Hungary’s bond yields rose the most in more than a week before an auction today as the European Commission threatened to withhold subsidies and a dispute held up talks on a bailout.
Hungary is offering 42 billion forint (US$193 million) in debt maturing in 2015, 2017 and 2028 at today’s biweekly sale, according to data from the Debt Management Agency on Bloomberg.
The yield on existing five-year notes climbed 9 basis points, or 0.09 percentage points, to 8.631 percent by 11:28am in Budapest yesterday, from as low as 8.31 percent on Feb. 8.
The commission will propose suspending funds used to finance Hungarian development projects after the country failed to curb its deficit in a sustainable way, a European official said on Tuesday on condition of anonymity because the discussions were private.
The move increased the pressure on Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has been trying to revive talks with the EU and the IMF on a bailout since the beginning of the year.
“Bond investors aren’t expecting bailout talks to begin before late March at the earliest,” Zsolt Kondrat, head of research at Bayerische Landesbank’s MKB Bank unit in Budapest, said in a telephone interview on Tuesday.
“There is only a finite amount of time before the government must show something, at least that talks can start,” Kondrat said.
The potential loss of EU subsidies is “an additional threat,” Kondrat said.
Hungary has responded to all of the EU’s concerns about disputed legislation, including monetary-policy independence, that has delayed international aid, Hungarian Foreign Minister Janos Martonyi told reporters in Prague on Tuesday. He “hopes” talks can begin by the end of next month.
The European Commission has no timeline or deadline to assess Hungary’s response to the so-called infringement procedures on the disputed legislation, commission spokesman Olivier Bailly told reporters in Brussels.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
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