Polish prime minister fires finance minister in overhaul

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Poland\'s Prime Minister Beata Szydlo tells reporters that she has dismissed her finance minister and given his job to Deputy Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki at her office in Warsaw, Poland, Wednesday, Sept. 28, 20160. She said the dismissal was dictated by the need to speed up economic reforms. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

WARSAW, Poland – Poland’s conservative prime minister on Wednesday fired her finance minister and is gave his duties to the country’s deputy prime minister as part of a government restructuring.

Prime Minister Beata Szydlo said the dismissal of Finance Minister Pawel Szalamacha was dictated by the need to speed up and consolidate economic reforms.

Szydlo says the ministry will now be led by Minister of Development and Deputy Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.

Szalamacha had served as finance minister since November and prepared the 2017 budget draft. He recently yielded to European Union protests and backed away from a major government project, a tax on foreign-owned and Polish supermarkets operating in Poland. The tax was to help finance pro-family policy.

Szydlo spoke following a weekly government session where cabinet members also approved Szalamacha’s draft 2017 budget that keeps the budget deficit below the EU-allowed limit of 3 per cent of GDP.

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