CEE: Growth forecast revisions in both directions

Erste Bank Research Team Erste Bank

On the radar

Current account balance in Slovakia landed at EUR -126 million.
Today, Slovakia is scheduled to publish unemployment rate.
At 11 AM CET, Croatia releases unemployment rate in July and real wage growth in June.

Economic developments

We just published CEE Outlook | Growth Navigator after 2Q25 GDP in response to the 2Q25 GDP estimates (released by all countries but Croatia that is due at the end of the month). Apart from Czechia and Poland, where performance was very solid translating into the upside risks to our current 2025 growth forecast, in other CEE countries we revise the growth forecasts down. Growth dynamics will be below 1% in Hungary, Slovakia and quite likely in Romania, where we still consider the magnitude of downward revision. In Serbia growth will also be weaker this year than initially expected. In 2026, the 15% tariffs will weigh on economic development. We will release detailed CEE Macro Outlook in mid-September, once the GDP structure is published.

Market developments

Risk aversion has been declining amid the talks between Putin and Trump as well as between Trump and Zelenskyi. Local markets benefit from such development and CEE currencies hold stronger against the euro this week. For example, EURHUF went as low as 393 on Tuesday. Poland’s Ministry of Finance declined the need to amend 2025 budget deficit after weak performance in the first half of the year. On the other hand, Romania proceeds with fiscal consolidation and plans to submit the second package of fiscal reforms to parliament next week under simplified procedure.

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Erste Bank Research Team

Erste Bank

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