Jacek Rostowski: photo - PAP/Leszek Szymanski
“I think that in 5 years we have done a good job. Poland is in a most select group of countries, which have a better rating now than at the beginning of the finance crisis,” Minister Rostowski told the TVP public broadcaster on Thursday night.
Fitch Ratings released a statement yesterday saying that they had made the revision after “Poland's general government deficit […] has narrowed by around 4.5 percentage points of GDP since 2010, to an estimated 3.4 percent of GDP in 2012, placing it among the EU's best performers.”
Fitch added that “Public debt has stabilised” and is forecast to moderate to 54.5 percent of GDP in 2014.
“Poland has a solid track record of resilience to the eurozone debt crisis,” Fitch says.
Crucial to Poland's economic performance in the future is maintaining funding from the recently agreed EU budget for 2014-20.
“The EU budget for 2014-20 will allocate EUR105.8bn to Poland, helping it to bridge remaining infrastructure gaps and enhance prospects for long term growth,” the Fitch report says.
Finance Minister Rostowski agreed that the EU budget is crucial to future performance.
“Over the last three months, the government's priority was to negotiate as much EU funds as possible for the period 2014-2020. We will be the largest beneficiary of EU funds in this period, which will ensure Polish economic growth,” he told TVP.
Rostowski defended the Civic Platform/PSL coalition government's record over the last five years it has been in power, despite recent indicators showing an economic slowdown, with rising unemployment and falling GDP growth.
“Poland has had the fastest economic growth in the EU, throughout Europe and across the OECD,” he said, adding that interest rates, which have been cut by the National Bank by 0.25 percentage points for the last four months could come down still further.
“Now we are in a slowdown because there is a recession in the euro area [resulting in ] Poland having the highest real interest rates in the European Union,” Jacek Rostowski, who was named deputy prime minister in a limited cabinet reshuffle this week, said. (pg)