CEE: President Dan Eyes Consultations To Address Political Crisis Next Week

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Bloomberg News and AP News are reporting that Pakistan has delivered a 15-point US peace plan to Iran in an effort to end the war. AP reports Pakistani officials claiming that the proposal broadly touches on "sanctions relief, civilian nuclear cooperation, a rollback of Iran's nuclear program, monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), missile limits and access for shipping through the Strait of Hormuz."

• Iran continues to deny that any talks are taking place, with its armed forces in a statement claiming that “The level of [the US'] internal conflicts has reached the point where you are negotiating with yourselves.”
• Wires report IAEA chief Rafael Grossi stating that talks between Washington, D.C., and Tehran regarding the latter's nuclear programme and other issues could be held in Islamabad, Pakistan, in the coming days.
• The alleged US proposal runs entirely counter to supposed Iranian demands reported in the WSJ, including a new order that would allow Iran to collect fees on ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz at infinitum, guarantees that the war will not restart and that Israel stops strikes on Hezbollah in Lebanon, lifting all sanctions on Iran, and Tehran allowed to keep its missile programme with no talks on limiting its stockpile.
• If correct, these two sets of proposals are completely incompatible, requiring major concessions from one or both sides in order to reach a ceasefire agreement. 

The Economic Tendency actually ticked up to 99.9 in March (vs a downwardly revised 99.7 prior). It looks like the survey period may have come too early in the month to fully capture the Iran war fallout: “Typically, half of the responses to the Business Survey are received within the first five days after mailing and approximately 80 percent within ten days. ....Already during the first week, more than 60 percent of companies and households had responded to the survey”.

• Manufacturing and construction sentiment rose by 3.0 and 1.9 points respectively in March, while declines were seen in trade (-5.8 points), services (-2.1 points) and consumer confidence (-1.1 points).
• Selling price indices don’t point to an urgent need to deliver a pre-emptive hike (i.e. in May) for now, but Riksbank board members will be closely watching to see if any trends start forming in next month’s survey, which is released before the May 7 decision.
• At an aggregate level, the 3-month expected selling prices diffusion index ticked up slightly to 13 (vs 12 in Feb, 14 in Jan). Across industries, services rose to 17 (vs 14 prior) and retail trade ticked up to -1 (vs -2 prior). Manufacturing bounced back to 10 (vs 5 in Feb, 11 in Jan, 5 in Dec) – unsurprising to see 100% of respondents in the “Coke & refined petroleum products” industry report a rise in expected prices relative to February.
• The expected employment index fell back to 4 (vs 5 in Feb, 6 in Jan and 7 in Dec).