We had to wait for the right moment, but it’s been done since May 12: Adam Glapinski, the governor of the Polish central bank (NBP), was reappointed for a second and final term, until in 2028. Speculation was rife in the weeks leading up to the Diet vote. Polish President Andrzej Duda had tabled a motion supporting Adam Glapinski’s candidacy five months earlier. However, the ballot has been postponed several times, for fear – it has been said – that the outgoing candidate will fail to obtain the necessary majority. Finally, the entire coalition in power, helped by a few votes drawn from other parties, opted for the former minister for regional planning and construction, the only candidate for the post. Almost all of the opposition, including the far right, voted against.
It must be said that, in recent months, Adam Glapinski has become a particularly maligned personality. In addition to being criticized for his closeness to Jaroslaw Kaczynski – the leader of the ruling party (the PiS) – the economist, who has also been a deputy and senator in the past, is accused of having ignored the signs before -runners of long-term inflation, which the NBP was slow to curb. In January 2021, Adam Glapinski had effectively dismissed the possibility of a price spike. “I don’t understand where some observers’ concerns about the supposed threat of soaring inflation come from. There is no data to confirm this.”, he noted at a monetary institute press conference, suggesting that deflation would then be more likely. An opinion that the interested party was still hammering in September 2021: “Available forecasts point to lower inflation next year”, he said then.
Crescendo
On 31st May the Polish Statistics Office revealed that inflation was prancing to 13.9% for the month of May, unheard of since 1998 in the country. The phenomenon went crescendo from March-April 2021, exceeding the NBP’s inflation target (3.5%). It was only in October, when inflation peaked at 7.8%, that the central bank decided to raise its key rate for the first time from 0.10% to 0.50%.
Shattered confidence in the institution is likely to “keep inflation high, even when the external factors that cause it have disappeared” Hanna Cichy, economist
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