Global forecasts for 2025 remain broadly favorable — but weaker optimism regarding the growth outlook of Poland’s key trading partners, especially in the eurozone, implies that Poland will increasingly need to rely on its own domestic economic potential.
Early autumn is traditionally the time when major international institutions update their macroeconomic projections. In September, OECD experts raised their estimate for global GDP growth in 2025 by 0.3 pp, to 3.2% (Chart 1). The forecast for next year was left unchanged at 2.9%. The improvement in this year’s outlook largely reflects expectations of faster growth in the eurozone (Chart 2). Back in June, the OECD forecast euro area GDP growth at 1.0% for 2025 — it now expects 1.2%. However, the organization anticipates that the eurozone economy will grow slightly more slowly in 2026, at 1.0%, versus 1.2% previously expected in June.
A similar adjustment trend is visible in the IMF’s October forecast update. The institution now expects global real GDP growth to reach 3.2% in 2025 and 3.1% in 2026, whereas in its July World Economic Outlook the projection stood at 3.0% and 3.1%. This suggests a rising probability that 2025 could be a stronger year for global and European growth than 2026.
Germany’s outlook improving — a key factor for Poland
For Poland, it is encouraging that the baseline scenario for Germany — the EU’s largest economy and Poland’s most important trading partner — implies a noticeable acceleration next year. According to the OECD, German GDP growth is expected to reach 1.1% in 2025, up from 0.3% in 2024 (the June forecast was 1.2% and 0.2%, respectively). The IMF projects German GDP growth at 0.9% in 2026, following just 0.2% this year (previously 0.9% and 0.1%).
However, recent data has shown a stronger-than-expected slowdown in German industry. The German statistical office partly attributes this to the overlap of annual summer production shutdowns and process reorganisations. But the broader challenge facing Europe’s largest economies is the increasingly rapid influx of Chinese imports into the EU.
Poland must increasingly rely on domestic demand
Given the growing uncertainty about the strength of the recovery among its trading partners in the coming quarters, Poland must depend more heavily on its own domestic economic momentum to maintain solid GDP growth. This is already becoming visible in the structure of growth.
GUS data for 2024–2025 confirms that household consumption rebounded strongly in Q2 2025, and the coming months also look promising for this category. Although wage growth has slowed slightly in recent months, low inflation (below 3%) is supporting real purchasing power. Consumer sentiment indicators in Poland have been hovering near their highest levels since the pandemic (Chart 3). In October, both the current and leading consumer confidence indices were around 5 points higher than a year earlier, and since July, households have systematically become more optimistic in assessing their ability to make major purchases.
Economic indicators surprise to the upside
Last month also brought a series of strong upside surprises in short-term economic indicators. The median forecast of economists expected industrial output to grow by 4.6% year-on-year in September — yet GUS reported a 7.4% increase (Chart 4), supported by a sharp acceleration in both investment and durable consumer goods production.
Construction output also performed better than expected: instead of falling by 2.3% y/y (as predicted by economists), it rose by 0.2% y/y. While retail sales growth came in slightly below expectations (+6.4% y/y vs. the forecasted +6.8%), the pace still accelerated by 3.3 percentage points compared to August.
