Hungary Unemployment October 2007

Well, first off, I'm sorry I've been away for a bit. I may have been gone, but Hungary has not been forgotten, and I will now start bringing my posting up to date with a series of posts about the latest news. The first of these is the data release yesterday from the KSH with the August October unemployment data.


But before I do that, and just to get us in the swing of things, here is an extract from a useful little article I noticed in Portfolio Hungary today. It is about Esztergom, and how more than 42% of the 6,300 employees at the Hungarian plant of Japanese automaker Suzuki located in Esztergom are in fact Slovakian citizens, which indirectly makes the Esztergom factory the third-largest Slovakian car maker, at least according to Hisashi Takeuchi, Deputy CEO of Suzuki Hungary speaking to the Slovakian daily Pravda. This sort of emphasises the extent to which the labour market in this part of the world is often a regional rather than a national one.


Well coming back to that employment data from KSH, Hungary's rate of unemployment ticked up to 7.3% year on year in the August-October period from 7.2% in the third quarter. According to KSH the number of unemployed was 310,800 and the number of employed 3.940m during the August-October period. The latter figure compares with 3.947 m in Q3 and 3.956 m in the same period of 2006. The number of unemployed rose by 3,900 from the previous 3-m period and was down by 6,500 from the reading in the same period of 2006.

Let's take a look at some of the recent data by quarters. Firstly the unemployed (taking the 15 to 64 age group):



As we can see, despite the low growth rate in Hungary unemployment has dropped back somewhat from its peak. And now for the movements in the employed population, where again we will notice that while the numbers of those officially employed dropped back somewhat in the first quarter, this situation has now been recovered to some extent.





The labour market activity of the population aged 15-74 was 55.1% in Aug-Oct, unchanged from the previous three-month period and down by 0.2ppt from the same period last year. The employment rate of the population aged 15-64 was 57.6% in the period examined, down 0.1ppt from both July-Sept this year and Aug-Oct 2006.

The jobless rate for the 15-24 year old, representing 18.8% of all unemployed, was 18.2%, down 2 percentage points from the same period last year. The KSH said 45.6% of all unemployed have been seeking jobs for a year or more (vs. 47.4% in the previous 3 months).

The average duration of joblessness came to 16.5 months, down from 17.1 months in the previous 3-m period

Hungary Investment in Q3 2007

Well, one of the mysteries about Q3 GDP is now out of the way, since KSH reported today that Hungary's investment volume dropped by 2.5% year on year in the third quarter of 2007. The indicator was positive only once in the past 18 months, which indicates that a marked rebound is still far away.

Of the individual sections of the national economy government areas continue to perform badly. The Central Statistics Office (KSH) detected a decline in healthcare investments (0.5% in Q3, 7.5% in Q1-Q3), public administration (8% in Q3, 32.8% in Q1-Q3) and education (31.9% in Q3, 15.6% in Q1-Q3). Diminished state orders are suspected of being behind smaller investments in transport and the construction industry, as well. Of course, while those specifically worried about the size of the fiscal deficit might see nothing especially preoccupying about a decline in investment in the health sector, we do need to bear in mind that Hungary is now ageing rapidly, and a good and modern public hospital infrastructure is going to be very necessary on a larger scale than now just a few short years ahead of us.

This is also worthy of note:

The investments of manufacturing (giving the greatest weight) rose by 19.6%, first of all owing to the growth in manufacture of rubber products, that of transport equipment, as well as that of radio, television and communication equipment and apparatus. The investments of hotels and restaurants increased by 18.1,, primarily due to the reconstruction, extension of hotels. In the section of real estate, renting and business activities an increase of 0.7% was observed as well. This section covers the dwelling construction, too.

Presumeably the significance of the investment component in rubber products is associated with the construction and installation of the 500 million euro factory being built for South Korea's largest tyre maker Hankook Tire in Dunaujvaros, 68 kilometres south of Budapest.

