearance of the article in Voxeu at the end of June totally coincidental? He certainly is experienced enough to know what he is doing in these matters. And was it also a coincidence that only a week later former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund Ken Rogoff - surely another person who knows perfectly well what he is doing - gave an interview where he said that "Latvia should devalue the lats to avoid a worsening of its economic crisis" and that "the IMF made the wrong decision when it allowed Latvia to keep its currency peg"?

The IMF cannot say what it really thinks for obvious reasons, but could we construe Levy-Yayati and Rogoff as thinking out loud on the funds behalf?

The clash between the two institutions (should such a clash exist) derives from “ideological differences” according to Keller. "The IMF is focused on economic questions such as the sustainability of the currency peg, the use of economic stimulus or the idea of fast-track euro adoption......The EU’s main concern is political, such as euro-adoption rules and the implementation of convergence programs".

This all rings pretty true, and it rings even truer when you note that the Latvian Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis said only last week that the country "may not need the IMF share of the financing". As Keller says, “The Latvia program has become a headache for the IMF.”

Postscript

Latvian foreign trade was down again in May, at 618.3 mln lats it was 4.2% (or 27.1 mln lats) lower than it was in April (no green shoot here) and 38.5% (or 387.6 mln lats) down on May last year, according to provisional data of Latvian Statistics Office. May exports were down 30.1% over May 2008, while imports were down an incredible 43.7%. Over the January – May period foreign trade was down by 35.4% on the same period in 2008. Exports were down by 27.7% and imports by 39.9%.






Industrial output fell back again in May over April, by 0.4% on a seasonally adjusted basis according to the statistics office. Year on year it was down 19.3%.





And domestic demand continues to weaken. Retail sales were down 0.48% in May over April, and 24.14% year on year, according to Eurostat data.





Latvia’s inflation rate fell to 3.4 percent in June, the lowest annual rate since October 2003, from 4.7 percent in May. Prices were down 0.5% on the month, but this is way too slow for the kind of internal devaluation process which is underway. At this rate the loss of GDP will be truly massive before the internal currency correction has taken place.

There were 206,000 people unemployed in Latvia in May, or 16.3 percent of the labour force, according to the latest Eurostat data. This is slightly down on earlier data, but since these results are survey based, and such rapid changes make it difficult to apply such methodologies, I don't think we need suspect any kind of "foul play". The rise is dramatic enough as it is, as can be seen in the chart below. This makes me wonder were we will be by mid 2010.




One area where the central bank has had some success has been in getting overnight interbank lending rates down again, and the overnight Rigibor is now back around 3% (13 July), but the 12 month rates are still very high (20.2% 13 July) which does suggest that while market participants are fairly sure the peg is safe in the short term, they are not at all convinced about what is going to happen in the longer term. And in this they seem to be making a valid judgement, since this is the situation at the time of writing.






Meatime Latvia's natality continues to suffer under the weight of the crisis, there were 1750 live births in May, down 15.3% on May 2008. Thus, not only are we playing with the countries short term future here, we are also putting the possibility of having a long term one at risk.




Where Is The Endgame?

When it comes to the short term dynamics of the looming currency crisis in Emerging Europe, one of the Baltic Three, probably Latvia, will most likely be the first to concede its peg, as Eduardo Levy-Yeyati says this is just too painful, and the loss of GDP which is taking place while the politicians are dithering is fearful.

But when Latvia does leave its peg, then others are almost bound to follow. Everything depends on whether the EU Commission and the IMF are proactive or limit themselves to a mere reactive, problem-containment role. If the Latvian currency realignment is done in an organised and systematic fashion, then it may, even at this late date, be a containable process. For this to happen the EU Commission have to stop playing with the politics of the situation, realise that the Maastricht criteria were not written in tablets of stone, and start to formulate a reasonable exit stratgey for all the Eastern members of the EU. They need, that is, to start thinking practical economics, the way the IMF now seem to be doing. The macro economics of this was always clear and straightforward.

But if the Latvian situation is simply left to fester, and the country falls into the grip of a growing political anarchy, then containment will be much more difficult, since panic will more than likely set in.

