Today’s news round up in Poland
Start your day with a summary of today’s top stories from Poland’s leading news sites.
Wyborcza.pl – The biggest daily Gazeta Wyborcza carried a story on a new draft bill that would allow the transformation of office buildings and shopping centres into apartments. According to the regulations prepared by the government, such construction would not require compliance with spatial development plans. Developers, however, would be obliged to transfer 5 percent of the new apartments to the municipalities. Piotr Lopusinski from the Avison Young real estate advisory company said that such a change would be very costly due to different construction standards.
rp.pl – The Rzeczpospolita daily wrote that Polish government cannot force municipalities to carry out tasks that are not in the scope of their responsibilities. According to government officials, local governments should effectively support their inhabitants in purchasing coal. Poland relies heavily on coal in electricity production and faces shortages due to an embargo on Russian coal imposed when Russia invaded Ukraine. According to a lawyer, Prof. Hubert Izdebski from the SWPS University in Warsaw, local governments cannot legally pursue economic activities beyond utilities. Supplying coal to citizens is not listed as such an activity, he added.
RMF24.pl – The biggest radio broadcaster carried a story that Polish zloty rapidly weakened during the press conference of Adam Glapinski, Poland's central bank governor. On Wednesday, the Monetary Policy Council (RPP), the Polish central bank's rate-setting body, unexpectedly broke its rate-hiking cycle despite rising inflation and kept the reference interest rate at 6.75 percent. On Thursday, Glapinski said that a recent cycle of interest-rate hikes is merely on hold rather than formally at an end. According to RMF, the value of the zloty slumped within several minutes of the press conference. The radio added that investors expected rates increase as a tool to fight high inflation. According to a Central Statistical Office (GUS) flash estimate, CPI increased by 17.2 percent year on year in September.
TVPInfo.pl – The state-owned TV news channel carried a story that the head of the Belarus board guard predicted border provocations by Poland. He told Belarusian newspaper "Minskaya prawda" that Polish border guards were shooting into the air and shouting. He warned that if the situation gets worse then "Minsk will react immediately." Last year, Poland accused Belarus of deliberately flying migrants to Belarus and then pushing them across the borders with EU states in an attempt to destabilise the bloc.
