Adam Glapiński made the prediction at a news conference in Warsaw on Thursday, public broadcaster Polish Radio’s IAR news agency reported.
A day earlier, the Polish central bank's rate-setting Monetary Policy Council left interest rates unchanged, keeping the reference rate at 6.75 percent.
The panel had earlier delivered a string of rate hikes in an effort to contain surging consumer prices.
Inflation in Poland stood at 14.7 percent in April, according to a flash estimate by the country’s statistics office.
Meanwhile, core inflation, excluding the prices of food and energy, was 12.3 percent in March, down from 12 percent in February, the central bank has said.
Core inflation to subside
Glapiński told reporters on Thursday that "Poland’s inflation rate is falling very fast.”
He said: “Core inflation … remains high in many countries, including the eurozone countries and the United States, and especially the countries of our region. There is nothing extraordinary about Poland’s core inflation.”
Glapiński added: “In most countries in Central and Eastern Europe, inflation stands at around 12 percent, and so is at a similar level as in Poland. The situation in our country is not miraculously better than in other countries, but it is not bad, either.”
The central bank chief said that core inflation remained high “due to the strength of the shocks that hit the economy,” notably the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
He added that businesses “increased the prices of their products to reflect the rising prices of raw materials and energy and this trend spread further.”
Moreover, “the good state of the labour market is also facilitating price increases,” Glapiński said.
According to the Polish central bank chief, “it's only natural that core inflation takes longer to fall than consumer inflation.”
Glapiński stated: “We expect core inflation to fall in the coming months and quarters.”
Economy growing 'at a faster rate than elsewhere'
Glapiński also said that ”Poland’s economic situation is very good compared to all the other countries.”
He added that Polish GDP had been growing "at a faster rate than elsewhere, especially in the eurozone,” in recent years.
The central bank chief told reporters that “economic growth is slowing down in all countries,” but said he hoped that “there won’t be a recession, that growth will decelerate only slightly and then rebound.”
In March, Poland’s central bank said it expected the country’s economy to expand 0.9 percent in 2023, followed by 2.1 percent growth in 2024 and 3.1 percent in 2025.
Salaries to rise
Glapiński also stated on Thursday that “according to all available data," salaries in Poland "will begin to rise again" in real terms in the coming months, after “falling last year, although they fell less than in other European Union countries.”
(pm/gs)
Source: IAR, PAP, money.pl, nbp.pl