Public Finance Commission looks for savings in public debt servicing

The Polish Public Finance Commission (KFP), desperately looking for 2003 budget savings, has proposed limiting the servicing of public debt and would also be keen to reduce the funding of public institutions. The commission would like to downgrade spending on public debt servicing by zl. 85 million (zl. 45 million in national- and zl. 40 million in foreign- debt). The KFP, which met yesterday to discuss future budget spending, is now facing serious problems with spending proposals by sector commissions and individual MPs exceeding zl. 4 billion while opportunities for increasing budget revenues remain scant. According to Mieczyslaw Czerniawski of the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD), the savings might amount at most to zl. 500 million to zl. 600 million. The entire process was simplified following the commission's decision that the zl. 75 million budget reserve could not be infringed upon, which eliminated a number of potentially costly motions. Similarly, further spending was avoided when the commission agreed to set the cost of Polish-EU integration at zl. 423 million, a figure which is now fixed. The commission decided yesterday that the budget revenues in 2003 would remain at zl. 154.76 billion, the same as this year. (Rzeczpospolita, p. B2) J.K.