The Minister's mission

At his first conference, new Economy Minister Piotr Woźniak appraised the current state of the Polish economy as "good" and announced the priorities of his new Ministerial team.

"The Polish economy is in quite good condition, which is especially due to Poland entering the EU. The results in foreign trade are very good even though we still have a negative balance of trade - some zł.10 billion - but it is not likely to increase. Unemployment fell to 17.3 percent and we expect FDI to reach $10 billion next year. So the new ministry has a good start but there is still room for improvement," Woźniak said.

The Economy Minister announced his focus would be on maintaining the fast pace of economic development and abolishing barriers to business activity, in order to meet the Prime Minister's forecast of five-percent GDP growth.

"We are going to draft a list of barriers to entrepreneurship in Poland, we'll present that list to the Council of Ministers and try to get rid of those regulations that actually impede doing business," he said.

He also promised increased institutional support for small and medium-sized enterprises. "SMEs are the basis of economic development. A couple of weeks ago I was a businessman myself and I know that because of red tape each businessman has to spend two whole working days every month on administrative procedures. That needs to change."

Woźniak said his Ministry is still undergoing reorganization, since the division of responsibilities between Ministers changed in the new government, with regional development becoming the scope of interest for Grażyna Gęsicka and a new Ministry of Labor and Social Policy being created with Krzysztof Michałkiewicz at its helm.

"In spite of the organizational complications we finalized the deal with LG Philips for their zł.10 billion investment in Kobierzyce. Almost 11,000 new jobs will be created, which I think is a great success," Woźniak stressed.