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Key View: As awareness of ingredient safety and environmental impact grows, North American consumers are increasingly demanding clean beauty products. Social media plays a crucial role in this shift, with influencers educating and advocating for transparency and higher quality, toxin-free ingredients. Amidst concerns over greenwashing

Latest Development: MTN Rwanda is partnering with the government to boost the availability of affordable 4G smartphones, which would be priced at USD16. The move is informed by the ConnectRwanda 2.0 initiative, which aims to foster digital inclusion. Forecasted growth in mobile data subscribers, emphasised by expected robust growth in 4G

Key View

• We continue to forecast that the US budget deficit will narrow from 6.3% of GDP to 5.8% in FY24 (October-September), with incoming data largely in keeping with this view.
• Relative to a second Trump presidency (average FY25-28: 6.5% of GDP, end of period: 6.2%), we expect that a Biden victory would result in a somewhat narrower

Key View

• We forecast end-2024 banking asset growth of 12.8% y-o-y in Ukraine, down from 22.1% at end-2023.
• Asset growth will slow as the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) continues to cut its key policy rate, but client loans and domestic government debt securities will become more significant drivers of growth.
• Renewed loan growth will

Key View

• After narrowing sharply to an estimated 8.7% of GDP in 2023, we expect that Fiji's current account deficit will widen to 10.9% in 2024.
• This reflects our outlook for weaker growth in tourism earnings and remittance inflows following a strong post-pandemic rebound, though we forecast that the services and secondary transfers

Key View 

• We anticipate that the Houthis will continue to carry out attacks targeting Israeli, US and UK shipping in the Red Sea for as long as Israel’s military operation in Gaza continues, but they will increasingly need to rely on less sophisticated weaponry, with limited chance of causing serious damage.  
• The Houthis’ support for the

Key View

• We forecast real GDP growth of 3.9% in Kiribati in 2024, up from an estimated 3.4% in 2023 and above the long-term pre pandemic average of 2.2%. However, downside risks remain.
• We expect private consumption to be the primary driver of growth in 2024 amid substantial public sector wage increases and easing inflationary pressures.

Key View

• Major central banks were broadly in sync as they undertook quantitative easing (QE); however, the BoE is set to undertake a divergent path in reducing the size of its balance sheet, conducting quantitative tightening (QT) to a greater extent than its peers, including more outright bonds sales.
• We expect that QT from the BoE will

Key View

• The Iranian rial will depreciate more rapidly in 2024 compared to 2023 on the parallel market, influenced by heightened political risks from negative investor sentiment in Q1 2024 and uncertainties surrounding the upcoming US presidential election in November.
• Conversely, the Nima exchange rate's depreciation will ease relative to

The Latest: On March 19 2024, AstraZeneca announced it has agreed to acquire Fusion Pharmaceuticals, a company focused on the development of radioconjugates for cancer, in a deal worth up to USD2.4bn. Radioconjugates are an emerging class of targeted cancer treatment that work by combining antibodies with small molecules or peptides that are