A similar situation pertains in Bulgaria (see my latest post on Bulgaria, since the similatities are evident). Absent a Latvian devaluation, it is not unthinkable that the Lev peg may be maintained in Bulgaria for another year or so. But if the Bulgarian authorities do go down this road, then we face the severe risk of a a further raggedy ending, since the problem is not one of sustaining the peg, but of restoring competitiveness and economic growth, and this is much more difficult without a formal devaluation. And if Bulgaria does go hurtling off that cliff on which it is currently perched, then just be damn careful it doesn't drag half of South Eastern Europe careering after it. The EU Commission need to begin to resolve this mess, and the need to begin now!

Cliff Hanging In Bulgaria

The International Monetary Fund this week forecast the recession in Bulgaria would be deeper than it previously predicted. Such a decision should come as no surprise to anyone, since the country's economic dynamics in both the short and long term look extremely unstable, and Bulgaria is now almost certainly headed towards a series of more or less hair-raising roller-coaster rides. Even the briefest of glances at the population chart above should lead all but the most sceptical among us to stop and think a little about the possible economic implications of such an appauling demographic outlook. As can be seen, the opening to the west brought a sharp outflow of people in the late 1980s (mainly ethnic Turks), but the important thing to note is that the decline has continued almost continuously ever since. That is, the decline was not a one-off demographic "shock", but rather it has become a way of life (or, if you prefer, of death, since deaths constantly outnumber births, even before you consider emigration). And it is this "terminal style" dynamic which virtually guarantess that the coming ride will be a bumpy one, not only in the short term (guaranteed by the size of the current account deficit - 25% - which Bulgaria needs to correct) but in the longer term, since according to any known growth theory there is simply no way any country can sustain headline GDP expansion with potential labour force and population contractions of this magnitude.

Sharp Recession in 2009

Well, to come down to earth with a bump, let's now get into the immediate situation, and return to the fact that the IMF now expects Bulgaria’s economy to shrink by 7 percent in 2009 (previously they were forecasting a 3.5 percent contraction). They also upped (or downed) their 2010 outlook to an anticipated 2.5 percent contraction, from an earlier 1 percent one, although such an adjustment at this point this is now better than mere guesswork. The point is we are in for a severe contraction, and it isn't going to be any laughing matter.

The IMF revision also follows last weeks announcement that it now expects a “sluggish” global economic recovery and its 2009 forecast reduction for central and eastern European, which went to a 5 percent contraction from an earlier 3.7 percent one.

The heart of the Bulgarian problem at the moment stems from the need to correct a current account deficit which reached 25pc of GDP in 2008, the highest of the 80 emerging markets around the world tracked by Fitch Ratings. Gross external debt reached 102 percent of GDP.




Bulgaria faces a drastic process of external adjustment process which with the shadow of the current international economic crisis hanging over it will surely be far from painless. Vulnerabilities accumulated during the boom period - a marked rise in private sector external, debt along with a rapid increase in credit growth and widespread FX-denominated borrowing - will make demonstrating unwavering commitment to the currency board arrangement very hard work indeed. Neil Shearing at Capital Economics estimates Bulgaria’s external financing needs at $25 billion this year, including the current-account deficit, short-term private foreign debt payments and interest payments. Foreign investment has fallen by almost half over the last year. Meanwhile private debt is up to just shy of 100 percent of gross domestic product, while the government budget revenue fell 6 percent in May.

Plummeting GDP


The Bulgarian economy contracted 3.5 percent in the first quarter when compared with the first quarter of 2008, according to the most recent figures from the National Statistics Office. The turnround is massive when you consider that the economy actually grew by 3.5 percent year on year in the last three months of 2008. In fact, GDP actually shrank by 5 percent from the fourth quarter (or at an annual 20% rate), when it contracted 1.6 percent, according to quarterly data which the statistics institute published for the first time (although these are not seasonally adjusted, so we need to be careful in drawing conclusions). At this speed, I would say even the IMF estimate may well fall significantly short of the final outcome, and we could well be looking at a double digit contraction in 2009. Basically make this kind of current account correction without any sort of currency adjustment is extremely costly in short term GDP, as we are seeing in the Baltics.



