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Key View: We hold a positive outlook for Croatia's consumer activity over 2024, with support for spending and confidence coming from a strengthening economic backdrop, easing inflation and jobs and earnings growth. Consumer confidence has been improving steadily over the last few months of 2023 and with inflation easing over the same period, this

We retain our mixed short-term outlook for the currencies that we cover in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. All of the MENA currencies we track closely have weakened so far this year, albeit to different degrees (see chart below). 

In Israel, the ongoing war in Gaza and rising tensions with Iran led to a nearly 5.0% depreciation

Key View:

• The economic feasibility of importing hydrogen as opposed to developing domestic hydrogen production hinges on comprehensive cost analyses across various markets. Transporting hydrogen by sea becomes cost-effective for distances exceeding 2,500 kilometers, necessitating advanced infrastructure and strategic decisions regarding

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

Latest Development: Smart Communications (Smart), a subsidiary of incumbent, Philippines-based operator PLDT, has initiated a campaign to boost eSIM adoption among prepaid customers, offering current Smart subscribers an upgrade to eSIM for PHP99 (USD1.75) while retaining their number, and providing non-Smart users the option to switch to Smart

Latest Development: Viettel and Singtel are partnering to deploy the first subsea cable to directly connect Vietnam and Singapore. The new cable would enhance Vietnam’s international bandwidth capacity, which will be key in achieving its goal of becoming an alternative data centre hub within the east Asian region. The project also aligns with the

Key View

• We anticipate a mixed performance for the major Sub-Saharan African currencies in 2024, though the majority will perform better than they did in 2023.
• Both the Ghanaian cedi and Nigerian naira will pare back some losses over the coming quarters, while the Kenyan shilling and Zambian kwacha will also perform fairly well in 2024 having

Key View: Over the medium to long term, we expect more government support and increased regional EV production to support passenger EV sales in Kazakhstan. However, the country's aged power grid and limited generation capacity will prove to be a tough challenge to overcome for most potential EV buyers. This could eventually shift the demand from

Key View

• If our Country Risk team’s most likely scenario of an ANC coalition with smaller parties were to materialise, this would result in policy continuity in the agriculture sector, albeit potentially at a slower pace. The most relevant policies for the agricultural sector relate to loadshedding, port efficiency and land redistribution.
• If