Jeffrey Sachs: Poland should focus on innovations

Jeffrey Sachs, one of the advisers during the Poland's economic transformation said at the this year's European Forum for New Ideas that Poland is a strong economy whose efforts should be invested in the development of new technologies and innovations, the Polish Press Agency reported. "The Polish economy remains to be strong. It successfully survived the financial crisis in 2008 and did it best later, when there was a recession in Europe. At that time, Poland had good results and a economic growth," Sachs told the media at a briefing. "Poland should put its bet on competitiveness, which is reachable through technologies and innovation, because it is difficult for it [Poland] to compete with cheap labor force," Sachs pointed out, adding that such direction may help integrate with German and Scandinavian economies. Moreover, Sachs believed that Poland should increase R&D expenditures to 2 percent of GDP (currently, it stand at some 0.9 percent of GDP).