Translation Risk in the Baltics and other matters on Eastern Europe

by Claus Vistesen

cross-posted from Alpha Sources

Work is piling on my desk at the moment and I fear that events might even overtake my efforts to keep up with them but here is to trying. Basically and if this was not clear back in the beginning of September it should now be readily clear everybody that Baltic and CEE economies now need serious watching and attention. As my regular readers will know I have been slowly and steadily chipping away together with my colleague Edward Hugh. My own catalogue of posts on the subject can be found here and you might also want to check the following three blogs; Baltic Economy Watch, Eastern Europe Economy Watch and Latvia Economy Watch. Also, the group blog Global.Economy.Matters has been the venue lately of some very interesting posts on the issue at hand. In fact, Edward's recent entry over at GEM offers an excellent introdution to the issues in Eastern Europe as they have been dealt with and indeed described regularly in the past months here at this blog. As such and in order not to repeat myself, I reproduce a key quote by Edward below which sums up the current situation quite well and also allows me to get down to business in this post ...

Basically the principal outstanding issues confronting the EU10 countries are threefold:

1/. Labour capacity constraints (which are normally a by product of long-term low fertility and large scale recent migration flows) are producing significant wage inflation and strong overheating.

2/. A structural dependence on external financing - which is in part a by-product of the effect of low levels of internal saving, and which is another factor which separates the EU 10 from those like India or China who are benefiting from a typical demographic dividend driven catch up, is leading to large current account deficits, and potentially high levels of financial instability.

3/. A loss of control over domestic monetary policy due to eurozone convergence processes which - with or without the presence of formal pegs - make gradual downward adjustment in currency values as a alternative to strong wage deflation virtually impossible. This issue is compounded by the likely private "balance sheet consequences" of any sustained downward movement in the domestic currency given the widespread use of mortgages which are not denominated in the local currency.

Now the worrying part about all three of these is that they are not simply cyclical in character. As such they are not problems which will "self correct" as a result of a recessionary slowdown, whether this be of the "soft-" or "hard-landing" variety.

And business, as it were, in this post is basically an extension of the analysis I did a couple of weeks ago regarding the balance sheet exposure of (primarily) Lithuanian households towards a potential rattling of the pegs to the Euro carried by a currency board. To put it more directly, this post will deal with aspects of the topic at hand which ties up to point 2 and 3 above.

In order to frame the discussion a bit before we move into the data I want to emphasize that the risk of a rapid currency unwind somewhere in Eastern Europe is most emphatically not some kind of odd suggestion. The risk is very real indeed! You just need to take a brief look at what has happened the past weeks to see how things are now set in motion towards what seems to be an inevitable loosening of the tight strings attached between the Eurozone and the pegging and also floating currencies in Eastern Europe. Exhibit one is found in two recent publications from the World Bank and the IMF in which specifically Eastern Europe is singled out as a cluster of countries where the economic development as epitomized by the three points above have put these economies in a situation where not only the general macroeconomic environment is in risk of taking a serious blow. However, this is also a situation where the process of convergence with the Eurozone countries as well as of course the final carrot of Eurozone membership have become events subject to eternal postponement for the majority of the countries in the region. Now, this raises obvious questions surrounding political reactions and while I can understand the overall political and economic dynamics which are now set in motion I also need to emphasize why these countries should not be handed the stick at this point since this would not help at all. Yet, this is an issue for another post. What I am really getting at here, and this would be exhibit two, is quite simply the fact that people which in this case mean policy makers and opinion makers at the ECB as well as of course investors seem to be positioning themselves for a collapse of the de-facto fixed exchange rate regime which ties together the Eurozone and most of the CEE and Baltic economies. A notable example of this would then be Danske Bank's Lars Christensen who is also shadowing the unfolding events in Eastern Europe and who recently suggested in a note that the ECB might be growing rather un fond of the close ties to the economies in Eastern Europe with respect to the fixed exchange rate relationships.

The increasing and clear signs of overheating in a number of Central and Eastern European countries – especially the Baltic States and South East Europe – are drawing attention not only from the financial markets, but also from international institutions. Recently the IMF has warned of the dangers of overheating in the CEE and the World Bank has on numerous occasions raised the same concerns. Now the ECB is also stepping up the rhetoric. At a conference earlier this week ECB officials expressed their concern about the in-creasing imbalances in the Central and Eastern European economies.

