The previous government had overestimated its 2014-2015 exports by PLN 20-30 billion by including fictitious invoices in its calculations, resulting in inflated GDP growth estimates, deputy PM, Finance and Development Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on the sidelines of the Economic Forum in Davos.
“Today we already know that at least PLN 20 billion or PLN 30 billion of exports in 2014 or 2015 was fiction resulting from fake VAT invoices,” Morawiecki said. “This means that economic growth in 2014-2015 was in fact strongly overestimated.”
“I hope that GUS [state statistical office], Eurostat and economists will estimate it well,” he added, warning against making oversimplified calculations.
Asked about 2016 growth, Morawiecki said it would be “lower than had been planned,” but that budget income would nevertheless exceed expectations by 1-2%.
“Such growth is usually characterized by lower budget income, but here there is a piece of good news: despite lower than expected growth, lower than expected inflation, last year’s budget income will be more or less PLN 1-2% above plan,” he said.
Poland reported 3.9% GDP growth in 2015 after 3.3% growth in 2014. Last year’s exports reached PLN 747 billion (EUR 178.7 billion), producing a trade surplus of PLN 15.5 billion (EUR 3.7 billion) after a 2014 deficit.
Poland’s 2016 budget was built on 3.8% GDP growth. Q1-Q2 growth reached 2.9%.
Poland’s GDP might have been overestimated by fictitious exports used for tax fraud, but by no more than 0.5% of GDP, economic think tank IBnGR expert Bohdan Wyznikiewicz said, commenting on remarks by Morawiecki.
Additionally, GUS bases its foreign trade statistics on data from the Finance Ministry, INnGR and GUS said.
Societe Generale chief economist Jaroslaw Janecki sees political motives in Morawiecki’s claims of overstated GDP in years 2014-2015: the discussion started when the data on the weaker 2016 GDP are slated to appear.
(The Warsaw Voice)
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