Post-Pandemic Steel Production Scenarios for Poland Based on Forecasts of Annual Steel Production Volume

Abstract The paper presents the results of forecasts made for the volume of steel production in Poland based on actual data for the period from 2006 to 2021 with forecasting until 2026. The actual data used for the forecasts included annual steel production volumes in Poland (crude steel) in millions of tons. Basic adaptive methods were used to forecast the volume of steel production for the next five years. When selecting the methods, the course of the trend of the studied phenomenon was taken into account. In order to estimate the level of admissibility of the adopted forecasting methods, as well as to select the best forecasts, the errors of apparent forecasts (ex post) were calculated. Errors were calculated in the work: RMSE Root Mean Square Error being the square root of the mean square error of the ex-post forecasts yt for the period 2006-2021; ? as the mean value of the relative error of expired forecasts y*t (2006-2021) – this error informs about the part of the absolute error per unit of the real value of the variable yt. Optimization of the forecast values was based on the search for the minimum value of one of the above-mentioned errors, treated as an optimization criterion. In addition, the value of the point forecast (for 2022) obtained on the basis of the models used was compared with the steel production volume obtained for 3 quarters of 2022 in Poland with the forecast for the last quarter. Forecasting results obtained on the basis of the forecasting methods used, taking into account the permissible forecast errors, were considered as the basis for determining steel production scenarios for Poland until 2026. To determine the scenarios, forecast aggregation was used, and so the central forecasts were determined separately for decreasing trends and for increasing trends, based on the average values of the forecasts obtained for the period 2022-2026. The central forecasts were considered the baseline scenarios for steel production in Poland in 2022-2026 and the projected production volumes above the baseline forecasts with upward trends were considered an optimistic scenario, while the forecasted production volumes below the central scenario for downward trends were considered a pessimistic scenario for the Polish steel industry.