Positive The strongest defender of the plan was Leszek Balcerowicz himself, who in 1992 argued that his reforms resulted in an increase in the supply of goods, privatisation of trade, internal convertibility of the złoty, rapid growth in exports, effective introduction of market economy principles, development of financial institutions such as banks and the Stock Exchange, establishment of 'genuine local government', reform of the tax system, and reduction of foreign debt. He believed that setbacks that his reforms suffered were caused by factors that slowed down the privatization. Decades after the plan, Balcerowicz argued that Polish economy remains too regulated and his reforms should be continued, writing: "I think we have an optimal situation in terms of price stability and currency convertibility. [...] As far as the overall state of the economy is concerned, when comparing the current situation with the starting point, we must note enormous positive changes. However, we still have public spending that is far too high, reaching 47% of GDP. As a result, we have high taxes and, in addition, a huge budget deficit. Public finances are in poor health, which is one of the symptoms of the Polish political system's illness. […] Another problem we have to deal with is the excessive legal regulation of certain areas of the economy. […] In almost every sector, production is based on employment contracts. When regulations in this area are too strict and flawed, the entire economy suffers." Polish economists W. Jarmołowicz and K. Szarzec argued in their study of the economic transformations that there were many more ‘bright spots’ than ‘shadows’ in the Polish transformation in the areas of macroeconomic stabilization, microeconomic liberalization and privatization. They praised the plan for working on the assumption that ‘economic freedom and the rule of law are essential conditions for long-term economic growth,’ and stated that while the plan had flaws, no economic theory was able to provide guidance on how to transform the economy, forcing Balcerowicz to learn from mistakes. Szarzec and Jarmołowicz argue that the plan was successful in suppressing inflation, cutting deficit and returning Poland to a path of a rapid GPD growth. Among the flaws they listed excessive budget deficit, high unemployment rate and state of public finances. They believed that these could be alleviated by increasing the freedom to conduct business in Poland. for having contributed to a significant decline in the living wage of numerous groups of the population, especially workers in unprofitable state-owned enterprises and the
state agricultural farms, creating poverty areas and structural unemployment, which in many places continues to this day. also criticized the Balcerowicz plan for insufficiently protecting the internal market during the transition and of allowing entire sectors of the economy to collapse for many years as a result of the lack of a state policy to influence its structure. Among the most frequently criticised (mainly by
Grzegorz Kołodko) elements accompanying the introduction of the plan include: • The Act on the Ordering of Credit Relations (of December 1989), by which the ‘inflationary overhang’ was to be taken off the market. Repealed the provisions of credit agreements concerning privileges and preferences in access to credit and their interest rates below inflation. It introduced ‘variable’ interest rate thresholds instead of contractual ones (in already concluded credit agreements) - as a result, in the conditions of existing hyperinflation, banks multiplied their claims on borrowers overnight. • The maintenance for a period of several months (January 1990 - May 1991) of a fixed dollar exchange rate (9,500 zlotys per dollar) - the so-called anti-inflationary anchor. A side effect was a decrease in the purchasing power of savings and debts in dollars and the possibility for foreign investors to profit from high interest rates on savings in zlotys (limited by foreign exchange law and the currency liquidity of the economy). According to some economists, in the 1990s the plan led to a collapse of domestic demand, flooding the domestic market with imported production, as well as the collapse of state enterprises indebted by financial policy and the sale of the best of them into the hands of mainly Western capital. It also led to a strong pauperisation of the majority of the population and a spike in unemployment. The plan's most decisive effect for generations was to create the possibility of privatising state assets in the Latin American formula in the form of selling off, to the point of economic partition, enclaves of modernity and profitability to foreign corporations for 4.5-5% of their replacement value. According to Kołodko, a mistake of the Balcerowicz's stabilisation package was the assumption of a rapid increase in supply from enterprises. Balcerowicz believed that production would recover on its own, without interference from economic policy. However, the low elasticity of business supply and the shock reduction in domestic demand resulted in a price-maximising response which, in the reality of moving away from a shortage economy, encountered a barrier to effective demand. There was therefore a drastic decline in production. Interventionism was attempted late, and in the period of the ‘systemic void’, monetary and fiscal policy instruments worked differently than in a properly formed market economy. According to G. Kołodko, the Polish economy underwent a process of ‘over-liberalization’. Poznański also criticised excessive concessions to the European Union, including the liberalisation of foreign trade. According to his calculations, in 1996 Poland had reached the level of the economy in 1989 and the level of national income in 1976. He wrote that by reducing the role of the state, the Balcerowicz Plan made it impossible to control the national economy, resulting in the outflow of profits abroad, which failed to increase labour productivity or introduce modern technology.
