QUARTERLY ECONOMIC FORECASTS
In addition to their annual forecasts, we regularly ask our country panellists to provide short-term economic forecasts for the next 8 quarters. We undertake special surveys of quarterly forecasts across our publications Consensus Forecasts, Asia Pacific Consensus Forecasts, Latin American Consensus Forecasts and Eastern Europe Consensus Forecasts at regular intervals throughout the year and the resulting tables and analysis are displayed in both the hard-copy and PDF versions of the publications.
Quarter-by-quarter forecasts are updated every March, June, September and December (in Consensus Forecasts and Asia Pacific Consensus Forecasts), May and November (in Eastern Europe Consensus Forecasts) and June and December (in Latin American Consensus Forecasts). Below is a list of countries for which we collect quarterly forecasts. Furthermore, quarter-by-quarter forecasts for the US economy are updated monthly in our publication Consensus Forecasts - USA.
| Consensus Forecasts | Asia Pacific Consensus Forecasts |
Latin American Consensus Forecasts |
Eastern Europe Consensus Forecasts |
|---|---|---|---|
| United States | Australia | Argentina | Czech Republic |
| Japan | China | Brazil | Hungary |
| Germany | Hong Kong | Chile | Poland |
| France | India | Mexico | Russia |
| United Kingdom | Indonesia | Venezuela | Turkey |
| Italy | Japan | Colombia | Bulgaria |
| Canada | Malaysia | Peru | Croatia |
| Euro zone | New Zealand | Estonia | |
| Netherlands | Philippines | Latvia | |
| Norway | Singapore | Lithuania | |
| Spain | South Korea | Romania | |
| Sweden | Taiwan | Slovakia | |
| Switzerland | Thailand | Slovenia | |
| Ukraine |
Download Sample Issues
The table below shows a sample of the data from one of our surveys for Quarter-by-Quarter forecasts in Japan (from our March 2010 Consensus Forecasts survey).
| Germany | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| *% Change over previous year |
2009 | 2010 | 2011 | |||||||||
| Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4 | Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4 | Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4 | |
| GDP*2 | -6.7 | -5.8 | -4.8 | -2.4 | 1.4 | 1.6 | 1.3 | 1.7 | 1.8 | 1.6 | 1.8 | 1.9 |
| % Change Qtr/Qtr | -3.5 | 0.4 | 0.7 | 0.0 | 0.2 | 0.6 | 0.4 | 0.4 | 0.4 | 0.4 | 0.6 | 0.5 |
| Private Consumption*2 | 0.0 | 1.5 | 0.2 | -0.4 | -1.0 | -1.6 | -0.5 | 0.6 | 0.7 | 0.8 | 0.9 | 1.0 |
| % Change Qtr/Qtr | 0.8 | 0.9 | -1.0 | -1.0 | 0.1 | 0.2 | 0.1 | 0.1 | 0.3 | 0.3 | 0.3 | 0.2 |
| Industrial Production* | -19.9 | -19.2 | -15.5 | -9.2 | 4.8 | 6.7 | 4.5 | 4.3 | 4.4 | 3.8 | 3.5 | 3.6 |
| Consumer Prices* | 0.8 | 0.2 | -0.2 | 0.4 | 0.7 | 0.8 | 1.0 | 1.0 | 1.2 | 1.3 | 1.4 | 1.5 |
| 3-month Euro Rate, %1 | 1.5 | 1.1 | 0.7 | 0.7 | 0.7 | 0.9 | 1.1 | 1.4 | 1.7 | 2.0 | 2.1 | 2.3 |
1 %, End-period. 2 Quarterly data (source: Bundesbank) are working-day adjusted.
The Q3 2009 national accounts in the G-7 and Western Europe marked a turning point upon their initial release. They indicated that, with a few exceptions (namely the UK, Spain and Sweden), economies were finally emerging from arguably the worst recession since the Great Depression. However, since then, the Q4 result has shown the pick-up faltering for some countries. German economic growth stagnated in q-o-q terms (see table, bottom of this page) as private consumption declined and industrial production weakened. Italy saw a 0.2% (q-o-q) contraction in GDP. France may have recorded a more pronounced 0.6% acceleration, but the outlook for the Euro zone as a whole has been spooked by the Q4 deceleration evident in the region and by financial worries engulfing Greece, Spain, Ireland and Portugal. Individual countries issue their own debt, but downward pressure on the euro currency suggests that the international money markets are scrutinizing financial stability in the Euro area as a whole. The UK’s huge public deficit (as a % of GDP) and the authorities’ hesitancy in implementing badly-needed austerity measures has also impacted on the quarterly outlook, leaving GDP expectations lower than in the past. By contrast, the US, Japan and Canada recorded robust GDP rebounds (of 1.4%, 1.1% and 1.2% q-o-q, respectively) in Q4. Going forward, though, the growth path is not entirely straightforward: in Japan, for example, GDP is expected to peak in y-o-y terms in the current quarter before moderating. Support from US fiscal stimulus measures is fading but the y-o-y quarterly outlook is noticeably upbeat. In Canada, growth fundamentals look equally resilient but the rebound is expected to trigger price pressures.
Text from Consensus Forecasts, March 8, 2010.