Doing Business in Poland (is slow)

According to the FT, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the prime minister of Poland, said the government would cut from 31 days to three days the amount of time it takes to open a business. The prime minister also promised to make it more difficult for government agents to undertake long and vaguely formulated inspections of private companies.

This comment holds out the hope that Poland, which ranked 114 out of 175 countries on the ease of starting a business and landed a particularly low score of 146 in the "dealing with licenses" category, is on a path to real reform. The subscription-based Polish press service suggests that the excitement was premature:

Corporate red-tape reforms would not reduce the number of controls conducted in companies, contrary to what Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski presented March 19, 2007, a critic now claims. For a business activity liberty bill to really decrease the number of controls, changes in the laws governing market regulators [almost 40] are needed, but no such changes are planned by the government, claims Jan Lic from Economic Academy in Krakow, co-author of the bill.