Banking on a housing revival

Rafał Ostrowski, ‘Eurobuild CEE’: The aim of fund is to stimulate the residential market. Its announcement has provoked the immediate response that this is an example of state interference with the free market and is almost a return to a centrally-planned economy. How would you answer such critics? Piotr Kuszewski, the director of the capital investment department at Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego: Any talk of distorting the market is groundless here. We are establishing an ordinary closed investment fund that will operate on the same basis as many others on the market. Similar funds exist for properties in the office, retail and warehouse sectors. They also operate on the residential market. When it comes to our fund, the novelty consists in the fact that it will buy buildings and sections of residential buildings and subsequently rent them. However, each such decision will be market-based – that is, it will be economically justified. However, there are doubts about