Tadeusz Kowalik contended that Balcerowicz did not have a coherent programme, and acted under the dictates of
Jeffrey Sachs and other Western advisers. To Kowalik, the excessive social costs of the transformation resulted in the ‘ugly face of Polish transformation’, manifesting itself in the form of high and persistent unemployment, impoverishment of the countryside, a wide area of poverty and high, ever-growing social inequalities, a crisis of the welfare state visible in the degradation of social security. Kowalik argued that privatisation benefited the few who firmly held the once chosen course of transformation, and that what emerged was "a market economy that did not suit the majority of Polish society". Kowalik believed that a social democratic model would have been the best for Poland, contrasting it with Balcerowicz Plan that was "colossally overdone". Kowalik is particularly critical of the thesis that the Balcerowicz Plan was the only good solution. He Kowalik argues that an excellent basis for the transformation policy could have been the
Round Table Agreements. He also spoke against comparing Polish economic performance to that of other countries such as Ukraine or Russia, writing that given that Poland had much better initial economic conditions (e.g. a relatively developed private sector), Balcerowicz Plan should not be considered a success. Kowalik emphasises that Balcerowicz squandered a unique opportunity to create the foundations of a fair socio-economic system. Instead, a system was created "whose trademarks became mass and permanent unemployment, for many years the highest in Central Europe and then the highest in the EU; one of the highest income disparities; the dismantling of the welfare state. Added to this was the breaking down of workers' negotiating power. The shock operation meant consenting to the introduction into Poland of the worst variety of capitalism." In his 2025 analysis of the economic transformation and its effects on Polish economy and society,
Jan Sowa concluded:
Karol Modzelewski, a former Solidarity leader, wrote of the plan: "freedom is a value for all, which does not mean that in the social dimension freedom has to be so dramatically bought with economic inequality. We have a peculiar current of thought, or rather a current of platitudes, according to which the only thing that matters is the efficiency of the free market, so we should not look at those who find themselves in the sphere of social collapse. At the threshold of the Third Republic of Poland, much was said in liberal circles about the development of the Polish middle class. Meanwhile, an upper class and a much lower class emerged, somewhat like in the Latin American countries." He wrote that "it was not just a case of IMF imposition of its will - ‘Leszek Balcerowicz’s team did not resist at all. On the contrary, of their own free will, they chose the most radical version of the so-called stabilization policy, which the IMF representatives treated only as a version of the tender."
Witold Kieżun wrote similarly of the plan, arguing that instead of creating a team of professionals made up of Polish professors working at Western universities, "it was decided to do the transformation under the dictates of a young, inexperienced American, Jeffrey Sachs, and a few capitalistically indoctrinated party academics". He concluded that "the direction taken then has determined the structure of the Polish economy to this day. Big industry and trade dominated by foreign capital. Likewise the banks." In case of foreign analyses, Chris Hann wrote: "No one can doubt that the processes of transition in the Visegrád states would have been very different if they had been launched in the 1960s under the aegis of Keynesianism and the Marshall Plan, rather than in the 1990s, when militant neoliberalism was in the ascendant." He states that Latin America and Eastern Europe became living laboratories’ for neoliberalism, and that in Eastern Europe shock therapies resulted in ‘capitalism devoid of any of the social protections that were the achievement of social movements in Western European capitalism’, a capitalism "more American" than that of Western Europe or United States itself. John Feffer argued that "the refusal to consider a
Marshall Plan after 1989 in favour of a repeat of the ruinous policies of 1918 is a testament to the failure of institutional memory and the victory of theory (or greed) over demonstrable practice.’ ==Comparative statistics==