Macroeconomic reports

In the first half of 2019, Tajikistan's economy grew by 7.5% amid a sharp acceleration in inflation, primarily food one. The key driver of growth remains public investment aimed at the implementation of major projects, in particular, the construction of the Rogun HPP. The decline in total investment led to a slowdown in investment and intermediate imports, which resulted in a slight reduction in the foreign trade deficit.

Armenia's economic growth slowed to 6.8% in the first half of 2019 as a result of a reduction in investment activity in the mining sector and a slowdown in the state capital expenditures. The driver of economic growth was consumer demand side, supported by an increase in consumer lending, as well as the growth of domestic income and income coming from abroad in the form of remittances. Annual inflation reached the lower limit of 2.5% of the target bound of the Central Bank of Armenia, but core inflation remained low under the influence of weak growth in the money supply. Maintaining high rates of economic growth and public control on expenditure growth led to a surplus execution of the state budget. Despite a slowdown in external demand and supply constraints on some major export items, favorable terms of trade have helped to reduce the current account deficit. For 2019, the EFSD forecast of economic growth was revised upwards from 4.4% to 5.4% due to changes in the dynamics of foreign trade, in particular, a decrease in the volume of investment imports.

The structural constraints of the Belarusian economy and the decline in external demand, coupled with the incident on the Druzhba oil pipeline, which negatively affected the performance of a number of industries, led to a slowdown in Belarus' GDP growth to 0.9% in the first half of 2019. At the same time, the delayed effects of pro-inflationary factors, formed in 2018, affected the acceleration of annual inflation to 5.7%, which is higher than the target set by the National Bank at the level of 5% for the year. At the same time, monetary policy has had a restraining effect on price growth. The loss of revenues from trade in oil and petroleum products affected both the reduction of budget revenues and the deterioration of foreign trade indicators. Nevertheless, the augmented government budget balance remained positive against the background of conservative spending policies, and the current account deficit remained at the level of the first half of 2018 due to the increased surplus in trade in services. The updated forecast of the EFSD shows a slowdown in Belarus' economic growth from 2.4% to 1.7% at the end of 2019, which reflects a stronger- than- expected slowdown in the growth of major trading partners and a more significant decline in world prices.