Some light in the tunnel

But what really sticks in the craw of Polish businesspeople and foreign investors are the endless bureaucratic hoops one must leap through in order to set up and run a company. On this front, the government took a welcome step in the right direction last week when Prime Minister Marcinkiewicz announced a series of bills that he calls a "constitution of business law." The proposals include setting up a one-stop-shop (the Tax Office) for registering a business and shortening the time it takes to do so from 31 days down to no more than seven, and should give Poland's beleaguered entrepreneurs some relief.

While more could certainly be done to make doing business in this country easier, the Prime Minister's proposals, if enacted, would have an immediate positive impact by making Poland's highly entrepreneurial economy more flexible and spurring private investment. Business leaders ought to get behind them.

Certainly, talk is cheap, and a healthy skepticism ought to be maintained until concrete results are seen in the form of Marcinkiewicz's 'business constitution' graduating from a bill to law. Indeed, the recent inclusion of more socialist-protectionist elements into the government mean the proposals finally becoming a reality is a far from a foregone conclusion. All the more important then, that the business community stands up and expresses its support for the Prime Minister's proposals - some progress is better than none.