Radio Gdansk News in English: Denmark and Poland are refusing to bail out companies registered in offshore tax havens

The Polish government was one of the first governments in the world in early April to announce that it would be taking a hard line with companies who avoid paying corporation tax. Speaking at the time, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said that large companies who wanted support from the roughly $6 billion bailout fund must pay domestic business taxes. „Let’s end tax havens, which are the bane of modern economies,” he added.

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Poland’s gas grid operator Gaz-System says it has acquired a complete set of permits needed to build the Baltic Pipe link between Poland and Denmark.

The project to build the pipeline is part Polish efforts to diversify its gas supplies and reduce the country’s energy dependence on Russia. Work to build the Baltic Pipe is expected to start later this year and be completed by October 1, 2022. Once built, the Baltic Pipe will have the capacity to carry 10 billion cubic metres of natural gas from Norway to Poland annually.

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The Polish government are considering the possibility of issuing travel vouchers in order to provide a boost to the country’s ailing tourism industry according to a report in the Travel Weekly website this week.

According to the article, the Polish Ministry of Development and the Polish Tourist Organization are considering offering Poles vouchers worth 1,000 złoty to be spent on leisure trips and activities such as concerts, sporting events, entertainment and recreation. Speaking in early April, the development minister said “The money would go to Poles in the form of vouchers. They could be spent on a specific purpose – trips or other types of tourism-related events”.

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And finally, a team of scientists in Gdańsk have isolated the full DNA sequence of the coronavirus obtained from a Polish patient according to an article in the First News website.

The team at the Gdańsk University and Medical Academy’s joint Intercollegiate Faculty of Biotechnology used the same equipment to decode the coronavirus as was used during the Ebola epidemic. The data has been uploaded to a worldwide research database. The database contains 11,000 other coronavirus DNA sequences which are being studied in the hope of developing a vaccine.

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Weather

Today will be a glorious sunny day with scattered clouds and a gentle breeze. Temperatures will reach a very pleasant 18 degrees centigrade (64 degrees Fahrenheit) during the day, dropping to 6 degrees centigrade overnight. Saturday should remain sunny but it will be cooler at only 9 degrees centigrade