Bumpy road to 2012
The All-Polish Economic Chamber of Road-building (OIGD) has expressed concern over Poland's ability to complete its ambitious road-building plan in time for the Euro 2012 football championship. Over the next five years, the government hopes to construct a full 960 km of new highways and over 2,700 km of express roads, in addition to modernizing nearly 4,000 km of existing roadway.
"This is a good plan but it's not feasible," says the president of OIGD, Wojciech Malusi. The Chamber claims that the state will come zł.35 billion short. According to its calculations, the costs would amount to zł.110 billion. With the EU providing zł.44 billion for Polish roads over the 2007-2013 period and the state supplying zł.31 billion, funding the remainder poses a weighty question.
"The state thinks it will build everything with EU funds, but that's not possible," Malusi contended.
Minister of Transport Jerzy Polaczek tried to allay such fears by issuing a statement that the government would provide zł.41 billion for construction related to Euro 2012 to supplement EU funds. He said that total expenditure for roads until 2015 would reach zł.164 billion, adding that if he didn't think the program was realistic he wouldn't have taken responsibility for it.
Malusi estimates that the government would need to spend one percent of GDP on roads per year as opposed to the current 0.3-percent level, and raising the percentage of fuel tax spent on road work to 48 percent. Organizations like the Polish-American Chamber of Commerce (Am-Cham) have put forward recommendations for making use of Public Private Partnerships (PPP) as way to relieve the state budget of its financial burden.
The industry is also concerned by the falling number of road-construction tenders. This year the General Directorate for National Roads and Motorways (GDDKiA) completed a mere 306 tenders, nearly a third less than in 2006. Much of this is due to growing materials and labor costs, along with excessive bureaucracy.
Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński was quick to reply to OIGD's worries. "We will break the cartel which wants to hinder the organization of Euro 2012," he said, claiming construction companies and construction-materials producers are raising prices "to earn a fast buck."
