Following the MPC’s decision earlier this month to halt its cycle of interest rate hikes and to keep Poland's main interest rate unchanged at 6.75 percent, two of the panel's members distanced themselves from the move.
One of Poland’s most prominent job market experts, Joanna Tyrowicz, a recent addition to the MPC team, slammed the 10-person body for its latest official statement justifying its stance, and posted on LinkedIn an edited version of the document in which she expressed her own views on how monetary policy should be made.
In an interview on Tuesday, Tyrowicz said that, as an economist, she could not understand the MPC’s decision, adding that the rates "should be raised a few percentage points more."
Joanna Tyrowicz (pictured) is a professor of economics at the University of Warsaw. She joined Poland's rate-setting Monetary Policy Council last month. Photo: PAP/Marcin Obara
Another rate-setter, Przemysław Litwiuniuk, criticised the panel’s modus operandi whereby he said its members have limited contact with the bank’s analysts.
Underlining that he first voiced his concerns “on the inside,” Litwiniuk told private broadcaster TVN24 that he later made his worries public in a bid to “nurture the image” of the MPC, for which he feels responsible.
In response to these claims, Glapiński, who is the governor of the National Bank of Poland (NBP) and a member of the central bank's rate-setting panel, said that all rate-setters “should remain independent and abide by the law.”
Supported by four other Council members, Glapiński threatened that Tyrowicz and Litwiuniuk could "face prosecution for violation of some of the MPC-related legal provisions."
The National Bank of Poland on Wednesday issued a statement saying that “a media campaign of this size may have a lasting impact on the central bank’s image and affect the stability of the country’s financial system.”
The statement added that the Council comprised “members of various ideological persuasions” but in the past “they never breached the rules of the MPC’s collective action and never inveighed against the central bank’s governor or other MPC members.”
Both Tyrowicz and Litwiniuk, as well as Ludwik Kotecki, another member critical of the panel's monetary policy stance, were appointed by the opposition-controlled upper house, the Senate.
The friction within the rate-setting committee comes as inflation in Poland hit a 25-year high of 17.2 percent in September.
(pjm/gs)
Source: Rzeczpospolita, Reuters, NBP