Domestic consumption fell 5.4 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier after a 1.4 percent increase in the previous three months. Industrial output, which makes up 31 percent of total GDP, plummeted an annual 12.4 percent in the first quarter, after a 3.7 percent decline in the fourth quarter of 2009. Agricultural output, which accounts for 4 percent of the economy, dropped 4 percent after rising 26.7 percent in the fourth quarter. Services, which make up 65 percent of GDP, rose an annual 2.5 percent after a 3.8 percent gain in the previous quarter, although it is obvious that on a quarter over quarter basis even services are now contracting.

First-quarter exports dropped 17.4 percent, while imports dropped 21 percent, meaning that the net trade impact on GDP was positive.


Short Term Indicators


Bulgarian industrial production continues to fall and was 22.1 percent from a year earlier in May - the eighth consecutive monthly decline. Output was also down month on month - by 1 percent over April. Retail sales dropped an annual 10.4 percent in May.




Construction activity is also well down, falling by 9 percent in April, over April 2008 according to Eurostat data.

Domestic demand is in full retreat, as evidenced by retail sales which were down by 3% year on year in May, with the pace of decline steadily increasing.

Unemployment is also rising, and hit 6.5% in May, according to the EU harmonised methodology. This is still comparatively low, but the rate will continue to rise sharply throughout the rest of this year.

With all this contraction going on, deflation must surely be looming for Bulgaria, but given the very high levels which inflation hit in the second half of last year, the annual rate of inflation continues in positive territory, and what we are seeing for the time being is (not so rapid) disinflation. Bulgaria's annual inflation rate only fell to 3.9 percent in June from 3.9 percent in May. This is the lowest level since July 2005, and there is surely much more to come, even if the pace of disinflation raises issues about the ability to maintain the currency peg.



More evidence of the deflationary pressures which are now about to arrive can be found in Bulgarian producer prices, which slumped the most in more than a decade in May, led by falling manufacturing, mining and quarrying costs. Factory-gate prices dropped 3.2 percent on an annual basis after a 2.3 percent decline in April. Producer prices rose 0.3 percent in the month, after April’s 0.8 percent decline.


Mining and quarrying producer prices slumped 13.4 percent in the year, reflecting a global decline in commodity prices, after a 15.7 percent drop in April. Metal producer prices plummeted 30.9 percent in year, after a 29 percent decline in the previous month.

Another Candidate For Internal Devaluation?

Many supporters of the continuty of the current Currency Board Arrangement aregue that while the adjustment process is likely to be a bumpy one the CBA should be able to ride out the storm. I severely doubt this, for many of the reasons I have already offered in the case of the Baltic Countries (here, here, here, and here). Advocates for maintaining the peg argue the CBA is solidly based and able to weather adverse shocks, given the substantial buffers accumulated in the fiscal reserve account (around 15.0% of GDP) and the existence of large foreign reserves. Bulgaria’s "safety margin" - the sum of international reserves and the domestic currency component of the government’s fiscal reserve account — is estimated to be around 48% of GDP. This compares favourably with the rating agencies’ estimate of contingent liabilities from the financial sector under a reasonable worst case of around 30% of GDP (Standard and Poor’s, 2009). Also, as in the Baltics there is strong feeling of national identification with the CBA, which, coupled with the solid backing of all potential stakeholders (the EU and the IMF in particular), could be consided to offer a robust anchor to the CBA. But as with the Baltics, this kind of support may not be sufficient. Lets have a look at why not.

The first and most obvious issue is the competitiveness one. Since Bulgaria's domestic construction, borrowing and spending bubble has now most definitely burst, and since government spending will be brought under a tight lease by the IMF (when they inevitably arrive) Bulgaria is now (like the Baltics) destined to live by exports (not only live, but also pay down some of the accumulated debt) and this is just where we hit a snag. If we look at the chart for Bulgaria's Real Effective Exchange Rate, then we will see that the country has experienced a significant drop in international competitiveness since the end of 2005, due largely to the high level of inflation the country has suffered.




