World Bank publishes damning report on Poland

The World Bank's latest report, “Poland: Coherence with Europe. Challenging productivity growth" see the country as one closed to foreign investors and is heavily dependent on traditional industries. "This is the way to capture the essence of the situation before the country enters a path of rapid growth," explained Ryszard Petru, one of the authors of the document. He added that Poland is not competitive with Western Europe or other countries of the region as its competitiveness per head index is the worst in the region. For example, the share of foreign trade in GDP in Hungary increased from 76% to 123% between 1995-2001, while in Poland it increased from 50% to 60% over the same period. Furthermore, the share of highly processed goods does not exceed 7% of total exports in Poland. The World Bank appealed to the government to speed up the privatization process, as well as strengthening the foreign investment agency (PAIiIZ). (Parkiet, p. 6) M.M.