IMF warns Poland against excessive deficit: report
PR dla Zagranicy
Paweł Kononczuk
19.05.2017 13:51
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned Poland against excessive deficit and advised Warsaw to keep it under 3 percent of the country’s GDP, the Puls Biznesu daily has reported.
Photo: pexels.com
According to the Gazeta Wyborcza daily, the IMF also said that Poland should save increased tax income instead of spending it, in order to build a financial buffer.
Puls Biznesu quoted Anna Ilyina, from the IMF, as saying that the International Monetary Fund expects Poland’s GDP growth rate to hit 3.6 percent at the end of 2017, thanks to strong consumption and an increase in public investment driven by EU funds.
Poland’s Central Statistical Office said in a flash estimate on Tuesday that the Polish economy grew 4.0 percent year on year in real terms in the first quarter of 2017.
However, according to Gazeta Wyborcza, it might be hard for the government to keep the fiscal deficit at the end of 2017 below the EU’s Excessive Deficit Procedure cap of 3 percent of GDP, although the government projects the deficit will not exceed 2.9 percent.
Poland was taken out of the excessive deficit procedure by the European Council in 2015 following a reduction in the deficit to below the 3 percent of GDP threshold.
The deficit has remained below that level since.
(tf/pk)