The American Chamber of Commerce in Poland (AmCham) acts for developing Polish-American economic relations, promoting investment in Poland and improving the investment climate. Wednesday’s meeting was an ideal opportunity to talk about strengthening economic relations between Poland and the USA in the context of the visit by Minister Piotr Nowak to the United States, which will begin on 14 March.

The Polish economy has stable foundations and despite the crisis in the east it is a safe place to invest and open a business

– said the Minister of Development and Technology, Piotr Nowak during the meeting with the American Chamber of Commerce.

Poland is a safe haven for companies relocating from Ukraine

The Minister stressed that our country could become a safe alternative for companies that are considering to move their seats from Eastern Europe to Poland in connection with the war in Ukraine. In this regard, we are also open to broadly understood cooperation with American companies.

Minister Nowak informed that the government had prepared a special act that would allow citizens of Ukraine to set up a business in Poland. The draft regulations are currently being processed in the Sejm.

The Head of the Ministry of Economic Development and Technology also mentioned that the Polish Investment and Trade Agency had involved in supporting Ukrainian companies, offering free office space in Warsaw and helping companies which, due to the difficult situation in the east, are planning to relocate their resources to Poland.

Condition of the Polish industry

Despite tensions and disturbances in global value chains, the Polish industry proves resilient to them and remains the driver of the Polish economy.

In 2021, the output of industry increased by 15% y/y. The Ministry of Economic Development and Technology will prepare instruments to support this branch of the economy as part of a new strategy for industry. One of the instruments of development is to be an industry contract, which assumes close cooperation between the private and public sectors. This will allow to achieve additional benefits, in particular, in the area of digitalisation, improvement in productivity, R&D, knowledge transfer, green transition or dual education.

In this context, Minister Nowak mentioned the need to stimulate the war industry.

It is an industry that gives the Polish economy innovation, and an additional advantage is the fact that military expenditure does not drive inflation

– stressed the Minister of Economic Development and Technology. 

Record-breaking year of foreign investments

Minister Nowak pointed out that the year 2021 had been a record-breaking year for the results of the Polish Investment Zone – 713 decisions on support were issued, with an investment value exceeding PLN 37.1 billion and with 16,831 new jobs declared. Foreign companies have invested EUR 3.5 billion.

Our country is constantly working to improve the conditions for investing in Poland. In order to meet the expectations of investors and adapt to the current economic situation, we have made amendments to key legal regulations, including in relation to the Polish Investment Zone. The scope of the amendments includes, among others, facilitating the access of enterprises to regional state aid, reducing the required minimum eligible costs to 90% for medium-sized enterprises or reducing the minimum eligible costs required of investors by 50% in the case of re-investment by a large or medium-sized entrepreneur in order to stimulate private investments.

Polish-American economic cooperation

Taking into account only non-European Union countries, the USA is in the lead of Poland’s trading partners – as the second export market and the third import market. Despite the pandemic, in 2021 trade increased at a two-digit pace – export increased by 18.8% and import by 28.7%. From the Statistics Poland preliminary data in 2021 it results that the value of export from Poland to the USA amounted to slightly more than USD 9 billion, and of import to about USD 10.4 billion.

40% of total capital invested by American companies in this region of Europe goes to Poland. According to the AmCham data, the USA is the second most important source of investment capital in the Polish market. It is responsible for 11% of the value of all foreign direct investments in our country.

According to the latest National Bank of Poland data, the value of American capital invested in Poland at the end of 2020 amounted to USD 4.2 billion, and of Polish direct investments in the USA – USD 442 million (an increase by USD 83 million).

In Poland, there are 835 companies with American capital (data as of the end of 2019), mainly in the ICT, cosmetic, pharmaceutical, chemical and electronic sectors. They employ about 267 thousand employees.

The largest investments announced in the years 2020 – 2021 include the following transactions:

• Microsoft – data center;
• Frito Lay (Pepsico group) – construction of a corn snack plant near Środa Śląska;
• Corning in Mszczonów – EUR 85 million;
• Intel research and development centre in Gdańsk worth EUR 74 million;
• Google - cloud solutions.

Recent days have brought another record-breaking transaction of an American company in the Polish office market. On 7 March, Google announced that it would purchase two buildings from The Warszawa HUB office complex in Warsaw for nearly PLN 2.7 billion. They will accommodate the cloud technology development centre of Google in Europe. This is the largest project of the company in Poland.