Poland backs central bank governor for EBRD chief
PR dla Zagranicy
Paweł Kononczuk
03.03.2016 14:16
Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydło on Thursday confirmed that her government would back central bank (NBP) governor Marek Belka as a candidate for the new head of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
Marek Belka. Photo: Flickr.com/imfphoto
The four-year term of Suma Chakrabarti, the current EBRD head, expires at the beginning of July, while Belka’s six-year term as central bank chief finishes some two weeks earlier.
Szydło told reporters: "We have until 11 March to officially put forward Prof. Belka’s name as a candidate” to head the EBRD.
Belka was prime minister in a government backed by the left in 2004-05, while Szydło’s Law and Justice party, which came to power in Poland’s general elections last October, is staunchly conservative.
The Puls Biznesu newspaper last month quoted an unnamed source as saying that for Law and Justice leader Jarosław Kaczyński, “the key factor is that a Pole could take over so important and prestigious a position, and the fact that only the current president of the NBP gives Poland any chance in the race" to head the EBRD.
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is an international financial institution founded in 1991 to help the former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe make a transition to a free-market economy.
Meanwhile, former rate-setter Adam Glapiński was this week appointed to the management board of Poland’s central bank. The move paves the way to him taking over as the bank’s governor in June, the Polish PAP news agency reported. (pk)
Source: PAP