Now, some of my readers with a special interest in ECB affairs will recognize that Christensen is a keen ECB watcher by his mentioning of a recent conference on Eastern Europe which indeed produced some rather spectacular contributions related to the economic situation in Eastern Europe. The most cited speech from this conference is consequently one held by Lorenzo Bini Smaghi who is a member of the executive board about the risks which pertain to the process of convergence in Eastern Europe. Of course, mentions of the currency pegs were not made explicitly but as Christensen also homes in on, Bini Smaghi did note that there is a clear tradeoff between keeping the pegs and continuing the process of convergence. I will devote more time later to discuss this speech as well as another one along the same lines made by another member of the executive board Jürgen Stark but for now and in connection with the immediate topic at hand we need to understand that the scene is now effectively set for an (potential) economic correction triggered by either/or both an unwind of one of the pegs and an 'attack' one of the floaters.

Moving on to the Baltics

It is thus in this immediate light that I am going to present a slew of graphs below on the Baltics which, as noted picks, up on one of my recent posts on Lithuania which deals with the concept of crossover currency balance sheet exposure or as it has been coined in the literature; translation risk. The following definition is from investopedia.com:

The exchange rate risk associated with companies that deal in foreign currencies or list foreign assets on their balance sheets. The greater the proportion of asset, liability and equity classes denominated in a foreign currency, the greater the translation risk.

Now, the first interesting thing which should be noted in the quote above is of course the notion of how 'companies' are emphasised. Now, I don't have a very broad overview of the literature on this topic but on the back of a superficial glance it seems clear to me that most of the words on this subject has been devoted to the description of companies' exchange rate risk of operating in foreign countries under insecure exchange rate systems and obviously subsequently how this risk can be hedged using derivatives or just by calibrating the denomination of the stock of liquid assets held on the balance sheets. In this way, we need to look at another kind of translation risk and one which is especially important in the case of the Baltic countries and in fact also in many other countries in Eastern Europe. Simply put and as an inbuilt and strongly influential factor in connection to the general economic situation these countries have, as mentioned above, seen a very rapid increase in credit/capital inflows in the past years to cover a ballooning negative external balance helped on its way by boom in domestic demand. The point is moreover that the majority of this credit has been extended to households through loans intermediated by foreign financial institutions and thus in foreign currency (mostly Euros). As an overall point the following point as quoted by a recent report by the World Bank (linked above) is important:

External positions in 2Q 07 in most EU8+2 were financed by FDI. In the Baltic countries they were financed by foreign borrowing through the banking sector. In most countries current account deficits remain largely covered by FDI – fully in the Czech Republic and Poland, in 90% in Bulgaria and 2/3 in Slovakia and Romania. Meanwhile in the Baltic countries, which have the largest imbalances, FDI cover 1/3 of CAD in Latvia and Estonia and slightly more (58%) in Lithuania with banking sector foreign borrowing remaining the primary source of financing.

This last part is rather important for the analysis at hand which basically seeks to present comparable charts for the three Baltic countries according to the following overall analytical principles.

• The charts will show three things. Firstly, charts will be presented on the evolution of the external balances in order to show the magnitude of the problem. Secondly, a set of charts will seek to show the overall build up of credit measured as the evolution of the total stock of loans with special focus on the households' contribution. Thirdly and as a direct measure for the potential translation risk associated with an unwind of the fixed exchange rate regimes in the Baltics charts will be presented which compares the denomination of loans with the denomination of deposits in financial institutions. In this way it is important to note that we are not comparing the stock of loans with the stock of deposits according to a criterion of how much the latter can cover the former in absolute terms but, as it were, solely with a focus on cross-currency denomination.
  

• The charts, which will be presented without many words, denotes what you could call a static analysis of the issue of translation risk. The point is that the charts solely show stocks and not flows. It is thus assumed that in the case of households in particular the cash flows used to service the loans are denominated in local currency (i.e. salaries) as well as it is assumed that households have limited acces to intruments used to hedge cash flows at different points in time.
  

