Economic confidence improved in June, mainly on the back of higher optimism in the business sphere, while confidence for consumers slightly declined, but remains close to its historical highs. Today’s data supports our view for a Czech National Bank hike on Wednesday.

Strong wage growth has finally begun to pass through into inflation, while the exchange rate has depreciated on the back of the EM sell-off triggered by political turmoil in Italy and the initial trade skirmishes. The resurgence of inflation has induced hawkish talk from some board members. The common message is that CNB is likely to hike earlier than is indicated by the current forecast. This makes the upcoming June meeting much more interesting than we had previously thought. While we do not believe in a rate hike, we expect lively discussion and a hawkish outcome to the meeting. That said, the rate hike now looks closer than we previously expected. We expect the bank to increase rates as early as its August meeting.    

CBRE, a global leader in commercial real estate services published its latest CBRE REAL DEMAND BAROMETER – a study monitoring demand for warehouses all over Czech Republic over past two years. It shows large differences between regions (kraje) – while in Karlovarský region was the typical (median) request for warehouses exceeding 13 thousand square meters, in Olomoucký region the median demanded warehouse floor space was only 600 square meters.

The deadline for 2017 corporate financial statements will expire within one month, but almost 90 percent of companies have not yet published any. To date, an astounding 65 percent of businesses have failed to insert their accounting documents in the collection of documents pertaining to 2016. Twenty-five percent of firms, i.e. more than 124,000 business entities, have not met their information duty even once in the past six years. The statistics were provided by the consulting company Bisnode, which has the most extensive Czech database of corporate financial and exchange-of-payments.