High hopes for hi-tech

"Call for Leaders," the first stage of the "Technological Fishing Rod" program has attracted 700 projects, all of them showing a high probability for profitability. The government estimates their implementation and commercialization should bring in up to zł.19 billion in revenues within the next five years. Prior to that, some zł.2 billion will have to be invested in the projects by 2009.

"The development of our entrepreneurship and innovation is one of the economic pillars of a solidarity state," said Teresa Lubińska, Secretary of State at the Prime Minister's Chancellery and Head of the Inter-Ministerial Office for the Development of High Technology Sectors.

"It is said that Poles want money [for innovation] from the state budget, while most countries base their hi-tech industry on private funds. The conditions of the Polish economy will not be an automatic solution to that situation. There is evidence that countries with indicators like Poland's have to set innovation into motion with public funding," added Lubińska.  

In this year's budget, the government has appropriated zł.300 million to fund the program. According to Lubińska, the implementation of the program will mean 20,000 new specialist, well-paid jobs, and the establishment of new, innovative companies, competing on international markets. In her view, such companies would gain independence from foreign licensing, and Poland would no longer be seen as simply a market on which to sell products. Lubińska also suggested that the program could indirectly help stem the country's brain drain. 

Lubińska says that over the last few years expenditure on science has been gradually decreasing. As a result, Poland has only 2.7 patents per million inhabitants, compared to 10.9 in the Czech Republic, 18 in Hungary and 133.6 in the EU-15. Exports of products based on advanced technologies amount to just two percent in Poland, while it reaches 18 percent in the EU-15.