The Council of Ministers has adopted the draft budget law for 2023. It stipulates that next year’s state budget revenues will be around PLN 604.4 billion. This is an increase of nearly 110%, compared to 2015.

The draft law will now be submitted for consultation to the Social Dialogue Council. The final draft budget will be adopted by the government at the end of September.

“Within this budget, we have made many assumptions, expenditures to ensure the security of Polish families, in this difficult period in which we have to govern, in the period of war in Ukraine,” said Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.

The head of government stressed that the high inflation rate is caused by factors such as the war beyond Poland’s eastern border, tensions on energy commodity markets and the COVID-19 pandemic.

“This is the environment in which we operate and based on the assumptions of various international institutions and our own analyses, we have arrived at some specific macroeconomic parameters that allowed us then shaping the budget assumptions,” the Prime Minister pointed out.

The Budget Law for 2023 envisages that state budget revenues will amount to PLN 604.4 billion. State budget expenditure has been planned at PLN 669.4 billion. The state budget deficit is therefore to amount to no more than PLN 65 billion.

In the 2023 budget, funds have been planned for key social programmes concerning family support. These include the ‘Family 500+’ programme (PLN 40.2 billion in 2023), the ‘Good Start’ benefit (PLN 1.4 billion in 2023), and the Family Care Capital (PLN 2.4 billion in 2023).

The budget also assumes an increase in funding for Poland’s defence needs from 2.2% to 3% of GDP. In 2015, defence expenditure amounted to PLN 37.1 billion; in 2023, it is planned at PLN 97.4 billion.

The 2023 budget also assumes an increase in health care funding to over 6% of GDP. In 2015, expenditure on health care amounted to around PLN 78 billion. In 2023, it is estimated to be around PLN 165 billion.

Adrian Andrzejewski