Ministry of Finance criticizes 500+ program

The Ministry of Finance published a report on Thursday in which it strongly criticized the current version of the 500 + program. It emphasizes that it does not reject the existence of the program as a whole, but that it simply desires various amendments to be made in order to make a more precise and better functioning measure. The report,  available online on the Government Legislation Center website, points out among, other things, that the official evaluation of the consequences of the bill  projects its expenses to amount to 17, 272 billion PLN, whereas the government's most recent budget projections assumed that it will equal 17, 055 billion PLN. The Ministry believes the program should be financed only up to that amount. The report also notes that the decision to remove parental leave benefits may lead to increases of the total cost of the 500+  program. Furthermore, "it should be expected that the increase in money transfers to parents will cause deactivation [quitting a job or a job search] among parents." Another reservation of the report is the lack of clarity regarding the rules by which funds would be transferred from the main government to the heads of municipal governments in order to implement the program. The 500+ program is scheduled to come into effect on the 1st of April. It is based upon giving families 500 PLN in financial support for every second and successive child that they have; families with extremely low income will receive the same support for their first child as well. The Minister of Finance Paweł Szałamacha also said in a press conference on Thursday that these reservations were directly expressed at a meeting of the Council of Ministers on Thursday, and that "some of the suggestions were accepted, [while others] were dismissed."