Eastern Europe gains strength

published 5 May 2017

Economic activity in the eurozone has reached six-year highs, according to recent data, so it's no wonder that the emerging region most exposed to the single currency area, eastern Europe, is also beginning to motor.

The average reading of economic sentiment indicators compiled by the European Commission is close to a nine-year high, notes Capital Economics. That translates to regional growth of around 4% in the first quarter of 2017 quite a jump from 3% in the previous three months.

Poland has been doing especially well, with output likely to have expanded by 4.5% in the first quarter, . Longer term, there should be plenty more growth to come for the region as it continues to converge with western Europe. In Estonia and the Czech Republic GDP per capita is still around $33,000 and $30,000 respectively, compared to $42,000 in the UK.

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The good news, according to Chris Colunga of the BlackRock Emerging Europe trust, is that the rebound has yet to be priced in. Emerging Europe is on a p/e of below nine, compared with the emerging market average of 12.5, he says.

Andrew is the editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He grew up in Vienna and studied at the University of St Andrews, where he gained a first-class MA in geography & international relations.

After graduating he began to contribute to the foreign page of The Week and soon afterwards joined MoneyWeek at its inception in October 2000. He helped Merryn Somerset Webb establish it as Britain’s best-selling financial magazine, contributing to every section of the publication and specialising in macroeconomics and stockmarkets, before going part-time.

His freelance projects have included a 2009 relaunch of The Pharma Letter, where he covered corporate news and political developments in the German pharmaceuticals market for two years, and a multiyear stint as deputy editor of the Barclays account at Redwood, a marketing agency.

Andrew has been editing MoneyWeek since 2018, and continues to specialise in investment and news in German-speaking countries owing to his fluent command of the language.