Andrzej Duda delivered the remarks during a meeting of the country's Social Dialogue Council at his presidential palace in Warsaw on Tuesday, the state PAP news agency reported.
Duda told those at the meeting that when COVID-19 struck, “we were convinced that unemployment would skyrocket and jobs would be lost.”
“However, the government introduced various measures ... to save the economy and jobs,” he said.
“Today, two years on, let’s be clear: to a large extent, this has been achieved,” Duda added. “This is definitely a big success."
The president cited recent statistics according to which the economy was growing, while unemployment remained steady.
“The fact that the jobless rate practically didn’t increase is arguably our greatest success,” Duda said.
He thanked the country’s entrepreneurs for "spending government grants as allocated" and for helping keep jobs.
Meanwhile, Family and Social Policy Minister Marlena Maląg briefed meeting participants on the latest job market figures.
She said that 71 percent of Poles aged 15-64 were active on the labour market, an increase of 0.4 percent during the pandemic and close to the European Union average of 72.9 percent.
“Poland’s employment rate stands at 68.7 percent and is higher than the EU’s overall rate of 67.6 percent,” Maląg told the gathering.
Unemployment in Poland held steady at 5.4 percent in December, unchanged from November, the state-run Central Statistical Office (GUS) reported last month.
According to the European Union’s Eurostat statistics agency, unemployment in Poland was a modest 2.9 percent in December, the second-lowest rate in the 27-nation bloc, with the EU average at 6.4 percent.
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP
Click on the audio player above for a report by Radio Poland's Agnieszka Bielawska.