K&H: Large companies are trying to avoid the weakening of the forint with these precautions

Large companies expect a further weakening of the forint. This is shown by the K&H large company growth index, which examines the expectations of Hungarian companies with an annual turnover of over two billion forints for the next year.

Company managers are pessimistic about the development of the forint. Based on the data from the fourth quarter, 65 percent of the companies plan to use the HUF weaker than the EUR exchange rate of around HUF 401-433 typical at the time of the survey in the next 6 months. Compared to the expectations of the previous quarter – when 80 percent of the companies believed this – this is definitely progress, but it still projects a gloomy picture for 2023. In addition, exchange rate fluctuations do not only sensitively affect companies that primarily sell abroad, and the export ratio does not significantly affect the situation of companies. This is shown by the fact that in the case of companies producing exclusively for the domestic market, instead of a fifth of the companies, almost half (48%) are adversely affected by exchange rate fluctuations in one year. And 57 percent of companies that sell abroad said that their operations are negatively affected by the weakening of the forint. There is therefore no longer a marked difference between companies selling to the domestic and foreign markets in this respect.