However, experts claim it is just an over optimistic show-off, which is mostly based on PiS` robbing people`s private retirement accounts in OFE system and moving them into state Social Security Company.
the first budget since 1989 which won`t be burdened with the deficit
It is rather difficult to imagine, considering the fact that most industry and trade in Poland is in foreign hands, which means that profits are transferred out of Poland, and hard work of Poles serves to make other nations rich. I mean, where would the money necessary to balance the budget's expenses come from? When there is so little industry left in Polish hands, and big-scale trade is almost exclusively foreign-owned, the only viable source of income for the government is either loans or higher taxes (and I can't decide which is worse).
But at least they are trying. Their predecessors, who dream of returning to power, are the same people who deprived Poland of her industry through criminal "privatisation" process, and would now like to complete it by getting rid of the few income generating companies we still have (Orlen, KGHM).
PiS is far from being perfect, and some of their actions are outright harmful, but PO returning to power would be a complete and utter disaster. Luckily, Grzegorz Schetyna is still in charge of Platforma which pretty much guarantees long reign of PiS. :)
most industry and trade in Poland is in foreign hands
isn't this the usual case in the modern world? we are in an age of fluid capital where companies have no ties to the countries they are headquartered in.
the same people who deprived Poland of her industry through criminal "privatisation" process
there were mistakes made, but most of Polish industry in the early 90s was incapable of supporting itself and hemorrhaging money (that the state didn't have).
how would/could you have done anything differently?
In 1989 Poland sat at a "Monopoly" board and started playing. The problem was - other players had money, and we didn't. Those who don't know what happens in such cases are advised to play a game of "Monopoly" when other players have 99% of money available in the game. :) Yes, I realise that my comparison entails certain measure of oversimplification, but that's basically what happened.
most of Polish industry in the early 90s was incapable of supporting itself
That is simply not true. Yes, there were companies in dire need of restructurisation, but most of them could have easily made it in the free market reality. Especially the light industry. In Great Britain there are still small/medium-size companies using industrial machines from 80s/90s and making profit. The problem with Poland is that our economy was in hands of either hard headed doctrinaires or simply corrupt people. A typical pattern of Polish privatisation was to take a company which brought 160 million USD yearly profit, and sell it to a foreign investor for 80 million. This way the investor got back his invested money in 6 months, and the land, buildings, machines etc. remained in his hands. There were also outright criminal cases, like selling car industry works in Bielsko-Biała for 1PLN (so-called "symboliczna złotówka"), to "save them from bankruptcy". Telekomunikacja Polska - a golden goose by any standards - was sold to France Telecom, which is a state-owned company (!!!), so now billions of pure profit (around 12-15 billion PLN every year) are going straight into the French government pockets. Jesus... I could go on like that...
In free Poland, people responsible for that should be put before The State Tribunal.
how would/could you have done anything differently?
First of all, I wouldn't sell ANY company that made even the smallest profit - they were numerous, and they weren't a burden for the newly independent state. Unfortunately, the doctrinaires in power back then viewed anything state-owned as evil, and were "privatising" (which simply meant selling into foreign hands) almost everything. When I think that Lewandowski wanted to sell KGHM for 400 million USD in 1992 (a company that brought over 42 BILLION profit since then), I am happy that there was someone with a bit of reason remaining in him and stopped it. Unfortunately, many other companies fell victim to the criminal privatisation, turning Poland from a highly industrialised state into a pretty much neo-colonial bantustan in economic terms.
Also, I would do everything not to give trade into foreign hands. As opposed to industry, creating trade companies and retail chains doesn't require exorbitant expenses. Giving away the overwhelming majority of retail to foreign based companies was nothing short of stupidity. We are paying a very high price for it now.
When I think of it all, I realise that it would require a 1000-page-long book, not a forum post, to even start describing the problem...
most of Polish industry in the early 90s was incapable of supporting itself and hemorrhaging money
That is true. Polish industry in the early 90s was more or less a joke. There were, however, a few examples of the opposite, but these only confirm the rule.
