Poland gives priority to consumer goods

Press, 25 September 1980, Page 7

Poland gives priority to consumer goods

NZPA , Warsaw The Polish Government has annouiced new investment priorities for 1981 and has said that the country will continue to need foreign loars to help it overcome its economic problems. The official news agency, Pap, said ;hat the Government had decided to shelve some big investment projects and give priority to investments connected with consumer Leeds and food.

“Tensiors in the economy impose the: necessity of solving these present swollen problems . . . with the help of additioial foreign means,” Pap said. Poland, which owes more

i than $20,000 million to the iWest, faces an uphill [struggle to recoup economic losses from a summer of strikes which caused a deficit in foreign trade for the first eight months of the year. The Government pledge to concentrate investment in food supplies conformed with the pledge by the new Communist leader, Stanislaw Kania, to boost the depressed private agricultural sector.

The Warsaw daily, “Zycie Warszawy,” acknowledged that ideological considerations had inflicted serious damage on Poland’s vital agricultural industry, of

which more than three-quar-ters is still in private hands. “Agricultural policy was distorted, some local- activists seemed to believe that they had to • consolidate State farms at all costs and thoughtlessly,” “Zycie Warszawy” said. . . . The newspaper said that State farms accounted for 25 per cent of arable land, but used 64 per cent of all capital expenditure on agriculture.

“State farms have an important and constantly growing role to play in Polish agriculture .. . but one should stop nursing them like prematurely born children and limit subsidies,” the daily said.