Candidates chosen for NBP boss
Five candidates have been chosen to run for the president of the National Bank of Poland (NBP), President Aleksander Kwasniewski announced last week. The listed candidates are Leszek Balcerowicz (53), Marek Belka (48), Dariusz Filar (50) Andrzej Slawinski (49) and Jerzy Stopyra (47). The first three candidates are economy professors, and the latter two hold doctorates in economics. Only Balcerowicz and Belka have links with politics.
The financial markets welcomed the nominees and late last week the zloty made gains on the WSE trading at 4,47 zl to the dollar.
Before Kwaoniewski presents his final nominations this week, he will meet with the leaders of political parliamentary clubs to choose the final candidates for the Sejm to vote on.
The best known candidate is Leszek Balcerowicz, a supporter of tough monetary and fiscal policies, head of the Freedom Union (UW) and a former minister of finance. Hes widely recognised as the architect of Polands successful transition to a market economy in the 1990s. Marek Belka, the economic advisor to Kwasniewski, was deputy prime minister and finance minister in the left-wing government of 1997. Andrzej S3awinski is advisor to the president of the NBP and is an academic teacher at Warsaw School of Economics. Jerzy Stopyra, the first deputy president of the NBP, has worked at the bank for 14 years. Dariusz Filar, the only candidate from the commercial financial sector, is chief economist in Pekao SA, a bank listed on the Warsaw stock exchange. He is known as a monetarist and supporter of tough monetary policies.
The new head of the central bank will replace Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz, who recently accepted the position of deputy president of the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development, a London based international investment institution.
