Q: Does Poland have an economic information market?

A: It’s only a few years old and honestly speaking it’s still in its fledgling phase. The law on access to economic information came into force six years ago. It was a necessary act because Poland certainly needs every commercial safety guarantee it can get. It is important to be on a constant lookout for commercial offenses, including financial delinquency, and a good way to do it is by screening business partners prior to sealing contracts with them.



Q: Do you think Polish enterprisers know how important such information is for, say, risk management or financial solvency?

A: This knowledge is a worldwide standard. It’s nothing else but building positive financial relations among companies and between them and consumers. Unfortunately we’re still far behind other EU countries in this respect.

Still, as I said above, this market in Poland is still in the making. I can see that it’s growing by the number of queries filed to us. In 2005 there were about 7,000, in 2006 already 200,000, and in the following year – over 1.5 million. Last year we received more than 4.5 million queries.

One thing is sure: the market has been installed and is growing. And we’re all growing and learning with it.



Q: Learning is one thing, but what about the standards in this field in Poland ?

A: Although a system enabling access to economic information hasn’t been functioning for very long in Poland, we’ve managed to develop solutions which fully measure up to world standards regarding data reliability, information flow and processing/transfer safety. Of course we in Poland have had a difficult start in this respect because of the decades under communism. Today we have to rebuild everything again.



Q: Twenty years after the system changed? Why so late?

A: The 1990s in Poland saw a spontaneous development of the free market. A few years passed before we set about putting some order into this and modernized the market. And a part of this was the mentioned act on economic information. A currently-planned amendment to this law is one of several initiatives for economic information launched by the Economy Ministry under Deputy Minister Adam Szejnfeld. The suggested changes are to improve the act to make it a better instrument for raising economic security. One of the most important changes will be the cancellation of a to-date closed list of companies entitled to relay consumer liability data to us. This will enable secondary and public creditors to create lists of information providers about debtors. Another proposal is to enable physical persons to relay data on their debtors. These new regulations are especially important today in view of the crisis.



Q: Where do you stand on this young and growing market?

A: Reliable, transparent and safe information exchange stimulates economic growth. Three organizations in Poland have pooled their resources to promote a new approach to economic information as a risk-measuring instrument and to show how such information served society – the Union of Polish Banks, the Credit Information Bureau, and InfoMonitor. Five years after the aforementioned law came in these three institutions launched an Economic Information Centre consisting of a network of regional departments which promoted and offered education in economic information and its meaning in the modern business world.

InfoMonitor today numbers 30-odd people. We offer access to databanks with information on the financial reliability of enterprisers and consumers. We also run a Central Debtor Register which is extremely helpful in reclaiming debts and motivating contractors to pay bills on time. We also publish regular reports which provide a fairly complete picture of the debt situation in Poland. They are sent out to all banks via the Credit Information Bureau, and banks use them when they process credit applications. InfoMonitor is also an electronic information exchange platform and as such relays data to firms outside the bank sector, among others telcom companies, leasing agencies, insurers and providers of mass services. We also work with energy and gas companies. Although of course we are ready to work with all kinds of commercial operators.



Q: Does the information you store offer any insight into more general matters like the condition of the Polish economy this year or moods prevailing among entrepreneurs?

A: An Economic Security Barometer survey which we ordered revealed that Polish company owners and their financial executives witnessed a considerable fall in economic security over the past 3 months. Over half of the respondents said they felt the crisis. Economic security figures have been falling steadily since the first company owner mood survey in November 2007, and were at their lowest (– 3.81 points) in March. The present survey showed a rising fear of payment holdups. Sixty-three percent of the polled entrepreneurs admitted that delayed payments by contractors were a serious problem and that this forced them to delay payment to their own partners. But the survey also showed that more and more Polish company owners know how to deal with delinquencies and what the sanctions for shirking liabilities are.

About 75% of the respondents admitted that open access to information about persons and firms that do not pay up on time was important for safe business. Most were rather cautious when asked how long the crisis would last, almost as many opting for a year as two years. Most also didn’t expect any major changes in their business in the coming six months and were therefore not planning any radical moves like layoffs.