Download Warszawa, 2005-09-07

PAIiIZ Press Release
Warsaw, 2005-10-14
Poland as an attractive location for German investments
“Poland as a location for German investments. Advantages of Poland over Germany” report was
presented on October 14th, 2005 in the seat of Polish Information and Foreign Investments
Agency . The expertise was prepared by The Gdańsk Institute for Market Economics, due to
PAIiIZ's order. The report is one of many promotional activities conducted by PAIiIZ during the
Polish-German Year 2005/2006.
The people present at the conference were:
 dr Maciej Grabowski – Executive Board Vicepresident Gdańsk Institute for Market
Economics
 dr Tomasz Kalinowski – Head of the Research Division UE & Germany Gdańsk
Institute for Market Economics
 Andrzej Zdebski – PAIiIZ President
The idea of the „Poland as a location for German investments” report was to emphasize
Poland’s advantages over Germany. Those advantages should be stressed because the image of
the Polish market in Germany was misleading and burdened by negative stereotypes. The
second reason is that often we do not realize that some insufficiencies in locating investments in
Poland are not specific to the country, but universal and present in many other market
economies. In presenting a new image of Poland to the foreign investors there is a need for new
and well documented source of information.
According to the data presented Poland is becoming
Poland is becoming a very valuable economic partner in broadened EU. Its economic potential
in comparison to Germany is growing. The results of the BDI market report in 2004 shows, that
the German companies make the investment decisions based on three factors: venturing into
new markets, production costs reduction and sustaining the current net of suppliers.
New Member Countries are gradually becoming most important places for locating new German
investments. Poland is becoming a leader of this group. According to the newest research by
Rold&Partner German investors are choosing Poland because of: an interesting market (62% of
responses), low labour costs (26%) and highly qualified workforce (14%). Other important
factors include: the tax advantages (13%), pressure from the client (13%) and geographic
proximity.
According to the newest World Bank ranking, Poland leads over Germany in the area of
business activity in the following categories: shorter time for setting up a company, more
favourable legal regulations for the employers when it comes to hiring and firing workers, lower
real estate prices, lower costs of vindication process and higher rate of return when closing a
business.
According to the PAIiIZ data, the accumulated value of German investments in Poland at the
end of 2004 was USD 10,15 billion. On the PAIiIZ “List of the largest foreign investors” there
are 258 German investors. The biggest German companies present in Poland are: Metro Group
AG, HVB, Volkswagen AG, Commerzbank, RWE Plus and Siemens. The inflow dynamics of
German investments to Poland varied. In the record year of 1998 almost USD 3 billion were
invested by German companies. The years 2002-2004 showed a moderately slow inflow of
German capital to Poland (USD 500-1000 million yearly). Accession to the EU accelerated the
process. In the next years the German interested in Polish market will be growing.
We kindly inform, that the Polish version and a German summary of the report will be posted in
a “PDF” format on the www.paiz.gov.pl website. The German version will be printed at the end
of 2005.
Informacje: Centrum Prasowe PAIiIZ, tel. 334 99 41, [email protected]