Donald Tusk, leader of Poland’s main opposition party Civic Platform (PO), has suggested a package of solutions to help society weather rising prices, interest rate increases and shrinking savings.
Poland’s inflation reached 10.9% YoY in March despite the seventh rate hike in a row by the central bank, which pushed the reference interest rate up to 4.5% from just 0.1% half a year ago.
Speaking at a sitting of the PO National Council on April 13, Tusk said that “in the face of the highest inflation in 20 years and the loss of the real value of Poles’ wages, I hereby oblige the MPs and senators to immediately present legislative solutions on a 20% wage rise for public employees.”
The second initiative that Tusk appealed for was aimed at helping mortgage holders, who had been hit by “the disastrous policy of the government and the central bank”.
“The legislation should set the maximum mortgage payment at no higher than the December 2021 level,” Tusk said, without specifying who should bear the cost of freezing the interest payments despite higher rates, which economists predicted would go up even further.
“The third project concerns the issuance of two-year bonds, the interest of which would be matched to inflation,” Tusk said, adding that the limit for the special bond purchases would be PLN 50,000 (EUR 10,770) per person.
Currently, Poland’s two-year Treasury bonds offer a coupon of a mere 2%, minus capital gains tax at 19%. (The First News/Business World Magazine)
