She was quickly restored to the State Planning Commission vice-presidency, although now there was more than one vice-president so that her relative stature within the body was diminished.[1] A few years later, after 1961, the economic reforms branded as the "New Economic System", reflecting a modest loosening of centralised control across the entire "Eastern Bloc" seemed to acknowledge concerns that had been expressed by Wittkowski three years before. She herself remained at this point outside the Party Central Committee Politburo, but her principal interlocutor within it was Werner Jarowinsky who had been a pupil of her old friend and literary collaborator, Jürgen Kuczynski. In February 1961 she resigned from the State Planning Commission for the last time and took up a post as a deputy chair of the Council of Ministers, where her departmental responsibilities covered Trade, Supply, and Agriculture.[2] Over the years there were many deputy chairmen of the Council of Ministers, but Wittkowski was the only woman ever to be numbered among them.[3] She held this post till July 1967.[2] Meanwhile, in 1963 she was readmitted to the Party Central Committee.[2]