P.M. BRIEFING : Poland OKs Free Currency Trading
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WARSAW — Poland today introduced free currency trading for the first time since World War II as part of an effort to attack the black market and pave the way to convertibility of the Polish zloty.
A long line gathered at Warsaw’s central PKO savings bank, one of a handful in the capital that started buying and selling hard currency, as the new foreign exchange law came into force.
The law, part of a package of reforms intended to haul Poland out of economic crisis, ended a prohibition on private trading in foreign currencies that had existed since the country went under communist rule four decades ago. It also lifted a 40-year ban on possession of hard currency, which carried a penalty in the 1940s and 1950s of heavy jail terms.
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