ZUS warns that company debts may end up being picked up by the budget

The president of the Social Insurance Company (ZUS) Aleksandra Wiktorow, says that the government should tread very carefully with its ideas of reducing the liabilities of state companies to ZUS. The less it receives, the more subsidies ZUS needs from the budget. The Social Insurance Company is feeling the wider squeeze in the economy, with zl. 500 million less revenues in May as compared to April, and this was repeated again in June. Between January and April companies paid over zl. 6.2 billion in contributions to ZUS every month, but now this has dropped to just under zl. 6 billion. The company is having to take more and more legal action to collect overdue payments. Last year such methods were used to collect zl. 1.8 billion of outstanding contributions. If the proposed plan to reduce these liabilities is accepted, ZUS will find itself in a difficult position. "We cannot allow a situation, in which companies will be able to reduce their debts which are the future pensions of its employees," added Wiktorow. (Puls Biznesu, pp. 1, 8) M.M.