The Polish zloty climbed by 1%, as broke trough the lower bound of the current 3.80-3.84 EUR/PLN price range on Thursday. The currency spiked to one-month high at 3.782, as it benefited from the relief enjoyed by the Slovak koruna and pledge of PM Marcinkiewicz to adopt the euro. The PLN got off to a good start of the day at 3.8200 EUR/PLN despite the negative undertone of the populist Self Defense tax proposals allegedly written into the so-called “stabilization pact” and released early in the morning. These include the raising of the threshold of tax-free personal income, lowering the CIT rate from 19% to 10%, the introduction of a 2.5% tax on business turnover and raising the dividend tax rate to from 19% to 30%. It worth reminding that ex-liberal FinMin Zyta Gilowska will present details concerning the government’s 2007 tax reform this Saturday. Even though the nature of the agreement between the PiS and populists on tax issues is not clear, we believe that the PiS will not see it as binding. This could put the stabilization pact to an early test sometime soon. On the other hand, if the Law And Justice turns out to be more accommodating than we expect it to be, this could lead to Gilowska’s early departure, something we think neither the Kaczynski brothers nor financial markets are looking forward to.
The largest single move of the day came just after noon and was triggered, according to market speculations, by a FinMin intervention. Later in the afternoon NBP governor Leszek Balcerowicz reiterated he expected that the Ministry would not attempt to strengthen the PLN with market interventions in the future. Together with a handful of comments on inflation this has become the governor’s mantra recently, and as such was ignored by the market. As for today’s trading the zloty may continue to rise with the eco calendar empty and politics still off the agenda.
ČSOB - Investment Research