n WARSAW -- President Lech Walesa has signed a controversial cooperative banking reform bill under which Poland's ailing rural banks will be grouped into nine regional banks controlled by one national bank. "I have decided to sign the bill despite numerous protests by cooperative banks ... in the belief that the financial deterioration of the cooperative banking sector has to be stopped through radical reforms," Walesa said in a statement Friday. The bill, passed by parliament last month, aims to help more than 1,600 Polish cooperative banks, half of which are in financial trouble, and the Bank Gospodarki Zywnosciowej, or BGZ, co-owned by the banks and the state. It has been criticized by rural banks for limiting their independence and giving too much power to BGZ, which would become a stock company and a national clearing and supervisory center for cooperative banks.
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