Poland’s hidden debt

Officially, the public debt figure in Poland stands at roughly 900 billion zloty, or some 210 billion euro. But what about the so-called implicit or hidden debt which is threefold that sum?

As Slawek Szefs reports, this far larger state liability often skips the public's awareness, though its long term effects may be extremely painful for the statistical taxpayer.

“One way of coping with this problem is to increase the retirement age, so that we work longer and we get pension payments over a shorter period of time. In Poland the retirement age is very low,” says Professor Stanislaw Gomulka, chief economist of the prestigious Business Center Club and a former deputy finance minister of Poland.