While attending the World Economic Forum conference in the Chinese port city of Dalian on Tuesday, Andrzej Duda said that Poland is an excellent place for investment and a leader among countries with a successful record of economic development.
According to Duda, Poland's "excellent economic performance" is due to the ambition, hard work, creativity and perseverance of the Polish people, combined with wise political and economic decisions made by the country's authorities over the past 35 years.
Since transitioning to a free-market economy in the early 1990s, Poland "has built efficient and stable state and economic institutions" after decades of communism, Duda said.
"We have consistently pursued integration with the European Union, of which we have been a part for over 20 years," he told the conference, arguing that Poland offers "credibility, predictability and stability" to international investors.
Duda said that Poland "has enjoyed decades of uninterrupted growth" despite crises such as the coronavirus pandemic and the energy crisis in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Duda also noted that Poland boasted one of the lowest unemployment rates in the European Union and that one in two 30-year-olds in the country has a higher education.
Last year, Polish universities produced 55,000 technical and IT graduates, he added.
"Since 1990, the Polish economy has grown more than 1,000 percent," Duda said, adding that the country's annual gross domestic product expanded from "less than USD 66 billion" in the early 1990s to "over USD 800 billion today."
Meanwhile, Poland's real GDP per capita increased from USD 6,100 to more than USD 46,000 over that period, according to Duda.
"The world's leading financial institutions forecast that the coming years will continue to see this trend of increasing wealth in Polish society," the president told the conference.
Polish President Andrzej Duda speaks at China's World Economic Forum conference on Tuesday. Photo: PAP/Radek Pietruszka
"After surpassing Greece and Portugal in terms of real GDP per capita, Poland is expected to catch up with Spain and then Italy in the coming years," he said.
Duda told investors that Poland offers a welcoming business environment and serves as "a gateway between East and West" thanks to its central location in Europe.
"It is here that the intermodal terminals in Małaszewicze and Sławków are located, where the broad-gauge Trans-Siberian Railway ends, and where trains from China also arrive," Duda said. "Therefore, it is impossible to imagine building an economic presence in Europe, particularly in the case of China, without including Poland."
He argued that those interested in doing business in Poland can count on "a wide and generous range of support instruments," including grants and tax incentives.
During his visit to China, Duda met with the country's leader Xi Jinping. The two talked one-on-one for an hour on Monday, a meeting that resulted in the signing of significant agreements between the two countries, including one aiming to facilitate sales of Polish poultry in China, public broadcaster Polish Radio’s IAR news agency reported
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Source: PAP, prezydent.pl