In its latest forecast for Poland, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) projects that in 2009 the country’s GDP growth rate will reach around 3%, investment expenditure will rise by 4% and inflation will stand at 3.2%. OECD has revised its previous projections in the face of the developments on global financial markets in early October.

In building their financial plans for 2009 and investment plans for coming years, it is exceptionally difficult for Polish entrepreneurs to evaluate business risk because great changes can be expected in demand trends, interest rates, exchange rates as well as prices of some raw materials and semi-finished products. In order to make the risk assessment a bit easier, I propose that we assume the following course of macroeconomic developments:

The crisis in the world is no longer a local phenomenon. It has reverberated in central and east European countries, including Poland, as well. One major consequence of the crisis shortage of bank financing of investments. This has affected the investment construction market (and the consume market, too).

During 90 years of its uninterrupted operations, the Polish Patent Office has granted more than 200,000 invention patents, registered over 64,000 utility designs, over 13,000 industrial designs and more than 206,000 trademarks. Overall, the Patent Office received about one million applications during these years.

Zbigniew Jakubas – President of the Polish Business Council
In reference to the government’s “Stability and Development Plan” business organisations have submitted a set of suggestions:

”We have a good chance of sustaining the country’s economic growth and competitiveness”, says Waldemar Pawlak, Poland’s deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Economy.

The fact that Polish macroeconomic statistics appear sound and that the situation of most Polish companies is favourable does not necessarily mean that the sense of economic security and being immune to the crisis prevails in Poland. Although the hard core of the Polish economy is determined by internal mechanisms , its scale is too small to resist world market turbulences. To what extent could these turbulances put Poland’s favourable economic development of many years to a halt?

Polish firms are becoming more effective and better at managing capital and human resources, says Jan Macieja from the Microeconomy Section of the Polish Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Economics (INE PAN). For the past six years the team has monitored Polish enterprise and the condition of domestic companies, the top-ranked firms subsequently taking part in Polish Market’s Pearls of the Polish Economy rankings.