HIGHLIGHTS
WORLD ECONOMIC & MARKET DEVELOPMENTS
GLOBAL MARKETS: A hung parliament appears to be the most likely outcome at yesterday’s general election in Italy with none of the three major political parties or groups securing an outright majority. In FX markets, the EUR/USD marked a session low of 1.2270 earlier today before recovering to levels around 1.2330/35 in European trade favored by the result of Germany’s SPD membership ballot on Sunday which revealed that 66% voted in favour of the Grand Coalition. With the Italian election and Germany’s SPD membership vote out of the way, focus this week is on Thursday’s ECB meeting. On the data front, Friday’s US non-farm payrolls for February take centre stage.
GREECE: Eurogroup President Mario Centeno confirmed the full implementation of all prior actions of the third review of the Greek ESM programme, which will pave the way for the release of the first sub-tranche of EUR 5.7 billion in the second half of March. According to the Hellenic Statistical Authority (ELSTAT), the provisional, seasonally adjusted data for Q4 2017 show an increase in real GDP growth of 1.9%YoY and 0.1%QoQ. The first estimation for the FY2017 real GDP growth stands at 1.4%YoY.
SOUTH EASTERN EUROPE
BULGARIA: The Bulgarian equity market largely shugged off the sell-off in global bourses last week, with the main SOFIX index ending in a marginally negative territory. Elsewhere, Eurobond and local currency government bonds remained broadly unchanged.
SERBIA: The EUR/RSD remained bound within levels of 117.80 – 118.10 last week, as accumulated supply of hard currency was offset by new Central Bank intervention in the FX markets. In other news, Serbia and IMF will reportedly start talks about a new agreement in mid-March.
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