Critics claim now that those "jewels" were sold for nothing, but they simply look upon the economic condition in which the enterprises are now and completely ignoring the fact that this condition has been achieved thanks to foreign investments into these enterprises.
On that new economic base, some new Polish enterprises have been formed ever since and they have been very successful and have been 100% Polish-owned from the very beginning.
However, there have always been major companies that have remained Polish since the beginning of the economic transformation. One of those is the biggest Polish bank PKO, another is KGHM (and yes, the latter one was one of those Polish "crown jewels" which was on the verge of selling it to a foreign company in the 90s, but luckily enough, the trade unions had managed to block the deal, otherwise the KGHM would have really been sold almost for nothing).
but most of Polish industry in the early 90s was incapable of supporting itself
Yes, we talked about it. The post communist industry was completely obsolete, simply worthless.
but most of them could have easily made it in the free market reality
Of course not. You must be quite young coz you repeat false opinions which the Net is abundant with, spread mostly by youngsters who know nothing about the times. Good for you! :):)
Typical? You mentioned TPSA. Anything else?
Let me remind you that the same people you are talking about include today`s PiS politicians, firstly Kaczyńsks brothers. Do you remember the Telegraf scandal?
First of all, I wouldn't sell ANY company that made even the smallest profit - they were numerous, and they weren't a burden
There were some issues with that, though. For instance, some companies were making a profit solely because of political moves to guarantee that profit. For instance, you would see municipal companies forced into buying goods from other municipal companies through rigged public procurement processes. I had a chat with one Polish businessman about this, and he said that it was extraordinarily common in the 1990's for the local mayor to ask him to buy (unneeded) stuff from the local municipal factory in exchange for political favours.
I seem to recall that in the case of TPSA, one reason for the privatisation was the struggle to get them to actually open up and liberalise the market. I've got a Polish book somewhere that talks about this - for instance, they made it very difficult for operators to actually use their infrastructure for local calls. TPSA also benefitted hugely from their monopoly over long distance/international calls. TPSA were also hopeless with infrastructure themselves - I remember reading that the waiting list at the end of the 1990's for a phone was around 2m people, with demand being 3-4x that amount.
There were other scams as well, such as companies being profitable on paper and yet actually cooking the books on a large scale - Szczecin Shipyard being the posterchild in this case.
Mr Gowin, one of PiS` allies, said his group won`t support the planned increase of obligatory payments to Polish Social Security. If he keeps his word, the budget will lose about 5 billion PLN.
The balanced budget by PiS is slowly becoming a song of the past from before elections...... :):)
And.... the budget without a deficit is dead.... dead, dead, dead.
And... it appears that it was never a real possibility due to PiS desperate juggling things around while giving out kiełbasa wyborcza...
Cue a chorus of PiS supporters to chime in with 'but PO is worse!' or to maintain a dignified silence as they hope reality can be kept at bay for a while longer
Polish budget deficit at the end of 2019 was 12 billion PLN - more than 16 billion lower than planned - the government projects a zero deficit budget for 2020
I have an idea....Come here, get naturalized or create fake citizenship doc, run for president and I swear I will vote for you. The current one thinks that spending as much as the rest of the world combined is still not enough.
Hey, cms, I love Poland and the smart Polish guys like gumishu, so my post is about Poland.
the government projects a zero deficit budget for 2020
Their prognosis proved useless. The budget will be hit by a record deficit this year.
Yes, no government can be blamed for the outbreak of a deadly disease. But PiS can be blamed for their actions from before the pandemia. Instead of saving money for such catastrophic events, PiS had happily squandered it all on various benefits to bribe voters. Thank you, PiS.
The budget will be hit by a record deficit this year.
the budget suffers from the economic slowdown cause by the pandemy - if you can't recognize it why do you bother answering my threads - just go weeding out
the budget suffers from the economic slowdown cause by the pandemy
Yes, of course. But it is obvious you haven`t read my previous post. I wrote: Instead of saving money for such catastrophic events, PiS had happily squandered it all on various benefits to bribe voters.
PS. What is wrong with rightists today? Their intellectual capacities are much below normal.
