MACROscope

The recent data releases were mixed: 2025 GDP growth has been revised up from 3.6% to 3.8%, most real activity indicators in August 2026 disappointed. (…) At the same time, we saw growing evidence of improving economic activity in Western Europe, boding well for Poland’s export and manufacturing. All things considered, at this stage, we see no reason to change our GDP forecast, showing 3.6% growth in 2026 and 3.0% in 2027. On the other hand, the inflation outlook keeps worsening. (...) Our current baseline scenario assumes the expiry of fuel tax cuts in December and mild increases in electricity and gas prices (of around 5%), which lifts CPI to 5% y/y in January and 4.2% on average in 2027.  (…)

Despite the challenging global environment, the Polish economy managed to re-accelerate to almost 4% y/y in 2Q26. Fixed investment growth has picked up significantly, as expected, with the help of the RRF funds, while private consumption has slowed a bit, but remained solid. The net exports’ contribution to GDP also turned positive, thanks to an export revival. The cyclical upswing observed in Germany, the continuing revival in credit growth, plus signals that a greater part of the RRF-funded investment will be continued after 3Q26, all bode well for economic activity in the coming quarters. If it were not for rising commodity prices and global uncertainty, we would be thinking about raising our GDP forecasts. Yet, our baseline scenario still assumes that 2Q26 has seen a local peak in GDP growth and will be followed by a gradual slowdown (...)