Among the existing GDP forecasting methods, time series forecasting and regression model forecasting are the two most commonly used forecasting methods. However, traditional macroeconomic forecasting models are unable to accurately achieve optimal forecasts of highly complex nonlinear dynamic macroeconomic systems due to the influence of multiple confounding factors. In order to solve the above problems, a GDP economic forecasting model based on an improved RBF neural network is proposed. First, the main traditional GDP forecasting methods are analyzed. Then, RBF neural networks are used to solve the problem that traditional forecasting technology methods cannot handle multi-factor complex nonlinearities well. Second, to further improve the convergence speed and accuracy of the RBF neural network learning algorithm, the Shuffled Frog Leaping Algorithm with global search capability and high practicality is fused into the RBF network training. Finally, the improved RBF neural network is used to build a GDP economic forecasting model. The performance of the Shuffled Frog Leaping Algorithm and the improved RBF neural network was tested using the approximation of Hermit polynomials and the Iris classification problem as simulation examples. The experimental results show that the improved RBF neural network-based GDP economic forecasting model achieves more accurate forecasting accuracy than other forecasting methods.