Germans prefer to invest in Poland

On 5 May, the Polish-German Chamber of Industry and Commerce published the results of a questionnaire reflecting the popularity of Central and Eastern European countries as investment places. Poland was again ranked first before Slovakia and the Czech Republic. The results of this questionnaire confirm that German entrepreneurs have an increasingly good opinion of the Polish economy.

The questionnaire was conducted in February this year. It was completed by 80 German investors who make investments in Poland. The total result was slightly worse in comparison to the preceding year as it has fallen from 5.05 to 4.80 on the scale of 1 to six being used. However, it is still much better than it was in 2007 (3.63), and also as compared to the results achieved by Poland’s neighbours: Slovakia (4.13) and the Czech Republic (4.12), as well as Germany itself (4.43). According to German investors, Poland’s main strengths are its EU membership, workers’ qualifications, motivation, availability and efficiency, as well as availability and reliability of subcontractors. For these reasons, as much as 95% of the investors who filled in the questionnaire would make an investment again in Poland as compared to 60% in 2006. According to German firms, Poland’s worst weaknesses are poor infrastructure, inefficient administration and the quality of vocational training. In the opinion of German entrepreneurs, the greatest challenges Poland is facing include the development of the infrastructure, improvement of the functioning of the administration and of the situation of public finances. Most investors support the idea of introducing the euro in Poland (83%), however their number has been reducing since 2008 (96%). <pop>