Pre-Christmas shopping could boost Poland’s GDP growth in the fourth quarter by about 0.5pp, or roughly PLN5.6bn (€1.33bn), analysts at VeloBank said, PAP reported on December 17.

The impact reflects a seasonal surge in consumer activity ahead of Christmas, which the analysts estimate accounts for around 10% of annual retail turnover and temporarily raises economic momentum at year-end.

“Positive effects on the economy stem from heightened activity in sectors that are crucial for domestic production and services, such as retail trade, transport, logistics and catering,” VeloBank analysts said, according to PAP.

“Higher sales volumes, more transactions and increased demand for logistics services translate into higher value added in the economy,” they also said.

Stronger demand is also visible across market services, including food delivery and transport, which further supports GDP growth in the final weeks of the year.

According to VeloBank, the scale of the seasonal upswing is large enough for the pre-Christmas period to add between 0.3 and 0.7 percentage points to GDP growth at the end of the year, underlining the outsized role of the fourth quarter in Poland’s annual growth profile.

In value terms, this translates into an additional output of between PLN3.3bn and PLN7.8bn for the economy, with a central estimate of PLN5.6bn linked to a 0.5 percentage point (pp) boost.

Poland’s economy is expected to grow around 3.5% in 2025 overall.

That said, the previous Christmas season brought about a disappointment, sales-wise, as turnover increased just 1.9% y/y in constant prices in December 2024, well below expectations for a 3.8% increase.

Additionally, a Christmas boom is not guaranteed in 2025. A recent poll also showed that 69% of Poles planned to curb Christmas spending this year due to higher living costs.