Our Insights

Christmas saw a weaker seasonal spending impulse across advanced economies. While households continued to spend through the year, the traditional end-of-year uplift narrowed materially, particularly for discretionary items such as electronics, clothing and sporting goods.

Indonesia's rupiah has been approaching all-time lows, driven by persistent fiscal concerns. It's worth observing how a long-time relationship is breaking down.

CEIC recently added thematic datasets on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China's signature international investment strategy.

Australian inflation is proving to be both sticky and widespread – prompting a relatively swift reversal of last year's easing stance by the central bank.

Silver has become a major story. Parallels can be drawn with gold's rise to records, but silver has even more industrial uses than its precious-metal counterpart – especially applications relevant to the green-energy transition.

The Thai baht was one of Asia's best-performing currencies in 2025, appreciating almost 10% against the dollar despite disappointing tourist numbers, political instability and US tariffs.

US President Donald Trump’s seizure of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has driven renewed attention to the two nations’ historically intertwined energy industries.

To wrap up 2025, we have compiled CEIC users' most-read and most-downloaded data stories and visualizations of the past 12 months.

The news flow was dominated by Donald Trump's tariffs; our users were particularly interested in their implications for China's trading relationships.

China's population has been shrinking, but the demographic change is not uniform. Like Japan, workers are moving to employment hotspots.

As a year of global trade realignment winds down, we're examining one of the side effects of Chinese overcapacity. The nation is effect exporting disinflation to other markets – especially the #ASEAN economies, with their "connector" role in global trade.

Purchasing managers' index (PMI) surveys ask executives whether they believe business is improving. But which PMI is painting a more accurate picture of the economy?