Wage costs have risen significantly, and even as recently as the first quarter of this year total hourly labour cost rose by an annual 19.2%. The total hourly labour cost was up by 18.5% in industry, by 16.3% in services and by 32.2% in construction according to the statistics office.

Basically then, in order to maintain the CBA Bulgaria will need what is called an "internal devaluation" (generalised reduction in prices and wages) of something like 20%, and seeing the pace at which this process has progressed in the Baltics, there are serious questions about whether Bulgaria would be able to implement such an internal devaluation (ecen with IMF support) before it gets caught in a vicious and painful spiral of falling GDP, falling tax income, falling government spending and even more rapidly falling GDP. Also, unlike the case of the Baltics, where the other Scandinavian countries have been able to render assistance to some extent, there is no obvious external supporter for the Bulgarian peg, and indeed the banking system in some of the countries involved in Bulgaria (Greece in particular) may be nothing like as strong or willing to maintain funding as their Swedish counterparts.

Nonetheless the Bulgarian central bank rejects devaluation, saying the country’s reserves of $16 billion is sufficient to protect the peg, and favours an “internal devaluation” byforcing down domestic wages and prices, a process which will weaken domestic demand, trigger deflation and prolong recession in my view.

Further, since there is no realistic prospect of Bulgarian euro membership in the short term, sticking to the peg for the sole purpose of quickly adopting the euro is a non sequitur, and there is no obvious exit strategy in sight.

On the other hand, while a devaluation would obviously close the current account gap far less painfully, it would not help improve Bulgaria's external financing picture owing to adverse balance sheet effects and the likely rise in bankruptcies. But as has been amply discussed in the Baltic case, the difference with an internal devaluation does not exist from this point of view, and indeed the internal devaluation path may be even more damaging given that even those with loans in Lev would be affected.

The current account will adjust in either case, since it has to, as financing is no longer viable, but this can either be done more painfully, or less painfully, and this is the real question. On the face of it Bulgaria’s incoming government, led by Sofia Mayor Boiko Borissov, advocates taking a loan from the IMF and the World Bank, and following in the footsteps of Latvia, Romania, Hungary, Serbia and Ukraine. The outgoing Socialist government ruled out any international loans. Negotiations are expected to start shortly after the new Cabinet takes office, with the loan itself would probably coming at the end of this year or during the first quarter of 2010, according to Bisser Boev, an economist in the election winning GERB party, in an interview last week.

Neil Shearing, an emerging Europe economist at Capital Economics, goes further, and says Bulgaria’s next government faces a deepening recession and an “imminent” loan agreement with the International Monetary Fund. Basically I agree with Neil: the loan will come sooner rather than later, since having the "bad cop" of the IMF to wave is the only way the new government will be able to govern and implement the internal devaluation, which it is likely will be attempted for a time, even if a breaking of the peg is the most probable medium term outcome.

Neil Shearing also forecasts Bulgaria’s economy will contract by 5 percent this year and 4 percent in 2010. My own feeling is that Neil is a bit to cautious here, and looking at the Q1 contraction and the pace of the decline since, we may well be in for a double figure (10 percent plus) 2009 contraction. Evidence from the Baltics would also tend to confirm this view: struggling to maintain a currency peg in this environment can be very costly in terms of lost GDP, since almost all the burden of current account correction falls on reducing imports, with exports falling rather than rising due to short term competitivity issues, especially when a number of other countries - Poland, Romania, the Czech Republic and Hungary may either devalue or see their currencies fall through sell-offs if they try to lower the currently punitive interest rate firewall (Hungary and Romania).

The markets also appear to be far from convinced, and credit-default swaps linked to Bulgarian five-year bonds are up in the region of 400 basis points from the one year low of 290.4 hit on May 20, as perceptions of credit quality deteriorate.