Jacek Rostowski did a couple of tricks to the budget so it appeared the deficit was lower than it was in actuality - for example he "lent" money to ZUS (or rather FUS) instead of marking it as budget expense - PO also separated the special fund for building roads from the budget so any loans it had to take was not counted as a budget expense
the first few years of PiS didn't rely on this tricks - 2020 marks a change in that respect on the path created by PO-PSL
Numbers have little meaning in happiness of people. Bulgaria has much lower salaries in 2013, yet we were happier than ever back then. It was like heaven and then Borisov came back... As for Poland I used to speak to many Poles back in 2010-2014 and they seemed happier than today.
People! PiS ppl sound almost as bad as Boyko "The Pumpkin" Borisov. Let me tell you a story:
In 2013-2014 in an ancient country in E. Europe the evil pumpkin king was dethroned. Rivers of joy and happiness flowed everywhere. People started smiling for the first time ever. Golden light was radiating from every heart and people felt really happy in this formerly troubled state. Then the evil king came back as his benevolent replacement did a stupid mistake electing a hog for an important position. However not just this, NGOs and the pumpkin king paid people to cause mass protests. The state fell under the evil spell from 2009 again but this time it was worse as people became more stressed, angry and negative. Despite that they lost their hope and faith in the future. As the amount of call centers increased, small businesses went bankrupt. Now Bulgaria is in a worse freedom of speech place than any year since 2000. Don't allow PiS to make of Poland the same, you've been trough enough b.s. in the 20th century to get even more!
Hey, Gumi, you promoted PIS` "skills" in collecting VAT tax so vehemently in the past. Tell us what happened it doesn`t work any more? You accused the previous gov of neglecting the issue or even making illegal profits from the VAT gap. How about PIS doing the same thing now???
The current budget controlled by PIS is collapsing. Those incompetent idiots aren`t able to deal with the rising deficit partly caused by low VAT revenue. PiS has been hiding it as long as possible.
Well behind schedule, the Ministry of Finance published data on budget implementation after the first eight months of the year State revenues after August amounted to PLN 373.76 billion. At the same time, expenses exceeded PLN 390 billion According to Sławomir Dudek, throughout the year the VAT gap will exceed PLN 32 billion, reaching a level 4.5 times higher than in 2021.
Just before the elections, we at Business Insider raised the alarm that the government was hiding some important data because these numbers may be inconvenient during the campaign . It was about implementing the budget for the period from January to August . Although such data should normally be publicly available by the end of September, the Ministry of Finance delayed their disclosure and they only saw the light of day on the second day after the elections.
Let us recall that the president of the Institute of Public Finance and former director of a department at the Ministry of Finance, Sławomir Dudek, indicated that the reason for hiding budget data is the growing VAT gap.
- Prime Minister Morawiecki threatened during Monday's debate that PiS's loss of power would mean an increase in the VAT gap. Meanwhile, simple arithmetic shows that this gap is already growing , which the government does not want to admit, Dudek claimed.
if you don't understand what you are talking about, shut your mouth
@pawian
State revenues after August amounted to PLN 373.76 billion. At the same time, expenses exceeded PLN 390 billion
this only means that the budget deficit after August amounts to around 16 billion PLN - last year the deficit was singificantly lower amounting to about 12 billion PLN for the whole year but still the deficit is quite law
by comparison summed up budget deficit between 2008- 2015 amounted to 267 billion which means average yearly deficit was about 33 billion (with no social transfers to speak of (500+ programme costs the budget more than 20 billion yearly ))
there is not a figure in your quotation that presents the forecast and actual VAT income and no calculation indicating some kind of growing VAT evasion (the expert said simple arithmetics - why hasn't he shown it then) so you just have a word of your expert to convince yourself - I need figures
And I believed him. Let`s wait and see who is right. If he is correct in his estimates, it will mean you made a rabid lying rightist dog of yourself and you will have to bark it off under the table. Agreed?
PS. On a side note, it is good PiS lost the elections and power. In result, the PF has regained an active member. hahahaha buhahahaha
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