PM calls Poland's draft budget for 2023 'ambitious'
Mateusz Morawiecki, the Polish prime minister, has said the government has approved a draft budget for 2023, and described it as "an ambitious budget for a difficult time."
According to Morawiecki, the draft "includes a number of guidelines and outlays which are to ensure security to Polish families."
"All the social programmes which have been so far implemented, have been maintained in the draft," Morawiecki told reporters after a government meeting on Tuesday.
Under the draft, next year's deficit is planned to come to PLN 65 billion (EUR 13.7 billion), with budget incomes at PLN 604.4 billion (EUR 128.6 billion), and spending at PLN 669 billion (EUR 142.3 billion).
"The public finances deficit will stand at around 4.2-4.4 percent of GDP," Morawiecki said, but added that this was still a conservative figure.
According to the prime minister, in 2021 Poland's economy is planned to expand by 1.7 percent, after a 4.6-percent increase in 2022, and inflation is likely to stand at 9.8 percent.
"This year's GDP growth is expected to reach 4.6 percent, inflation is to reach 13.5 percent, and wages in the national economy are to grow by 11.2 percent," Morawiecki said, adding that, in 2023, nominal wages were to increase by 10.1 percent.
The prime minister also announced that next year's spending on the health service would exceed 6 percent of GDP.
"This has been our promise, our goal which we have achieved or even exceeded," Morawiecki stated, adding that health care spending could reach 6.2-6.3 percent of GDP next year.
The prime minister pointed out that health care spending had totalled PLN 77 billion (EUR 16.4 billion) in 2015, when the governing Law and Justice party came to power and had risen to PLN 160 billion-165 billion (EUR 34 billion-35.1 billion). "This means that the spending on the health service has been nearly doubled," Morawiecki added.
The draft will now be presented to the Social Dialogue Council, an advisory body composed of representatives of government, trade unions and employers. The government has to finally approve it and send it to the Sejm, the lower house of parliament, by the end of September.
