After years of underinvestment in its power grid, South Africa is experiencing daily load shedding, the intensity of which has only increased in recent months. Economic activity is severely impacted. The restoration of electricity production capacities will be slow, which will have a significant impact on growth and the trade balance in 2023. Supply-side constraints will keep inflation high, while the unemployment rate is a concern. Under these conditions, the ruling party, the ANC, will be pushed to revise its budgetary consolidation trajectory downwards. Furthermore, the partial transfer of the debt of electricity company Eskom to the government will contribute to a sharp increase in public debt.
Evidence of falling housing prices remains patchy. After a sustained rise throughout 2021, residential housing prices in the main European countries continued to resist the tightening of credit conditions in the fourth quarter 2022, with the notable exception of Sweden and Germany. A generalisation of real estate price declines in 2023 is a significant possibility.
According to the latest indicators, the US labour market continues to progressively slow down. The pace of both job creation and wage growth remains high. The unemployment rate has fallen slightly, whilst the participation rate has increased. Hiring difficulties remain acute, according to the falling but still very high ratio of unfilled job vacancy per unemployed person. The picture painted by confidence surveys is mixed. The gradual nature of the labour market’s slowdown allows the Fed to continue its monetary policy tightening. A further – and probably final – 25bp increase in Fed Funds rates is expected in May.
GDP growth, inflation, interest rates and change
The monetary tightening by the Federal Reserve and the ECB has led to a decline of the business climate in the manufacturing sector. The services sector has been resilient thus far. This may reflect the diversity of the subsectors within services, with some being highly correlated with the manufacturing sector and others far less so. Services also tend to be less sensitive to interest rates, which implies a more limited impact of central bank rate hikes. This resilience also influences the evolution of inflation. Services have a high labour intensity and wage developments are a key driver of services inflation, far more than in manufacturing. This complicates the task of central banks in bringing inflation under control.
The recent difficulties faced by some US regional banks have reignited the debate about a potential conflict between pursuing price stability and financial stability at the same time
According to the Atlanta Fed GDPNow Estimate, US growth will remain high in Q1 2023 (annualised quarterly growth rate of 3.2%). News on the labour market front also remains good. Everything would be fine if inflation were not also continuing at a sustained pace, resulting in continuation of the Fed’s rate hikes, the effects of which recently challenged certain banking models. Prior to this, we were expecting the tightening of credit access conditions to lead the economy into recession. Further tightening would weigh even more heavily on activity and ultimately, on inflation. Does this mean to the extent that the Fed will reach its terminal rate faster? This is possible, but the outlook remains very uncertain. Our forecasts for 7 March point to Fed Funds reaching 5
China’s economic activity started to rebound in late January, driven primarily by services and household consumption. Meanwhile, the crisis in the property and construction sectors has subsided. In the manufacturing sector, the growth recovery has remained moderate, hindered by the fall in automobile production and weakening exports. Economic momentum will remain strong in the short term. However, a number of significant downside risks to growth persist.
With alarming inflation across the country, the new governor of the Bank of Japan (BoJ), Kazuo Ueda, will have a baptism of fire when he takes up his role. Even though price increases are expected to slow down during Q1 2023 thanks to government energy subsidies, core inflation has continued to rise this winter. Price dynamics are posing a major challenge and may force the BoJ into making changes to its interest rate control policy, despite bond yields falling off as a result of the recent US bank failures. The Japanese economy stagnated in Q4 2022, buoyed by foreign trade and private consumption during Q4 2022, but slowed by public and private investment. We expect growth to continue in 2023 (1.2%) at a similar pace to 2022 (1.1%), before a more sluggish growth takes hold in 2024 (0.8%)
Even though euro area inflation likely peaked last October, the disinflation process is expected to be slow, with inflation not expected to fall back to its 2% target level before 2025. The most recent macroeconomic projections from the European Central Bank (ECB) all point to this direction of travel. The second wave of inflation is significant, with the HICP excluding energy climbing by 7.9% y/y in March, while further food-price increases are expected for the months ahead. Despite this, economic activity within the Monetary Union is holding up better than expected against the double shock of inflation and interest rate hikes. While a recession is currently being ruled out for 2023, growth is still incredibly fragile
Germany is the Western European country where GDP growth was the most negative in Q4 2022 (-0.4% q/q). Furthermore, economic indicators, although improving, remained relatively downgraded weak at the beginning of 2023. A further contraction in GDP in Q1 2023 therefore remains our central scenario. However, more favourable signals (peak inflation exceededslight disinflation, reopening of China, reduced supply shortages in the automotive sector) could lead to a return to growth from Q2. This has already been reflected in household confidence, although the weakness of growth in the euro area, since Q4 2022, could limit the intensity of this recovery.
