By Gabriela Baczynska
WARSAW, Sept 30 (Reuters) - Global financial turmoil has had
little impact so far on Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia,
with their banks mostly unexposed to the toxic debt rocking U.S.
and European financial houses, officials said on Tuesday.
In Poland, the largest economy among the European Union's
ex-communist member states, Finance Minister Jacek Rostowski
said the crisis would not affect plans to adopt the euro and
that the country was well-placed to weather the global storm.
Asked whether the turbulence would hurt Poland's plans to be
ready in 2011 to adopt the euro -- with analysts and government
sources saying it can join the euro zone a year later -- he
said: "As of now, I don't expect such a development."
"I would like to stress that the Polish economy is
particularly resilient to impact from financial markets," he
said.
Polish banks have mostly avoided dangerous products that are
causing problems for their U.S. peers, Rostowski said, adding
that he saw no need to lower the government's 2009 growth
forecast of 4.8 percent.
He also said Poland would join the ERM-2 exchange rate
mechanism -- a grid where euro candidates must keep their
currencies in a band against the common currency for two years
-- on schedule. Poland must also change its constitution, which
now says only its central bank can set monetary policy.
"We expect to enter (the ERM-2 exchange rate mechanism)
somewhere in the first half of next year. I'm convinced that by
then the situation will have stabilised," he said.
Economists say ex-communist central Europe could be spared
the worst of the fallout from the crisis because of its relative
backwardness, despite two decades of progress towards fully
fledged capitalism.
Emerging European currencies trimmed early losses with the
zloty <EURPLN=> and Czech crown <EURCZK=> down 0.5 percent by
1230 GMT. Stock markets also turned positive as sentiment gave
way to optimism that U.S. Congress could push through a bailout
plan for risky assets after failing a first time on Monday.
RISKY ASSETS
The region's rapid growth has been enough not to lure banks
into riskier assets such as mortgage-backed securities.
In Prague, the Czech central bank said the country's
financial system was relatively isolated from the global crisis.
"At the moment there is no reason for concern," it said in a
statement on Tuesday.
"The exposure of the most significant players on Czech
financial markets -- banks -- to the risky assets and
problematic global banks are minimal, which is due mainly to
their orientation towards a traditional conservative business
model and the until now unsaturated Czech market."
Neighbouring Slovakia, which will start using the euro on
January 1, 2009, has also seen no impact from the global crisis,
central bank governor Ivan Sramko said on Tuesday.
An advisor to Romania's central bank governor Mugur Isarescu
said Romanian branches of foreign banking units exposed to
troubled banks in the United States were safe.
"I can say that banks, including those having foreign
capital with affiliations with banks in big financial centres,
the daughter banks, are safe at this time," Adrian Vasilescu
told financial television The Money Channel.
"They are safe although some mother banks have had exposure
to some U.S. banks that have fallen," he added.
Romania, the second most populous ex-communist country in
the region after Poland, joined the EU in 2007.
(Additional reporting by Prague, Bratislava and Bucharest
bureaux; Writing by Gareth Jones; Editing by Andy Bruce)
