Rafał Guz/PAP

European Commission forecasts confirm that the Polish economy coped “relatively well” with the pandemic, the finance minister has said in a commentary sent to PAP.

New European Commission (EC) figures put Poland’s expected GDP growth for this year at 4 percent and 5.4 percent next year.

“According to the latest forecasts, last year’s recession in Poland was one of the shallowest among EU countries,” Tadeusz Kościński said. “A better result was achieved only by Ireland, Lithuania and Luxemburg. That confirms that the Polish economy coped relatively well with the hard times of the pandemic.

“The forecasts for Poland for the years 2021-2022, are higher than EC projections from February this year by 0.9 and 0.3 percent respectively,” he added. “The use of funds from the Recovery and Resilience Facility will also have an influence on the improved dynamic expected by the EC in 2022.”

Kościński also drew attention to a reduced budget deficit also expected by the EC.

“The EC expects a fall in the nominal deficit in the years 2021-22, earlier than assumed by the Ministry of Finance, by respectively 4.3 percent of GDP and 2.3 percent of GDP against 7 percent of GDP in 2020,” Kościński said.

The EC forecasts published on Wednesday put inflation in Poland at 3.5 percent in 2021, falling to 2.9 percent the following year.

Brussels also expects a fall in unemployment in Poland to 3.5 percent this year, which would be the lowest rate in the European Union. In 2022, the unemployment rate is expected to shrink to 3.3 percent, also the lowest in the bloc.