The Polish government is sticking to its goal of maintaining the deficit cap at 3% of GDP and hopes that higher Value Added Tax (VAT) and Corporate Income Tax (CIT) receipts on new measures will help meet the goal in 2017, deputy Finance Minister Leszek Skiba told a discussion panel hosted by PAP Polish news agency.
“The basic goal is holding deficit below 3% of GDP and it is the case that we have one new program, 500+, and in H2 determining retirement age, standardized deduction and VAT rate,” Skiba said. “Those will be determined at government level and within frame of preparing the budget we will deal with this or another set of spending depending on those final decisions.”
“You can see that tax revenues, albeit not to degree we wish, they are rising,” Skiba said. “We rather deal with new tax challenges and we need exceptional revenues from the fact that exceptional actions on VAT and CIT will allow for the budget to get the new revenues and the new spending will be covered and the deficit won’t be excessive.”
The government expects its general government deficit to increase to 2.9% in 2017 and subside beyond, Poland said in the latest update to the convergence program.
