Though the Hungarian Central Statistical Office does not publish the different sectors’ contribution to growth in its first estimate, it has already turned out that the financial, insurance, IT and communication sectors performed especially well. Monthly data and the summer restrictions show, however, that the output of several industries may have been significantly less than one year before. Tourism, transport services, the entertainment industry and—because of the decreasing demand—the construction industry may have been affected as such.
Q3 data show, however, that the recovery from the crisis has started, since the output of several sectors may have reached, or even exceeded, their previous year’s levels. In Q4, restrictions connected to the second wave of the pandemic are again likely to result in a larger fallback on a year-on-year basis.
MNB data show that, by the end of Q3, the negative macroeconomic processes and the rising expenses of the central budget resulted in an increase of the government debt to GDP ratio by 3.5 percentage points to 73.8% on a quarter-on-previous-quarter basis.
In October, the price increase rate continued to moderate, the inflation was 3.0%, which is the target rate of the MNB. The core inflation rate, which describes the underlying processes, was, however,higher than that, 3.8%. The increase of food prices slowed down but remained significant at 6.5%.
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