The energy crisis was less severe than initially feared during the autumn and winter. This prevented negative growth during Q4 2022 (+0.1% q/q) and provided grounds for relative optimism, as reflected in the rise in the INSEE business climate indicator from December to February. While the growth carry-over naturally led us to revise our growth forecast for 2023 upwards, growth is still low and reflects the sustained downturn in demand, particularly in household investment. In addition, while inflation is expected to decrease, it is still being buoyed by food prices, which, in turn, is adversely affecting household consumption.
In Q4 2022, GDP slightly declined on a quarterly basis. Domestic demand and the change in inventories subtracted 0.4 p.p. and 1.1 p.p., respectively from the overall growth, while net exports added almost 1.5 p.p. The Q4 GDP contraction mainly reflected the moderate weakening of the services sectors that had experienced a strong rebound in the previous six quarters. Despite its Q4 decline, services value added is 1.7% higher than in Q4 2019, explaining about half of the total recovery of the Italian economy. Overall, the 2023 outlook remains positive, with GDP expected to grow close to 1.0%.
The Spanish economy held up better than expected in 2022 (+5.5%), but a slowdown in activity is expected this year. Industrial production is declining, hindered by the energy sector and intermediate goods and services. Investment and private consumption fell significantly in Q4 2022 and will remain under pressure in 2023 from rising interest rates and high inflation. Excluding energy, the rise in consumer prices accelerated further to 8.2% in February. The reduction in the public deficit – greater than expected in 2022 – is making it easier to continue budgetary support in 2023
Belgian GDP remains on a positive growth trajectory, even as monetary-induced clouds are forming. The historically large wage-indexation that benefitted a significant number of workers at the start of the year should spur on consumption in the short run. With disappointing corporate and household-real estate investments, and international trade decreasing, government spending is the only other positive contributor to growth, making for unsustainable public finances.
The UK economy avoided recession in H2 2022 thanks to corporate investment and public and private consumption. Inflation figures in February surprised on the upside and remained at an exceptionally high level, which should continue to erode household purchasing power. As a result, the recession may only have been postponed. We now expect GDP to contract by -0.3% QoQ in Q1, then by -0.2% in Q2 2023. Faced with this situation, the Bank of England (BoE) is not expected to raise its key rate beyond a final hike of 25 basis points in March. This, plus accelerating disinflation, would allow a rebound in growth from H2 onwards.
In the longer run, the business climate in industry and services are highly correlated but in the short run large divergences can at times be observed. This has been the case in recent months following a strong rebound in services and a far weaker improvement in industry. Services cover a variety of activities and those that are very correlated with manufacturing have seen a weaker performance as of late. Tourism and recreation have low correlation with manufacturing and have been very dynamic. This may reflect there is still post-Covid-19-related pent-up demand and/or a combination of a pick-up in wage growth and a still strong labour market. Whether this can last will to a large degree depend on how the overall economic environment influences the labour market outlook.
The upturn in the INSEE business climate indicator in February was not confirmed in March although, despite the downturn noted, this indicator remains above levels seen between September 2022 and January 2023. Although the March survey highlights forthcoming disinflation, this drop remains relative and is not general. At the same time, we are seeing continued pressure from household demand, with the confirmed weakness of retail trade (excluding automotive) and the renewed deterioration of the business climate in construction.
With a peak in inflation last autumn and fears of energy shortages during the winter, the IFO’s index hit an historic low in October 2022. This index has recovered to normal levels, as winter turned out better than had been feared. However, following the poor performance of Q4, all signs point to this being just a “technical” rebound in activity.
Recent data in the US show a resilient economy despite the significant and fast tightening of monetary policy. In the Eurozone, the services sector is a source of resilience. Frustratingly for central banks, inflation has also been resilient. This would call for a strong message of further monetary tightening, were it not that uncertainty about the outlook is high. More than ever, central banks need a robust strategy which takes into account a range of possible outcomes. As a consequence, the message from the FOMC has taken a dovish twist. Reading between the lines, the ECB’s message is also softening, as witnessed by the strong emphasis on data-dependency and the role of financial conditions.
In February, economic news on the growth front continued to be quite positive in the major OECD economies, while developments on the inflation side were negative.
Give or take a few details, the economic overview for February is a carbon copy of the economic overview for January: rather positive in terms of survey data, negative in terms of inflation.
Industrial activity saw a clear upturn in January (+3.5% m/m), after a significant downturn in December (-2.4% m/m). For example, intermediate goods and construction, which fell sharply in December, returned to a level of production close to that of November.
