The Adam Smith Research Center (ASRC), a CIPE partner organization, has recently drawn to a close one of its most cost-effective and successful programs ever: reform of Poland's outdated and inefficient pension system. In little over a year, the ASRC/CIPE partnership has had a profound impact in Poland by helping to move that nation from a costly "pay as you go" system to a free-market alternative that promises to safeguard pension funds for generations to come.
Working with CIPE through a U.S. Agency for International Development grant, the Warsaw-based ASRC has made important strides in establishing a system in which employees in Poland will contribute to privately managed, government supervised pension funds of their own choosing. This will not only provide for a transparent system ensuring economic solvency, but it will also inject large amounts of private capital into Poland's economy and will cement that nation's economic reforms by making all Poles investors with a stake in Poland's market economy.
Poland's Minister of Labor, Ewa Lewicka, recently paid the ASRC a very high compliment by appointing two ASRC experts to her advisory team on pension reform. Even more significant, she asked ASRC's program director, Dr. Cezary Mech, to serve as the new President of the Office of Pension Fund Supervision.
CIPE's partner in Poland, the Adam Smith Research Center, is an independent, non-profit think tank that promotes democratic society through a market-based economy. Founded in 1989, ASRC was the first established institution in Eastern Europe to espouse the benefits of a market economy through research, education, publishing, and public debate.
A vital part of ASRC's efforts to sell the new system to policymakers and Polish citizens has involved public discussion and media exposure.
ASRC and its partners, including CIPE, have earned the confidence of the Government of Poland. Dr. Mech is now spearheading the government's pension reform process, and ASRC's recommendations are being implemented at the highest levels in Poland. With full backing from the Government of Poland, ASRC is now helping to create a specialized school of social insurance to provide administrators with the technical expertise they will need to manage Poland's new pension system.