ING THINK
What February brought, March took away. The last month of the first quarter was a very weak one for Hungarian industry. The outlook is anything but rosy, with capacity utilisation at levels lower level than during the Covid. The negative pattern continued: same month and one positive surprise, plus one negative surprise. After the surprisingly strong March retail sales data and the Q1 GDP flash estimate, the writing was on the wall. It was almost inevitable that industry would suffer a sharp contraction in March. However, industrial production fell by 3% month-on-month, below all expectations. This effectively wiped out February's rebound.
