As soon as the National Electoral Commission announced the official election results, the Platform’s leading politicians and their formal and informal advisors began to speak publicly about Morawiecki’s ‘budget hole’, which, it was suggested, should result in cuts to both social services and policy programs introduced by the Law and Justice government and the inability to meet election obligations, this batch in the form of “100 details for 100 days”.
Opposition fairy tales about the budget and letters from economists
The candidate for Minister of Finance, MP Izabela Leszczyna, the current senator and candidate for Senate President Małgorzata Kidawa-Błońska, and experts such as Leszek Balcerowicz and Bogusław Grabowski, started talking in the media about how close this year’s budget is. and the one presented by the government would collapse. Morawiecki’s prime minister for 2024 is even more unrealistic.
However, the reaction of public opinion was surprising, especially on social media, texts from economists began to appear, citing data from both the Ministry of Finance and Eurostat, which showed that the situation of public finances is good and that 2024 will be even better promises to be. in this regard.
The Polish Economic Network responded by writing a lengthy letter to the current opposition, stressing, among other things, that “this is not the time for austerity” and that it is necessary to continue major development investments (for example in nuclear energy, maritime projects, etc.). ports, CPK) and the state of public finances is known and good enough.
Within a few days the letter was signed by more than a hundred economists from various Polish universities and various think tanks, of whom one could hardly suspect any sympathy for Law and Justice.
Moreover, the increasing statements by opposition politicians, who spread information left and right about the alleged budget gap and the downright dramatic situation of our public finances, were met with a substantive counterattack from Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and Finance Minister Elżbieta Rzeczkowska.
The state of public finances
At the press conference they presented both the state of the budget and public finances at the end of the third quarter of 2023, but also the most important expenditure items from the draft budget for 2024, which are within the constitutional deadline at the end of September this year.
Both the budget implementation at the end of the third quarter of this year and the state of public finances at the end of the second quarter of this year show that the state of public finances is much better than at the end of 2015, i.e. the end of the PO PSL government.
The state of the budget implemented this year is good, despite the economic slowdown in the first and second quarters of this year, caused by the tightening of monetary policy by the National Bank of Poland due to the need to limit inflation (in first quarter, GDP fell by 0.3%, and in the second quarter by 0.6 percent).
Despite this, budget revenues in the period January to September 2023 amounted to PLN 418 billion (i.e. 69.5 percent of this year’s planned revenues), and expenditures in this period amounted to PLN 452.7 billion, which amounts to PLN 65.3 per cent. plan, which means that the deficit for the nine months of this year is only PLN 34.7 billion, which is only 37.7 percent. deficit planned for this year (expected to amount to a maximum of PLN 92 billion).
It should be remembered that this year’s budget includes huge funds for the implementation of all social programs, such as the flagship 500 plus program, the expenditure for the 13th and 14th retirement, but also much higher than a few years earlier, the national defense expenditures related to the war beyond our eastern border and the threat posed by Russia’s imperial policies.
The income from the state budget is also high
As announced by Prime Minister Morawiecki and Minister Rzeczkowska, during the eight years of the Law and Justice rule, revenues from state budgets increased by as much as PLN 305 billion, i.e. by 105%. compared to 2015.
Let’s not forget that during the eight years of the PO-PSL government in 2008-2015, budget revenues increased by only PLN 35 billion (budget revenues were PLN 253.5 billion in 2008, and PLN 289.1 billion in 2015), and in 2015-2023, by as much as the above-mentioned PLN 305 billion (from PLN 289.1 billion to PLN 594.6 billion).
At the same time, public debt to GDP rose by as much as 7.5 percentage points to PLN 51.3 billion during the PO-PSL government, while during the Law and Justice government it fell by 3.6 percentage points to PLN 48.4 billion . per cent. GDP.
They also recalled that the 2024 budget, whose revenues are planned at PLN 684.5 billion and expenditure at almost PLN 850 billion, includes funds for the most important social programs and areas of our lives.
The most important social programs
For the Family 800 plus program an amount of no less than PLN 64 billion, for the indexation of pension and disability benefits an amount of no less than PLN 45 billion, for the 13th and 14th pension an amount of PLN 29 billion. for healthcare expenditure (including expenditure from the National Health Fund), as much as PLN 191 billion, and as much as PLN 158 billion for defense expenditure, including about PLN 100 billion from budget funds and almost PLN 60 billion from the Armed Forces Support Fund, established on the basis of the Financing of the Armed Forces Act of our country. There is therefore no substantive basis for disseminating information about the budget gap or the difficult situation of public finances, because things are much better than at the end of the PO-PSL government in 2015.
There are also no reasons in the current state of public finances to scare Poles with the need to cut back on the social programs introduced by the Law and Justice government, to limit national defense spending, or to strategic infrastructure investments, such as nuclear power plants, the Central Communications Port, or the expansion of the port container ship in Świnoujście.
In this situation, Platform politicians’ story about Morawiecki’s “budget hole” began to “pinch” itself.
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Source: wPolityce