Page "Polish złoty" Paragraph 17

Between 1950 and 1990, a unit known as the złoty dewizowy ( which can be roughly translated as the foreign exchange złoty ) was used as an artificial currency for calculation purposes only.

It existed because at the time the złoty was not convertible and its official rate of exchange was set by the Government, and there existed several exchange rates depending on the purpose of the transaction and who was exchanging, i. e. given amount in złoty could be exchanged for say US dollars at one of several official exchange rates depending on what was to be bought for the hard currency and the company that was buying foreign exchange ; it worked similarly when a company had some earnings in Western currency and wanted ( or had ) to convert them into złotych.

The exchange rate did not depend on the amount being converted.

Visitors from countries outside of the Soviet Bloc were offered a particularly poor exchange rate.

Concurrently, the private black-market exchange rate contrasted sharply with the official government exchange rate until the end of Communist rule in 1989 when official rates were tied to market rates.