POLAND REASSURES CREDITORS ON ECONOMIC REFORMS
Plans to rejuvenate Poland's economy
by reducing central government control would help reassure
Western creditors that the country's economy was safe to invest
in, a senior Polish official said.
    "The business of granting loans to Poland is not as bad a
business as you might imagine," senior Polish government
spokesman Jerzy Urban told a news conference in Stockholm.
    Urban, visiting the Swedish capital to deliver a lecture at
the Foreign Policy Institute, announced earlier this week that
Poland would soon offer shares to private citizens in state
companies in a bid to make the economy more responsive.
    This was part of a major economic reform to be announced in
the coming weeks, he said.
    Urban said the main problem with his country's foreign debt
burden of 32 billion dollars was short term interest charges
but  the long term looked more secure.
    He said he hoped talks under way with the Paris Club,
grouping Poland's main government creditors, would shortly
solve the problem of short term servicing.
    Urban told reporters that debt servicing was hampering the
expansion of the national economy, but that the new plans for
economic reform would "open new vistas for Polish exports."
    He criticised the blocking efforts of some Western
governments, whom he declined to name, for putting political
considerations ahead of economic co-operation.
    "After the lifting of U.S. Sanctions against the Polish
economy we considered all political obstacles had been removed,
but that has not been the case," Urban said.
 REUTER
