WARSAW: The head of Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party has said that last week’s decisions by rating agencies give the lie to claims that democracy and the Polish economy are at risk. Jarosław Kaczyński said that rating agencies “simply concluded that all the stories about there being a threat to democracy in Poland, or a threat to the market economy, are simply bogus, that this is nonsense. Because it is nonsense.”
Rating agency Fitch last week kept Poland’s A- long-term foreign currency rating and stable outlook unchanged. Meanwhile, another of the “big four” rating agencies, Moody’s, reported on Friday that it had not updated the Polish rating, which remained at A2 / P-1 for long and short-term obligations in foreign and local currency, with a negative outlook. Kaczyński said: “Compared to other European countries, including those present on [international] markets much longer than we are, you can say that there is order in Poland. Order in finances, order in the economy.”
In January last year, Standard & Poor’s lowered Poland’s long-term foreign credit rating to BBB+ from A-, and warned of a possible further downgrade, saying the conservative Law and Justice party, which swept to power in a landslide parliamentary election win in late 2015, had weakened the independence of key institutions. The move by S&P sparked anger in Poland, with the Polish finance ministry calling the decision “incomprehensible”. In December, Standard & Poor’s decided to keep Poland’s rating unchanged at BBB+ but raised the country’s outlook to stable.
