Economic slowdown will be short lived in Poland, says finance minister

jacek Rostowski before meeting of government, Tuesday: photo - PAP/Radek Pietruszka

Poland's draft budget for 2013 envisages a GDP growth rate at 2.2 percent, down from early forecasts of 2.9 percent. But the centre-right finance minister is still relatively optimistic that Poland will go on outperforming other EU economies.

“I’m quite confident the slowdown will just be temporary,” Minister Rostowski tells the FT.

New action by the European Central bank and the anti-finance crisis measures taking shape in Brussels have eased fears that the eurozone – Poland's main trading partner – will go into meltdown.

“For the first time in two years we have reason to believe that the risk of a catastrophic outcome in the eurozone has been taken off the table.

But Jacek Rostowski is still concerned that Poland, which has had to postpone plans of joining the eurozone, will be kept from influencing decisions made by the new single banking supervisor, while most of its banks have parents in the euro-area.

“An example of the kind of thing we are worried about is how one ensures proper democratic accountability of the ECB as a single supervisor? We believe that if we have an unaccountable single eurozone supervisor, we may be sowing the seeds of a major eurozone crisis five or 10 years down the line,” Rostowski said.

See the rest of the interview here. (pg)