Articles

Key View

• The National Bank of Romania (NBR) maintains a hawkish policy stance compared to its peers in Central and Eastern Europe, and we retain our core expectation for it to lower its deposit rate 7.00% to 6.25% by year-end.
• We forecast that Romania’s headline inflation rate will decline gradually over the coming months, reaching an end-2024 rate

Please Note: BMI is enhancing its risk analysis with a new scoring system following its acquisition of GeoQuant, a market-leading provider of political risk data. From March 27 2024, risk scores are inverted: zero now represents the lowest risk and 100 represents the highest risk. This allows for clearer, industry-standard assessments. For further

Key View

• We expect the recovery of the Serbian economy to continue in 2024 as consumer spending rebounds. We forecast GDP to expand by 3.0% after a 2.5% expansion in 2023.   
• Declining inflation alongside a still tight labour market will likely support consumer purchasing power in 2024, allowing for a recovery of private consumption growth from 0.8%

Key View

• Israel has taken over the Rafah Crossing despite Hamas accepting a ceasefire agreement. The operation will last several months and will likely worsen humanitarian conditions in Gaza and increase the civilian death toll. 
• We think that Israel’s operations in Rafah will intensify the international backlash against Israel, even from its closest

Key View

• We expect rising electronics exports, growing inbound tourism and remittances to support the current account balance in 2024.
• However, we also expect an uptick in coal imports due to heatwaves, a poorer trade balance specifically in steel due to heightened competition from China in Vietnam's steel market.
• Overall, we think the picture is

Key View

• We think that the Bank of Thailand will now cut rates as soon as its next meeting in June. That said, we are still expecting only two rounds of cuts this year. 
• Despite our view that interest rate cuts will do little to address the current challenges the economy is facing, sustained dissent among committee members is a reliable indicator of

Key View

• While Malawi's local vehicle market will remain subdued in 2024, as the continued devaluation of the currency drives up the cost of importing vehicles, vehicle first registrations in 2024 will find support from the increased vehicle imports of 2023.
• The main drivers behind the potential for Malawi's vehicle market over the medium term

Key View

• Malaysia's deepwater explorations are expected to accelerate as more investments are directed towards underexplored areas.
• International oil companies (IOCs) will continue to be crucial for Malaysia's deepwater success.
• Malaysia could experience a significant increase in exploration expenditures in 2024 as IOCs prepare

Latest Development: On May 2, the Planning and Statistics Authority (PSA) published preliminary GDP figures showing Qatar’s real GDP growth at 1.2% y-o-y in Q3 2023. The hydrocarbon sector expanded by 2.3% y-o-y, while the non-oil economy grew by 0.6% y-o-y compared to the same quarter in 2022.

Forecast Implications: Although growth in the

Key View: Over 2024, we expect an increase in the total tourist arrivals to Greece, with growth building on a full recovery to pre-Covid (2019) levels in 2023. Over the medium term (2024-2028), we forecast arrivals to continue expanding in line with increased arrivals from traditional and emerging major source markets for arrivals. Tourism