“As I have learned from unofficial sources, by mid-March the state budget deficit amounted to PLN 80 billion. We have a deficit of PLN 1 billion per day, that is how quickly the debt in Poland is growing,” said Jarosław Olechowski, head of editors at the station, on TV Republika’s program “Rewolwer.”
According to a statement released by the Ministry of Finance in mid-March, the state budget deficit after the first two months of 2026 stood at PLN 4.5 billion.
“To grasp the scale of this phenomenon, one only needs to look at historical data. The United Right government recorded a deficit of PLN 10.4 billion in 2018, PLN 13.7 billion in 2019, and, in 2022, a deficit of just PLN 12.4 billion, marked by economic shocks following the outbreak of war. Even in 2016, when the extremely costly 500 Plus program was introduced, the annual deficit amounted to PLN 46.3 billion. The current government team has exceeded these full-year figures in just 60 days,”
wrote Grzegorz Wierzchołowski on Niezależna.pl website.
According to unofficial information, the deficit continues to grow at an alarming pace.
“As I have learned from unofficial sources, by mid-March the state budget deficit amounted to PLN 80 billion. We have a deficit of PLN 1 billion per day, that is how quickly the debt in Poland is increasing,”
reiterated Jarosław Olechowski on TV Republika.
Earlier, these figures had also been circulated by, among others, MP Zbigniew Kuźmiuk, a member of the Sejm’s Public Finance Committee.
“Just three days after the Ministry of Finance released a statement illustrating the state of the budget at the end of February, unofficial information emerged that by mid-March the budget deficit had already exceeded PLN 80 billion. This suggests that, for reasons not yet fully known, we are dealing with a clear slowdown, or possibly even a collapse, in budget revenues, which, combined with a steady monthly level of expenditures, is causing the deficit to rise sharply. This is happening in a situation of relatively high economic growth by EU standards, set at 3.9% of GDP in the budget law, with consumption, exceptionally highly taxed in Poland, being the main driver of this growth,”
Kuźmiuk noted on his blog on salon24.pl portal.
Previous years show that March was typically a month of significant increases in the budget deficit; however, in 2026, we are dealing with unprecedented figures.
“If the information about a PLN 80 billion budget deficit by mid-March is confirmed, the pace of its growth indicates that by the end of March, after the first quarter, the deficit will exceed PLN 100 billion. It will then be clear that the full-year deficit, already set at an astronomically high level of PLN 272 billion, will not be sustainable, and the budget law will have to be amended,”
Kuźmiuk observed.
The MP also claims that the current deficit is understated due to “creative accounting” by the Ministry of Finance, namely, shifting part of VAT revenues from December 2025 to January 2026.