Our Insights

Brazil’s ongoing economic strength is having a particularly favorable impact in its historically under-developed Northeast, which accounts for about 20% of the Brazilian landmass and is home to about 55 million people. President Lula has earmarked his home turf for aggressive investment, while a growing number of tourists are visiting the region's beaches and historic cities. This increased economic activity is showing up in services demand.

Before 2020, China's deficit-to-GDP ratio consistently remained below 3%. As the nation gradually rolls out more stimulus to support growth, that ratio has been increasing, but stands well below levels seen in advanced economies.

The US economy ended 2024 with its strongest performance in almost three years, according to CEIC's latest nowcast. Our machine learning-driven model projects that real gross domestic product expanded at a 4% year-on-year pace in the fourth quarter. That's the strongest performance since the first three months of 2022, when the economy was snapping back from the pandemic; it's also a substantial acceleration from the 2.7% pace seen in 3Q.

Bolivia is in the midst of an economic and political crisis. Declining natural-gas production has crippled the country's ability to earn dollars; import costs have surged as a result, sending inflation soaring. As our first chart shows, consumer price inflation reached a 16-year high of 9.97% year-on-year in November. A similar increase has been observed for the producer price index (PPI) - a recent addition to the CEIC database.

Some of the final economic data from the Biden era has just been released. Inflation plagued the outgoing US president's administration, and price increases remained above-target in December -- but there was enough positive news to buoy markets and price in a Federal Reserve rate cut for July.

We have written previously about ASEAN nations benefiting from their role as "connector economies" as companies seek to avoid US-China trade friction - and whether Donald Trump's second term might place some of this success at risk.

Late last year, China's government provided more guidance about its stimulus plans. On Dec. 9, the CPC Central Committee called for "implementing a more proactive fiscal policy and a moderately loose monetary policy." It also emphasized "strengthening unconventional counter-cyclical adjustments" and explicitly called for "stabilizing the property and stock markets" for the first time. More specific announcements and plans were laid out during the Dec. 11-12 Central Economic Work Conference.

Amid robust economic growth, international air travel to India has finally rebounded to pre-pandemic levels – but some of the flight patterns are different than they were in 2019.

To get a sense of the underlying trends and potentially identify hot hospitality markets, CEIC has recently added granular, city-by-city data on flights to our India premium database.

The Bank of Japan – the developed world's monetary-policy outlier – is widely expected to raise interest rates soon. The central bank is also keen to see more inflation in the economy and a "positive wage-price spiral;" the BoJ most recently said that more companies are seeing the need to keep offering pay increases, given labor shortages and a minimum-wage hike.

Los Angeles is battling severe wildfires. As of Jan. 9, there was no containment in sight. There were at least five deaths and over 100,000 people were forced to evacuate as entire neighborhoods were wiped out.

UK asset prices are being rocked by the global bond selloff in real time, but the underlying British economy is decidedly stronger than the Bank of England expected a year ago.

Brazil's currency was one of the world's worst performers last year as President Lula's budget plans spooked markets. The sharpest declines came in December; the central bank was forced to make its largest ever intervention in the currency markets, using more than USD 30 billion of its international reserves.