Jarosław Kaczyński, leader of main Polish opposition party Law and Justice (PiS), defended his recent proposals for improving the Polish economy by presenting what he sees as the costs and benefits of his ideas. He called his proposals “completely realistic,” saying that the recently unveiled government draft budget plan for 2013 was the exact opposite.

Last weekend, Mr Kaczyński proposed, among other things, a 10-year program to create 1.2 million jobs, a unification of the PIT and CIT tax codes, zł.300 vouchers for poorer families to spend on sending their children to pre-school, undoing the recently-passed pension reform which raised the retirement age to 67 for both men and women, and increasing tax rebates for families with more than one child.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk criticized the PiS leader's ideas saying the proposals didn't take into consideration “the context of the crisis” and would be too expensive. The PM also said his government would present the costs of Mr Kaczyński's ideas to the public this week.

Pre-empting this, the PiS leader today told TVP1 that his program would have to be “spread over a period of time” with a good model being “Sweden and the reforms enacted there in the 1990s.”

Jarosław Kaczyński claims his proposal to reduce a social tax paid for employees would cost the government zł.9 billion, while zł.3 billion would be needed to start his jobs program. Add to that zł.1 billion for his pro-family proposals and a zł.400 million loss from eliminating tax for pensioners receiving under zł.1,000 a month, and the total amounts to zł.12-13.5 billion, the PiS leader said.

He believes that his proposals for simplifying the tax system, plus a bank tax, would earn the government an extra zł.11 billion. He also believes the state should be able to reduce the size of its administration, reforms that would mean his program would have a net cost of zero or “very little.”

RA