Polish Consumers Bitter Over Warsaw’s Plans for Major Economic Reforms

The woman, a housewife in her 50s emerging from a shop where she had been standing in line to buy cheese, listened intently to the question, self-consciously fingering a button that dangled from a loose thread on her coat, and then fairly exploded with wrath.

“Reform? I have no belief in this so-called reform,” she said, her face reddening. “I have been lied to so many times for so many years, and I see that nothing has changed. This is the same leadership, the same circle, that did the last reform. I know reality in Poland. Every month things get worse.”

Such is the widespread public skepticism greeting the Polish government’s newly announced plan of economic reform, billed as a radical restructuring of the system. While some Poles may be more cautious than the housewife about expressing their opinions, their doubts are no less serious. Optimism is the scarcest of all commodities in Poland.

The government’s reform plan, the broad outlines of which were announced last week, could have far-reaching consequences for Poland, which is saddled with $35 billion in foreign debt and a steadily deteriorating standard of living.

The central feature of the plan is its announced intention of cutting back on state control of the economy, allowing what Premier Zbigniew Messner called “development of a socialist model of entrepreneurship.”

The size of Poland’s government bureaucracy will be reduced, he said, and market forces will be allowed to influence prices and wages.

In his message to the Sejm, the Polish Parliament, Messner said, “We must repudiate the old era of nonsensical meticulous regulations hampering people’s initiative and activeness.”

The government also announced that it intends to hold a national referendum Nov. 29 to give voters a voice in the pace of reform. The key element, from the public’s point of view, will be the extent of price increases as the government attempts to remove subsidies and price controls on basic commodities.

It is this element--prices--that has aroused the cynicism of many Poles, who suspect that the government is offering vague promises of reform in order to get approval for higher prices.

The government has not yet determined the alternatives to be put forward in the referendum, but officials have said the proposed price increases could be as high as 57%. The government has said that the higher prices will not result in a lower standard of living for most Poles, since wages and cost-of-living allowances will be increased.

“When a man is condemned, they ask him if he wants to be hanged or shot,” a retired engineer said. “Our referendum will be like that.”

The engineer said he has no intention of taking part in the referendum. He said it will be a sham.

The plan is called officially the “second stage” of Polish reform, and a major reason for the widespread suspicion is the failure of the first stage.

Those reforms, enacted in September, 1981, were brought about largely because of pressure from the trade union Solidarity, and included measures that were advertised as leading to a decentralization of the Polish economy. Other elements in the reform package included plans for worker participation in the management of factories. Even after the imposition of martial law in December, 1981, various sessions of the ruling Communist Party endorsed the reforms. Most of them, however, have never been carried out or have been watered down by subsequent legislation.

Guiding Principle

Now, Premier Messner has said that the Polish government will be guided by the principle that “What is not forbidden is permitted.”

Although the prime minister indicated that individual enterprise is to be encouraged under the new plan, skeptics note that the government has not made clear which of the thousands of limiting regulations will be lifted.

“Right now,” one economist said, “virtually everything is forbidden. Unless most of those rules are eliminated, that slogan is just so much double-talk.”

The government said it plans to consolidate 16 of its 26 ministries, winding up with a total of 18. At least 3,000 bureaucrats are expected to lose their jobs. But critics argue that the remaining civil servants will be reluctant to let go of their authority. That authority, in some cases, is used as a means of profit, since some officials, for the right price, can manage to bend a regulation or look the other way when it is violated.

These constraints have imposed severe limitations on private enterprise in Poland. In an economy with chronic shortages of goods and services, individual entrepreneurs would be able to tap an eager market, were it not for the plethora of rules stacked against them.

Long Waiting Periods

Under present regulations, it can take months for a Polish businessman to get permission simply to open a business. Credit for start-up capital, available only from state banks, is hard to obtain. Private business or manufacturing concerns are usually last in line for raw materials from state sources. In addition, there have been limitations on the number of persons a private business may employ. Taxes on private business profits are so high that some concerns--bakeries, for example--work at less than capacity to hold down taxes.

The government says it will streamline the licensing procedure for private businesses, but it is not yet clear how it plans to deal with the rest of these issues. The reform plan promises an increase in the availability of credit, but does not specify how this will be accomplished. Likewise, there is no word on the restrictions on the number of employees or the rates of taxation.

The usual public critics of the Polish government, Lech Walesa and other leaders of Solidarity, the banned free trade union movement, have attacked the reform plan for its failure to include any significant political reform, even while supporting some elements of the economic plan.

Meaningful economic reform, Walesa said, “simply is not possible” without political change. He noted that Solidarity had been urging a referendum on “serious issues” since 1981. But a referendum “on the price of sausage,” he said, is ridiculous.

Some analysts say the government’s proposal for a referendum is a clever strategy to put the Solidarity leadership on the defensive.

If it comes out in opposition to the referendum, the government can argue that Solidarity is opposing reforms that include measures it once supported. On the other hand, if it supports the plan, it is likely to be viewed as endorsing a system that still falls far short of its vision of reform in Poland.

It seems doubtful, however, that the Polish public will adopt that view of Solidarity’s position. In general, the Polish public’s cynicism seems reserved for the government, at least until it sees more specific proposals enacted.

“I am not concerned about this referendum,” a young woman outside a housing project supermarket said the other day. “The government will do whatever it wants anyway.”