Presidential mediation may not have broken government-RPP deadlock

At yesterday's meeting with the Monetary Policy Council (RPP) President Aleksander Kwasniewski confirmed the independence of the central bank. "We agreed that the government needs to cooperate with the RPP," said Kwasniewski during a press conference with NBP president Leszek Balcerowicz. "We talked about lowering pressure on the appreciation of the zloty, and about the exchange rate strategy in the context of Poland becoming a member of the EU," he added. Leszek Balcerowicz said the Council still insisted that the current exchange rate mechanism is better than the alternatives that have been suggested so far, but expressed his readiness to hold talks on the exchange rate in the face of Poland's entry to the EU. He also announced that decisions regarding changes to the interest rate would be taken on economic rather then political grounds. There are three draft amendments to the law governing the central bank, one of which prepared by the governing coalition SLD-UP envisages increasing the influence of the government by increasing the number of its appointed members on the Council. Another suggestion is to make the Council legally obliged to focus on boosting the economy and reducing the unemployment, rather than solely be concerned with inflation. (Rzeczpospolita, p. A4) K.S.