Polish Deficit Dropped to 2.3% of GDP

Polish public finance deficit amounted to 2.3% of GDP in 2016, the lowest level since 2007, Radio Poland quoted the European Commission report as saying. According to the EC, in 2017 deficit will amount to 2.9% of GDP, and in 2018 the figure will grow to 3%. In a report published on the EC’s website, the improvement over earlier estimates for 2016 was “mainly driven by a drop in public investment and one-off revenue, while tax collection was in line with budget plans”. The increase in the deficit forecast for 2017 was caused by the “increasing costs of lowering the statutory retirement age,” the EC wrote. “The forecast does not include the effects of ongoing efforts to enhance the collection of taxes on production and income, as their likely impact is hard to estimate with sufficient accuracy at this stage,” the report added.