The Economy of Poland is the sixth-largest in the European Union and the 23rd biggest in the World. It is predicted that the economy of Poland will join the G-20 list by 2022.
Poland is becoming Europe’s new economic power. Polish economy has been the fastest growing one in Europe for recent 25 years and Polish GDP per capita increased more than double since 1990 (while Polish export increased more than 25 times). Polish economy was the only one in the EU which not only avoided recession, but even was growing very fast during the 2008-09 global financial crisis. Polish GDP per capita based on purchasing power exceeded $24,000 and reached 65 percent of the Western European level of income, the highest absolute level in Polish history. Until at least 2030, Poland is expected to continue converging with Western Europe reaching around 80 percent of the Western European level of income.
It is worth to underline that Poland's economic growth has been based on hard work, entrepreneurship and on brain power, not on natural resources or financial engineering. Poland strongly expanded the quantity and quality of education. In Poland 60% of young persons studies at the university level, above the EU average. Young Poles are very well educated, much better than most of their Western European and North American peers.
Additionally nowadays the young generation of Poles is the most competitive Polish generation ever - more materially motivated, more ambitious and assertive, and more focused on success than the old generation. The new generation of Poles - very open-minded and European, is widely perceived to be among the most productive and hardest working in Europe.
Doing business in Poland means working with very efficient and low-cost workforce, in friendly business conditions. Because of those mentioned reasons Poland is the third biggest destination worlwide for R&D and BPO centres. There are 940 such centres which employ 160 k people, with 20% of annual growth.
Poland's main economic sectors are: motor vehicles (cars and cars' subsets), but also trains, trams, helicopters, ships, white goods, electronics, petrochemical and chemical industry, pharmaceutical industry, cosmetics. furniture, agriculture, mining, textile and clothing sector.
For recent 20 years many middle sized companies have have been established by Poles. These companies also successfully expand abroad.
Strong domestic consumption is one of the engines of growth in Poland. About 40% of the Polish economy depends on exports. In 2015 export volume should hit 172 billion EUR. The main foreign markets for Polish export are: Germany, the UK, Czech, France, Italy, Holland. Sweden. Apart from European market Polish firms are more and more active in Asia, North America and Africa.
For the period of 2014 to 2020, Poland will have access to a huge 82.3 billion EUR from EU Cohesion Funds, that's why the biggest investment in Poland will be continued, especially in infrastructure and smart growth, knowledge, digital and technical development.
According to “Better Life Index” (which includes such measures like: education, environment, health, housing, income, jobs, life satisfaction, safety) Poland comes 24th among 34 high-income OECD countries, above its 29th place based on the income per capita alone.