OECD Economic Surveys: Poland 2016 (eBook)

Oecd (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2016 | 1. Auflage
140 Seiten
OECD Publishing (Verlag)
978-92-64-25257-8 (ISBN)

Infos

This 2016 OECD Economic Survey of the Poland examines recent economic developments, policies and prospects. The special chapters cover: Skills and migration; Transport and energy infrastructure.

Textauszug

Annex Progress in structural reform

Recommendations	Action taken since the beginning of 2014

Product and financial market competition

Give the Competition Authority more powers to split up firms to reduce dominant market positions and to impose vertical separation as a remedy for reduced third-party access in network industries. Create an independent regulator for water and sanitation services.

The Competition Authority can now impose structural remedies, when behavioural measures prove insufficient or overly damaging to the undertaking. After a two-year monitoring period and consultations, the Competition Authority may be given new powers.

Modify public procurement practices to select the contractors offering the best value for money rather than the lowest price. Focus procurement decisions on a mix of prices and technical bid details, including environmental impact assessments. Enhance staff skills to deal with complex selection criteria.

The application of the price as sole award criterion has been restricted to contracts for standard goods and services. Contracting authorities have been encouraged to consider innovative, environmental and social characteristics. Specific guidelines and training measures have been provided to contracting authorities. Governmental institutions now have to respect some social clauses in procurement contracts.

Make the judicial environment friendlier to class actions in cases of competition breaches. Accelerate the functioning of the judicial system to shorten the time between the Competition Authority’s decisions and a final court decision in antitrust cases.

No action taken.

Pursue privatisation, and substantially reduce government ownership in competitive segments of the economy while ensuring sound governance of remaining state-owned enterprises. Remove regulations and implicit subsidies distorting competition between public and private firms.

The number of companies the Treasury supervises fell from 387 in January 2014 to 281 in December 2015. The government envisages selling further minority shares. A new target for gender composition, additional financial planning and extra training of state-appointed directors have together strengthened SOE boards.

Fully implement the second and third stages of the liberalisation of professional services.

The second and third stages entered into force in August 2014 and December 2015.

Reduce anti-competitive pressures resulting from the participation of Polish Airports State Enterprise (PPL) in many airport entities, and consider long-term concession agreements or privatisation for airport entities. Privatise the national air carrier (LOT).

PPL is running its business on its own behalf and risk. It has shares in entities managing the most important Polish regional airports, running their business under commercial law. The analyses for the privatisation of LOT are ongoing.

Deepen financial development through a consolidation of co-operative banks and an improved legal framework for collateral. Set a cap on interbank fees for credit card transactions to reduce the effects of market concentration in line with the 2013 EU proposal.

New regulations allow co-operative banks to set up institutional protection schemes, which group institutions together. A cap on interbank fees was introduced and reduced to 0.3% and 0.2% for credit and debit card transactions, respectively.

Fiscal policy and the budgetary framework

Improve tax compliance and cut tax expenditures. Simplify tax regulations. Reinforce the monitoring and enforcement of the tax system. Eliminate the preferential regimes for the self-employed and link their social security contributions to their actual earnings. Broaden tax bases by introducing cash registers for all professional services to improve VAT collection and by significantly tightening eligibility for the lump-sum income tax. Extend the social insurance contribution base to uncovered earnings.

A law passed in 2015 assigns more tax administration staff to inspection and enforcement. There is now pre-filling for tax declarations, and the number of required documents was reduced. Companies will be assigned to a single tax office, and tax rulings will now clarify all cases of identical content. Mandatory cash registers were extended to several professional and personal services. Supervisory board members now have to pay social contributions.

Redesign and increase the least distortive taxes, by establishing market-value-based property taxes and by taxing capital gains on rented properties.

No action taken.

Further tighten eligibility criteria in the generous disability pension system. Substantially reduce subsidies to the farmers’ social security scheme, eliminate pension privileges for certain occupations, and increase the female retirement age at a faster pace, e.g. to reach 67 by 2030 instead of 2040 as currently scheduled.

Since January 2015 farmers undertaking additional work on a contract of mandate pay contributions to the universal ZUS insurance for that part of their revenues. Prevention and rehabilitation by KRUS will be financed almost fully by farmers’ contributions. However, a presidential draft bill envisages lowering retirement ages.

Strengthen the fiscal framework by: introducing a deficit rule; creating an independent fiscal council at least to monitor fiscal performance relative to targets; and harmonising the domestic and Maastricht definitions of government debt.

An expenditure rule was introduced into the budget process in 2014. It was amended in late 2015: the scope of entities covered was increased, the inflation forecast used to determine the spending limit was replaced by the MPC target, and a possibility to increase expenditures in case of positive one-offs was introduced. The government considers that most elements of a fiscal council are in place, as the supreme audit office assesses budget execution in terms of its compliance with fiscal rules.

Labour markets (see also Chapter 1 herein)

Allow the public employment services to hire more skilled staff, and ensure that overall resources are better allocated to front-line placement tasks. Promote the adoption of best practices through performance management and benchmarking of employment-service providers.

Managers of local labour offices and placement officers with good results can now receive performance-based rewards. As of 2017 external employment service providers will be benchmarked based on placement and three-month retention rates.

Rationalise ALMPs by focusing more on job-search assistance, career guidance and work schemes having a high training content. Improve job-seeker profiling. Reduce passive social assistance by making more transfers (such as childcare subsidies) conditional in part on being employed or seeking work. Expand the scope of private employment services.

Different tasks at local labour offices were combined to create client advisor posts in 2014.The number of such client advisors, including staff involved in job-search assistance, grew in total to 7812. Needs-based intensity-of-service provision based on profiling was introduced. The possibility to outsource job-placement services to private providers was introduced in 2015.

Consider merging local labour offices with unemployment benefits and social assistance administration to create a one-stop shop and more fundamentally to integrate the management of those activities. Enhance coordination and automatic exchange of information between local labour offices, firms, assistance centres and education institutions.

Since 2014 unemployed recipients of social assistance can be guided towards activation and social integration programmes under joint supervision by local labour offices, the social welfare centre and NGOs under the Activation and Integration Program (PAI).

Refrain from increasing the minimum-to-average wage ratio. Consider differentiating the minimum wage across regions depending on local labour-market conditions. Reduce wage rigidities by bringing the effects of age and education on public-sector wages closer to private-sector standards.

In January 2016, the minimum wage was increased by 6% for full-time workers with more than one year of tenure. This is above the increase in the average wage projected by the OECD.

Consider introducing an earned-income tax credit to encourage labour market participation by marginal groups.

No action taken.

Eliminate pre-retirement schemes, and prevent disability pensions from becoming attractive relative to...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 22.3.2016
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Staat / Verwaltung
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft ► Volkswirtschaftslehre ► Wirtschaftspolitik
• ISBN-10: 92-64-25257-6 / 9264252576
• ISBN-13: 978-92-64-25257-8 / 9789264252578