Poland’s Morawiecki Seeks to Balance Budget, Hold Energy Prices

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Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki pledged to stick to a plan to balance the country’s budget next year even as economic growth looks set to slow.

“The Polish economy is amazingly resilient to a slowdown in the West,” Morawiecki said in an interview on radio station RMF FM. The plan to balance the 2020 state budget for the first time in the nation’s post-communist history “is still valid,” he said.

• The government this week dropped its plan to remove a cap on social security contributions, aiming to boost the budget by 5 billion zloty ($1.3 billion).
• Morawiecki didn’t name any alternative revenue sources in the interview.
• His cabinet “will try to defend domestic households” from energy price increases; the government is now awaiting a proposal from the state’s energy regulator and “will seek to work out an appropriate calculation mechanism.”
• The government plans to “gradually increase the minimum wage” in coming years.

To contact the reporter on this story: Dorota Bartyzel in Warsaw at dbartyzel@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Andrea Dudik at adudik@bloomberg.net, James Amott, Stephen Kirkland

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