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The Finance Ministry expects unemployment to continue falling this year, following from 2006's drop from 18 percent to 15 percent. "We forecast that unemployment will fall by three percentage points this year," said Minister of Finance Zyta Gilowska, adding that the unemployment rate should stand at just over 12 percent at the end of the year.

Gilowska also added that the the government is planning to "significantly" decrease non-salary labor costs. "We have one of the highest [non-salary] labor costs in the OECD," Gilowska said, noting that these costs amount to around 44 percent of the average salary in Poland. "We want to reduce this to 38.7 percent," Gilowska promised. According to the Ministry's estimates, this should cost E6 (zł.22.8) billion in the first year and a half after the strategy starts to be implemented, which should take place in the middle of this year.

Gilowska expects that reducing this burden on labor costs will help increase the number of people professionally active in Poland. "It should rise from 54.6 percent in 2006 to 57.8 percent in 2009," she predicted.

"Taking the economy and public finances into consideration, we are prepared for reforms," Gilowska said. But she expressed worry that political instability in the government could hamper some of the initiatives. "When looking at the political situation, we cannot rule out that some things may not be implemented," she concluded.