Now, and if I have been able to hold on to you until this point why don't take a look at the charts. We will begin with the charts showing the evolution of the external balances before moving on to charts showing the evolution of the stock of loans and finally finishing off with charts comparing the denomination of loans with the denomination of deposits in financial institutions. The charts which cuts across all the Baltic countries have been made with the explicit goal that they are comparable. It has not been a complete success but it works.

Current Account (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania)


Evolution of total stock of loans (Estonia (million EEK), Latvia, and Lithuania)

Stock of loans and deposits by currency denomination (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania)

(Please click on images for better viewing)

As promised I won't say a whole much at this point save of course to point out that the charts above do indicate that a considerable amount of translation risk is present which also conforms with the rather large amount of anecdotal evidence.

Swiss Franc Mortgages in Hungary

The use of non-local-currency denominated loans has become a widespread phenomenon in Eastern Europe in recent years. In Hungary the most common currency for such purrposes is the Swiss Franc and around 80% of all new home loans and half of small business credits and personal loans taken out since early 2006 have been denominated in Swiss francs. A similar pattern of heavy dependence on foreign currency denominated loans is to be found in Croatia, Romania, Poland, Ukraine (US dollar) and the Baltic States, although the mix between francs, euros, the dollar and the yen varies from country to country.

So let's look at the extent of the issue in Hungary, and some of the likely implications. First off, here's a chart showing the evolution of outstanding mortagages with terms over 5 years since the start of 2003. As we can see the outsanding debt is now over 5 time as big as it was then.



Now if we look at the growth of forint denominated mortgages over the same period, we can see that while they initially expanded very rapidly, they peaked around the start of 2005, and since that time they have tended to drift slightly downwards.



Then if we come to look at the growth of non-forint mortgages, we will see that since early 2005 the rate of contraction of such mortgages has increased steadily.



Finally, if we look at the distribution of non-forint mortgages between those in euros, and those in "other" currencies (which may contain some yen, and some USD mortgages, but in the main will be Swiss Franc ones) we can see that those in euro form only a very small part of the total.



It is perhaps also worth pointing out that the fashion for non-forint loans is not restricted solely to mortgages, car loans and other longer duration personal loans also tend to be denominated in Swiss Francs or other currencies. The reason for this is obvious, the rate of interest is cheaper. But this non forint loan predominance has two important consequences.

In the first place the Hungarian central bank does not have sufficient control over monetary policy inside the country, being to some significant extent influenced by monetary policy in Switzerland, a country we may note which is not even inside the European Union. Secondly, the difficulties which would present themselves in the event of any substantial reduction in the value of the forint would be considerable - the is known as the translation problem, and is ably reviewed by Claus in this post here - and as a result the central bank is one more time a prisoner of others in terms of monetary policy, since it cannot take interest rate decisions which might influence excessively the swiss franc-forint crossover rate.





The fashion for borrowing in Swiss francs really took off in Eastern Europe after the Swiss National Bank dropped interest rates to 0.75% in 2003 in order to stave-off a perceived deflation threat, a move which at the same time converted Switzerland into the cheapest source of loan capital in Europe. External lending in Swiss francs reached $643 billion in 2006, according to data from the Bank for International Settlements . The huge scale of the borrowing in fact drove the Swiss franc to a nine-year low against the euro, and has lead to an accelerating slide in its value over the last two years - even though by this point the Swiss National Bank had been busy raising rates (Swiss interest rates have now been increased 7 times since the 2003 trough). The extreme weakness in the Swiss Franc is in fact rather perverse (shades of Japan, of course, here), since currently Switzerland enjoys the highest current account surplus in the developed world (some 17.7% of GDP in 2006). At the same time the Swiss hold more than $500 billion in net foreign assets, making them in these terms the wealthiest nation on earth.

