NBH says committed to achieving the inflation target in a sustainable manner

• Maintaining the stability of financial markets, especially that of FX, and it supports the anchoring of inflation expectations and thus contributes to achieving price stability.
• High energy prices, rising yields and uncertainty surrounding the global economic and financial market outlook warrant a careful approach to monetary policy.
• Sees 2026 average inflation at 1.8% and 2027 at 3.1%, with inflation expected to decline to the 2.5% target by the end of the monetary policy horizon.
• Inflation is expected to increase through the remainder of 2026 and in 2027, primarily driven by higher fuel prices and changes to tobacco excise duties.
• Hungary's economic risk assessment will primarily be influenced by the fiscal path, expectations regarding euro adoption and the external market environment.

Hungarian rate guidance of this kind has historically been read through the FX channel rather than the rate path itself: the NBH has repeatedly framed forint stability as a precondition for disinflation, and past episodes show the bank defending the currency with a higher-for-longer stance even when domestic activity argued for easing. The telling detail here is the composition of the projected inflation bump, fuel costs and tobacco excise changes, which is administered and tax-driven rather than demand-led; central banks in this position have tended to look through such shocks verbally while using them to justify caution, since second-round effects on expectations are the stated concern. The explicit linking of the risk assessment to the fiscal path and euro adoption expectations is a familiar NBH construction: fiscal slippage has on previous occasions been the trigger for renewed currency pressure and forced the bank back to a restrictive stance, making the government's budget trajectory the operative variable rather than any single inflation print. A forecast showing inflation returning to target only at the end of the policy horizon is the standard template for keeping optionality on hold decisions without committing to a direction. The follow-ons are the next rate meeting language on the forint, the fiscal outturns, and whether other MPC members echo the careful-approach framing. As commentary, the signal is that the easing bias, where it exists, remains conditional on currency calm.