Polish finance minister says 'main risk of inflation is behind us'

As you said, we have the lowest inflation in five years, so it’s great, great news. Having said that, it’s we still see some pressure and there is a risk that the inflation will slowly go up in coming coming quarters. But still I believe that the main risk of of inflation is behind us. Let me ask you about growth and the World Bank has revised its economic growth forecast for Poland for this year upwards to 3% from a previously anticipated 2.6%. What’s working for growth this year after fairly anemic level last year of just 0.2% and some would describe that as a rounding error this year. I mean we expect the GDP to grow by 3% this year and accelerate even further to 3.53 point 7 in 2025. And still the main engine behind this growth is consumption. We we we saw a quite substantial rise of wages in Poland and we see the effect on that in in growing growing consumption. But we also see a flow of EU funds to to Poland. This Friday, we received nearly 7 billion U.S. dollars of transfer from European Union, which was the the biggest transfer since we joined European Union. So the investments will hopefully start to rise in second-half of this year. How is that money being deployed? Where, where will it land in the economy? Of course, the most important area is green energy transition as it was not working properly in previous years. We we definitely need to invest heavily in energy generation is currently nearly 70% of our energy is out of coal which is of course not only very very difficult for climate but also it it makes Polish energy very expensive. So first of all, green energy transition, lots of investment is needed in great and but of course there are many other areas that we can and we need to to fund with those. EU money energy transition is seen as an opportunity for Poland. How can you attract more funds using what you’re already receiving from the Europeans, Is that a springboard to getting more international money invested in Poland? Definitely, definitely. We we don’t want to rely only on EU funds. We need to attract more foreign investors to invest in green energy transition in Poland. And frankly I believe it’s a great opportunity to invest right now in Poland. I’ve mentioned already that we have GDP growth expected this year at the level of 3% and then accelerate in the two thousand 2025. But there are many other reasons like very well diversified economy, young and well educated skill force and of course a new pro European government. So there is a lot of reasons to invest right now in in points and I believe it’s the best place to invest in Europe. As a former fund manager, you’re well aware of how markets work and you can see the gyrations based on politics. You mentioned the changes here, Pro European, but return of rule of law with judges, prosecutors reinstated, key ministerial appointments, including your own, with policies around actual research. Do you think the mood music is now changing around Poland for international markets? Absolutely. Since the October 15th election, we noticed that this lot Polish currency got really, really strong. We we saw yelled of Polish bonds going substantially down compression on the long end of the curve compared to German bonds for example. So we see that the market is starting to believe again in Polish economy and as I said our very pro European government with Donald Tusk our Prime Minister really working closely with European Commission. I believe it’s another reason to for markets to to change perspective, change their view on Poland. A war ravaged Ukraine is right on your doorstep. There have been tensions around accession, in particular, with farm product, cheap farm product arriving from Ukraine. What’s the answer? To support Polish farmers here without blocking Ukraine accession? First of all, let’s let’s put it very straight. That war in Ukraine, in the brutal Russia aggression on Ukraine, is is the single most important factor. That’s that we, at least we, we we perceive as a threat for global growth. That’s point number one. Point #2 is that we as Poland, as a country, we had to spend lots more on our defence and right now in 2024, we’ll spend 4.1% of our GDP on defence, 4.1. And of course there are lots of other consequences and the turbulence of the agriculture market is one of them. We notice Russia acting aggressively on this market putting the prices of of for example crops down. So some actions needed, we had to take some some actions and protect protect our market. We believe that that both Polish and whole European market has to be to some extent protected.