* Hungary's annual output fall slows, rises on the month
* June trade balance shows bigger-than-expected surplus
* Industry output fall may have bottomed out - analysts
(Adds analyst reaction, detail)
BUDAPEST, Aug 6 (Reuters) - Hungary's industrial output
The Central Statistics Office (KSH) said on Thursday the
June drop followed a 22.1 percent decline in May. The figure
compares with analysts' median forecast for a fall of 18.8
percent in a Reuters poll
Industrial output has been falling steeply for months in central Europe's heavily export-reliant economies as the global crisis hit their key markets in western Europe.
But on a monthly basis, Hungary's seasonally and working day-adjusted output rose by 1.9 percent in June, the second monthly increase in a row, after rising by 2.6 percent in May.
Both analysts and the KSH said this was a positive sign, but it was too early to be sure the economy has passed the worst.
"There is an improving trend emerging, the monthly index has increased for the second month running and the annual (output) figure is also improving," said KSH statistician lldiko Miko.
"We would need three consecutive months of increase (on a monthly basis) to be able to say firmly that (this is a turning point), but we already see that there is also some improvement among various segments of industry on an annual basis."
In a separate batch of data, the KSH said Hungary posted a
trade surplus of 549.1 million euros in June
"Industrial production came in slightly better than we expected, whereas the trade surplus was much higher again than what we pencilled in," said Zsolt Kondrat, analyst at MKB Bank.
"There is a good chance that we saw the bottom -- though, of course, one cannot be 100 percent sure," he said.
In the first half of 2009, output was 22.5 percent below that seen in the same period a year earlier.
According to working day-adjusted data, Hungary's industrial output in June was 18.6 percent lower than a year earlier after recording a 22.1 percent fall in May.
"The figure underlines that industrial production likely bottomed in the April-May period. On the other hand we note that the Hungarian improvement was much less powerful than the Czech or the Polish one and from a regional perspective the Hungarian y-o-y figure was the worst in June," said Gyula Toth, analyst at Unicredit. (Reporting by Gergely Szakacs, editing by Mike Peacock)