The coalition must work immediately to shore up revenue, which may fall as much as 3 billion lev ($2.1 billion) this year, said Boev, who was part of the team that mapped GERB’s economic policies and has been suggested by daily Dnevnik as the top candidate to run the Economy Ministry. “We’ll urgently revise the budget and cut what we can, postpone or freeze spending where we can,” said Boev. “This is our first task.” Bulgaria can only afford to co-finance infrastructure projects to bring roads and railways to EU requirements, Boev said. Restoring access to EU funds, which were frozen in 2008 over suspicions of graft, is crucial, he said. Bulgaria stands to receive 11 billion euros ($15.3 billion) in EU subsidies by 2013 to bring living standards closer to EU levels. Boev said the government would be “prepared” to cut investment spending and administrative costs, though it will leave social spending alone because reductions would generate additional unemployment.

The IMF forecast a budget deficit of 1 percent of gross domestic product this year and urged the previous government to cut spending by 20 percent. Ousted Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev froze public sector wages less than a month before the elections.

The Risk Of Spillovers

"The macro-situation in Bulgaria is dire," said Lars Christensen, emerging markets chief at Danske Bank.Foreign investment has plummeted. The downturn in the economy accelerated in May and June. While the new government is an improvement, I would not rule out a drop in GDP of 15 to 20pc from peak to trough," he said. My concern is that this is going to spill over into other countries. If you look at the main lenders, they are Greece, Hungary (OTP bank), and Italy."

The danger of a messy ending in Bulgaria adds another twist to the contagion worries which is facing Eastern and Southern Europe in the wake of the global crisis. A break in the Latvian peg (now, not in six months time) would be a blow, but it would, in my opinion, be containable. Estonia and Lithuania would have to correct in line, and pressure would come on Hungary and Romania, but if the Bulgarian peg goes, not in a managed devaluation but as part of a financial crisis inspired rout, which associated political chaos then the problems could rapidly escalate, immediately to four other countries in the west Balkans (Serbia, Croatia, Macedonia and Albania) and more indirectly down into an already weakend Southern Europe via the Greek and Italian banking systems.

But, you might ask, aren’t the Balkan economies too small to be a potential problem for Europe? This is true, but we need to bear in mind that all four of these nations, despite being outside the European Union, are in fact effectively euroised economies - in all cases their currencies are pegged to the euro. In addition all the Balkan countries have very close economic ties with southern Europe via the channel of expatriate remittances. And the economic problems which currently exist in Greece and Italy only serve to further weaken the nations of the Western Balkans, due to the strong trade linkages that exist within the region. These impacts will in their turn work their way back negatively into Greece and Italy due to their role in funding the region. South Eastern Europe could therefore, be quite literally at risk of economic seize-up.

And we should never forget that the political consequences of economic and currency reversals in the Western Balkans are potentially far greater than the Baltics simply because the former region has a population three times greater than that of the latter.

To be precise, maintaining Balkan GDP involves significant currency corrections. These corrections can take place by formal devaluations, or via the so-called "internal devaluation" process. The slower the Balkan currencies correct, the greater the depth and length of the recession. Basically, under these circumstances, I think that the incentive to devalue will, in the end, be too great. The immediate impact of such devlaluations will be most painful for countries like Croatia, which has a large proportion of euro-denominated loans.

When it comes to the short term dynamics of the looming currency crisis in Emerging Europe, one of the Baltic Three, probably Latvia, will be first to concede its peg. When it does others are almost bound to follow. Everything depends on whether the EU Commission and the IMF are proactive or limit themselves to a mere reactive, problem containment role. If the Latvian currency realignment is done in an organised and systematic fashion, then it may, even at this late date, be a containable process. If the situation is left to fester, and the country falls into the grip of a growing political anarchy, then containment will be much more difficult, since panic will more than likely set in.

A similar situation pertains in Bulgaria. Absent a Latvian devaluation, it is not unthinkable that the Lev peg may be maintained for another year or so. But if the authorities do go down this road, then we face the severe risk of a raggedy ending, since the problem is not one of sustaining the peg, but of restoring competitiveness and economic growth, and this is much more difficult without a formal devaluation. And if Bulgaria does go hurtling off that cliff on which it is currently perched, then just be damn careful it doesn't drag half of South Eastern Europe careering after it.