Manufacturers raise prices after three years of cuts

This article is a part of Poland Unpacked. Weekly intelligence for decision-makers

The most striking figures, however, concern so-called producer-price inflation, which reached 1.9% year on year across industry as a whole. This reflects the average increase in prices of goods leaving factories. The result came as a major surprise, as market expectations had pointed to a decline of 0.1%.

Part of the discrepancy can be explained by revised data. It turns out that prices had already risen by 1.2% in March, although Statistics Poland (GUS) reported a reading of -0.8% last month.

In manufacturing, producer-price inflation was slightly higher, at 2.3% year on year. This marks the end of the deflationary period – a sustained decline in prices – that had lasted for the past three years.

In April, prices increased in sectors including chemicals and chemical products (up 2.8% year on year), metals (2.1%), pharmaceuticals (1.6%), and motor vehicles, trailers and semi-trailers (1%).

Rising prices are, of course, a consequence of the war in the Middle East, which has pushed up commodity prices. Another factor may be rising producer prices in China, which climbed by 2.8% year on year in April. Until now, China had effectively been “exporting deflation” by flooding Europe with cheap finished goods while also supplying low-cost components. That now appears to be changing, at least in some industries.

Higher producer-price inflation tends to feed through into consumer inflation with a lag of several months. It is therefore reasonable to expect that this latest jump in costs will eventually translate into higher prices in shops. One factor that may partly limit the pass-through effect is weaker nominal income growth among households.

Construction and assembly output rises sharply

Fresh data have also been released for the construction sector. In April 2026, construction and assembly output rose by 4.5% year on year, up from 0.6% in March.

In building construction – primarily residential housing activity – output increased by 5.2%. In civil and water engineering projects, activity was 3.9% higher, while specialist construction works rose by 4.4%.

The sector is therefore recovering losses caused by the cold winter. Even so, the data still do not point to the launch of large-scale infrastructure investment projects.