Poland advances in competitiveness ranking by World Economic Forum

Poland ranked 41st out of 140 countries, jumping up by two positions, in the recent Global Competitiveness Report complied by the World Economic Forum (WEF). This is the first time Poland has advanced in the last few editions, the Polish National Bank (NBP) stressed. Switzerland, Singapore and the US are in the top three of the ranking. Compared to Poland, from other CEE countries, only Lithuania (38), the Czech Republic (31) and Estonia (30) performed better. All countries need to continue implementing structural reforms to achieve higher levels of competitiveness. In particular, all would benefit from improving the flexibility of their labor markets (with the possible exception of Hungary), developing financial sectors, and reducing red tape, which is reported as one of the most problematic factors for doing business in the region, the experts claimed. "Entrepreneurs assess the infrastructure significantly better, however, which might seem to be surprising, they do not see a huge improvement. There is also some improvement in innovation, but we are still lagging behind," said professor Piotr Boguszewski from NBP who coordinates the WEF survey for Poland. He stressed that the total score of our country was boosted by a better evaluation of Poland's macroeconomic environment (an advance of 17 positions). According to the report, the most problematic factors for doing business in Poland are the complexity of tax regulations, restrictive labor regulations and tax rates. On the other hand, WEF stated that investor protection in our country is quite strong (30th position), the country credit rating was also very well evaluated (31st position). The full version of the report is available here.