An interview with Polish Finance Minister Jacek Rostowski was recently publicized on BBC Monitoring European.
When asked if he feared for the upcoming year, Rostowski responded: “It will be a distinctive one. We are entering with a very strong economy in Poland. We saw quite high investments and growth in the third quarter. Our economy would still be accelerating if it were not for external threats, but this crisis is very unpredictable by nature.”
The issue of a ten-year loss was then brought up, along with heightened concerns of a recession. Rostowski said, “The latest decisions from the summit in Brussels and the accompanying decisions by the European Central Bank are for the first time heading in a good direction, providing some sort of positive perspective. There has been a quite extensive inability on the part of all the European institutions to make the right decisions over the past two years. Whether the current decisions are sufficient, we shall see. I am more optimistic, as far as the general situation is concerned, than I was three weeks ago. And in the longer term perspective- if the worst does not happen, meaning if there is no collapse of the euro zone and then likely a collapse of the European Union, I believe that even with zero growth in Western Europe we may develop at a pace of 3-4 per cent. Even if a lost decade occurs there, that does now mean that things have to be so in our country.”
When told that Deputy Prime Minister Pawlak considers him to be pessimistic, Rostowski said “I would very much like for Deputy Prime Minister Pawlak to be right.”
