Public finance 

The Polish government is not the most lavish one as far as attracting FDI is concerned. According to the latest report by the Polish Foreign Investment Agency, Poland has less incentives than Bulgaria and the Czech Republic but more than Slovakia or Romania.

Our business is not to buy investments but to shape an economic map of Poland. CEFinancialObserver.eu talks to Sławomir Majman, President of the Polish Information and Foreign Investment Agency.

Special economic zones are beneficial for regions that are at intermediate stages of development. In most cases they have not added to the growth of local communities.

A stagnant European Union and growing geopolitical problems in Russia are forcing Poland to look further afield for export markets, with some success; the government’s two-year-old GoAfrica programme has boosted trade with Africa by 25%.

There are more than 115 million immigrants currently living in developed countries of the OECD - people born outside their current country of residence who hold citizenship of the country of their origin. They constitute approx. 10% of the population in the OECD.

At least 70 cities and municipalities have already launched their participatory budgets. Their number will grow since they are drivers of popularity and the local elections are scheduled as early as this autumn. Therefore, once again - after a year - we are watching the implementation of the idea of the participatory budget. A review of Internet reports shows that the process of creating participatory budgets has been professionalised by city authorities.

The number of children and youth is for the first time the same as the number of pensioners in Poland. Both groups were 7 million strong in December 2013, according the preliminary reports of Poland’s Central Statistics Agency. This was also the first year in which the Polish government withdrew more from the its Demographic Reserve Fund (FRD), created as a reserve in case of problems with future pension payments, than it paid into the fund from gains from privatization. The fund is dwindling.

Roads, railways and drilling for shale gas are almost certain infrastructure investments for the coming years. Although yesterday the government adopted a nuclear power program, large investments in the power industry, in particular in a nuclear power plant, are uncertain.

Four new countries, among them Poland, will be audited as part of the IMF’s Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP). The program assesses financial systems in countries where a crisis would have a significant impact on the global economy, either due to the size of that country’s economy or its interconnectedness with others. We’ll be more important, but also subject to more frequent assessment.

Public-private partnership investment projects are still few and far between in Poland, and most tenders called for projects to be launched under this formula end up in a fiasco. Without incentive from the government and without some fairly uncomplicated changes to legislation, things are going to stay this way.