A recent issue of the Bank for International Settlements publication Highlights of International Banking and Financial Market Activity has some revealing comments on the Swiss situation(the data used for the report came from 2006):

Total cross-border claims of BIS reporting banks expanded by $1 trillion in the last quarter of 2006. After more modest growth in mid-2006, a pickup in interbank claims accounted for 54% of this expansion. A surge in credit to nonbank entities contributed $473 billion, pushing the stock of cross-border claims to $26 trillion, 18% higher than in late 2005.

The flow of credit to emerging markets reached new heights through the year 2006. Claims on emerging markets grew by $96 billion in the final quarter of 2006, bringing the volume of new credit throughout the year to $341 billion. This amount exceeded previous peaks ($232 billion in 2005 and $134 billion in 1996), both in nominal value and in terms of growth. The current annual growth rate has risen to 24%, having surpassed for the sixth consecutive quarter the previous peak of 17% recorded in early 1997.

Emerging Europe overtook emerging Asia as the region to which BIS reporting banks extend the greatest share of credit. Since 2002, growth in claims on the region has consistently outpaced that vis-à-vis other regions. With a record quarterly inflow, emerging Europe received over 60% of new credit to emerging markets, bringing its share in the stock of emerging market claims to 34%. Less of the new credit went to the major borrowers (Russia, Turkey, Poland and Hungary) than to a number of smaller markets, notably Romania and Malta, as well as Ukraine, Cyprus, Bulgaria and the Baltic states.


The currency denomination of cross-border claims on emerging Europe tilted further towards the euro. In the stock of claims outstanding, the euro and dollar shares were 44% and 31%, respectively, but the gap in the latest flow data was more pronounced (61% and 5%). While the sterling share has remained close to 1%, the yen has lost ground to the Swiss franc, thus continuing a trend seen over the last six years. Yet there is little evidence in the cross-border data of unusual borrowing in Swiss francs that might correspond to Swiss franc-denominated retail lending in several countries. Borrowing in the Swiss currency remains on average below 4% of cross-border claims, and exceeds 10% only in Croatia and Hungary.


Nearly 20% of reporting banks’ foreign claims were in the form of funds channelled to emerging market borrowers. Claims on residents of emerging Europe continued to account for the largest share of these funds.

So, although the BIS find "little evidence in the cross-border data of unusual borrowing in Swiss francs that might correspond to Swiss franc-denominated retail lending", they do make an exception in the cases of Hungary and Croatia, where they note that lending in Swiss francs to retail clients reaches over 10% (and of course in the Hungarian case well over 10%) of the total retail loans in those countries. Indeed, as I indicate above, swiss franc loans now seem to account for over 80% of all newly generated housing related credit in Hungary. The reason why Hungary has gone for Swiss franc rather than euro denominated loans undoubtedly has to do with the role of the Austrian banking sector in Hungary, as is explained in my fuller posting on this topic linked to below.

Additional References

For fuller examination of just why it is that Switzerland (or for that matter Japan) have such low interest rates, see my "Swiss Franc Loans and Ageing" post.

For an examination of the potential implications of the presence of all these foreign currency loans across the EU10 in the event of any generalised emerging markets crisis see Claus Vistesen "Translation Risk in the Baltics and Other Matters".

Hungary Producer Prices September 2007

September saw another significant increase in domestic producer prices in Hungary, this time in the shape of a 0.4% hike in industrial producer prices in Hungary, accompanied by an even sharper 0.7% price hike in the processing industry, reproducing a tendency which first started to be noted last month. The figures give some support to assessments made by those analysts who have been warning about the danger of growing inflationary pressure in the domestic economy.

As we can see from the chart the danger exists that the disinflationary process may temporarily have ground to a halt. In the food industry, which accounts for a significant part of domestic sales, the sharp price hikes that started in August continued throughout September at a monthly rate of 1.7%, which was higher than the rate registered in any other processing industry sector in September.

Together with the September CPI statistics the PPI news seems to confirm the view that there is little to prevent the continuing producer price shock from making a direct and immediate impact on retail prices. This may indicate that inflationary expectations are rising rather than falling at this juncture.

On the other hand, the export PPI continues to show a strong deflationary tendency, which is, of course, very good news for Hungarian exports.