“Start-up Loan” Will Divide the Coalition. The Minister of Funds Points Out Errors and Dangers

The idea of ​​a loan subsidy program, whatever it is called (the Ministry of Development and Technology now calls it “Start Credit”, previously promoting the name with a hashtag), will lead to disputes within the coalition. This is probably why work on the project has been taking so long. Let us recall that after taking power, the then head of the Ministry of Development and Technology argued that the program would come into effect this summer, and then in the spring, there was silence on the project for a dozen or so weeks. This was widely perceived as a sign of resignation in the face of criticism that the idea of ​​further subsidies had met with.

Start-up loan will divide coalition partners

In July, the Minister of Development, Krzysztof Paszyk, announced that work was in full swing and that the program’s assumptions would be known in the fall. Why so late, when Donald Tusk repeatedly promised a zero percent loan during the election campaign? The mere act of writing down the assumptions could have been much quicker; the problem seems to be the support that the project is likely to receive.

The Left has been critical of the idea of ​​returning to subsidies from the very beginning. Its politicians point out that last year’s program drove up real estate prices – in large cities they increased by at least 15% in a year, and in Krakow the increase even exceeded 20%. In addition, the Left remains a supporter of building municipal housing and TBSs. Although information has recently appeared that one of the elements of the housing program is to be an injection of money for local governments to build cheaper apartments, we do not know any specifics. Whether these would be apartments for rent or for ownership, how much money would go to the municipalities for this purpose – silence around this. One may get the impression that this information “came out” from the Ministry of Development only to placate the Left.

Katarzyna Pełczyńska-Nałęcz opposes subsidies

The critics of the subsidy program were joined by Katarzyna Pełczyńska-Nałęcz, Minister of Funds and Regional Policy (MFiPR), who comes from Polska 2050. The money.pl website has obtained inter-ministerial correspondence, which shows that although the minister initially appreciates that MRiT took into account some of the submitted comments, e.g. “in the scope of restoring the income limit for families with at least three children and for replacing the obligation to sell the owned real estate with the obligation to sell it when the sale is made to an entity other than a natural person”, this does not change the fact that the Ministry of Funds is still opposed to the entire project.

The letter stated that the proposal does not solve the problem of housing availability, because instead of creating conditions for easier and cheaper construction, it only increases the amount of money on the market. In conditions of still insufficient number of apartments, this threatens a repeat of the second half of last year, when sellers could raise prices at will, because they were aware that there would be willing buyers.

The Ministry also noted that, according to the latest data from the Credit Information Bureau, demand for mortgage loans in the first half of this year is approximately 30-40 percent higher than in the first half of 2023.

The Ministry of Funds suggests maintaining only part of the programme concerning construction, and not in its basic form (subsidies for loans), but in the part that concerns loans for participation or housing contributions within the framework of social housing.