CPI inflation will remain elevated in the first half of the year (5.3% y/y on average), but by the end of the year it will have fallen towards the upper end of the NBP target range (3.7% y/y). Due to statistical base effects, the annual peak in inflation will be in March 2025 at 5.6% y/y. Core inflation will be stubbornly elevated (3.9% y/y on average), partly due to sticky service prices. The persistence of core inflation will be a factor hindering the return of inflation to the target, which should not occur before 2026.
Factors which will affect the results of the Group
Economic growth
The activity of Bank Pekao S.A. and the Group’s companies is in majority conducted on the Polish territory, hence the Group’s performance will be mainly affected by economic situation in the country and international events that have influence on domestic economy.
Poland’s economic growth accelerated to 2.9% y/y in 2024. We estimate that after slowing down in Q3 last year, Polish GDP grew by 3.2% y/y between October and December. 2024 was marked by solid consumption (which added 3.2 pp to the growth rate), both public and private. For 2025, we expect economic growth to accelerate by one-third, i.e. to 4.0% y/y. This will be made possible by the fact that investment (8.6% y/y) will join the economic growth engines alongside consumption (2.9% y/y). Consumption dynamics will remain close to last year’s due to decelerating real wages, which will only partly be offset by a lower propensity of households to save. At the same time, the acceleration in investment will be linked to the absorption of European funds from the Next Generation EU (NGEU) and the new EU budget perspective – in other words, public investment will accelerate while private investment dynamics will stabilise. The contribution of net exports will remain negative (-0.4 p.p.), but will improve with respect to last year due to the strengthening domestic demand in the euro area (that, in part, being a consequence of the monetary easing by the ECB).
The key macroeconomic factor affecting the banking sector’s financial performance is monetary policy. In line with our projections, 2024 passed with the NBP reference rate anchored at 5.75%. In the autumn last year, signals began to emerge from the MPC that – given that the March 2025 projection would also show inflation converging to the target in 2026 – there might be some space for interest rate cuts after first quarter of 2025. However, the MPC is now communicating concerns about the impact of regulatory factors on the CPI path in Poland, which means that the prospect of a monetary policy easing (-100 bps) is shifting to the second half of the year. This means that at least half of this year will pass in an environment of increased nominal interest rates, while the real cost of money will remain positive all throughout the year.
Although the government’s housing loan subsidy programme (the so-called #NaStart programme) did not come into force, the situation in the credit market was improving in 2024. In particular, growth in the volume of PLN-denominated mortgages accelerated from 3.9% y/y in January to 8.9% y/y in November, and sales of new home loans increased by more than 35% y/y.In the first months of 2025, a slight deceleration in the dynamics of the volume of these loans can be expected due to a slightly lower number of loan applications submitted at the end of last year, but in the perspective of the following months, stable increases in real household income and the expected cuts in interest rates by the MPC will translate into a return of elevated housing credit dynamics. Demand for housing loan sales will also be bolstered by those customers who had decided to delay their loan decision in 2024 in anticipation of the #NaStart programme. In contrast, the volume of consumer loans grew at a slower pace than mortgages – nominal growth in this category is still weaker than in the pre-COVID-19 pandemic period. This is probably due to the increased depreciation of this portfolio, as consumer credit sales grew by as much as 27% year-on-year.
