„The government will not finance such huge investments; Polish banks have too limited capital to do so. What we mean here is the involvement of the foreign bank consortia that must be convinced that their investment will be executed with no risk of policy change after the elections,” said Stephane Hild, director general of Societe Generale Poland.
In recent years the inflow of foreign investment has positioned us at the top of Europe, but this year, due to the crisis in the world markets, the NBP forecasts its value to be EUR 6 billion in comparison with EUR 12.2 billion in 2008. Therefore, the fight against this drop will be effective only if the state authorities” approach to investors changes. „The authorities should stop interfering in investment in our sector,” said Maciej Witucki, president of Telekomunikacja Polska.
Administrative authorities are currently facing a great challenge. For years, Poland was attractive to investors because of its low labour costs, but after Bulgaria and Romania joined the EU we are no longer the cheapest. The abovementioned challenge was the subject of another panel entitled 'Attractiveness of Investment in the Region. Economic Prospects of Poland in Relation to the Region'. However, this panel was conducted in a slightly less optimistic atmosphere.
„The prospects for Poland in relation to the region are good, but we must keep working at this. In the Doing Business report we are preceded by Mongolia and Rwanda, which is quite sad. But on the other hand, the Ukrainian companies quoted in Warsaw considered the Polish market to be better for their IPO than the London or Frankfurt markets,” said Andrzej Olszewski, managing director of ING Securities. Association of Poland with the region where many countries, such as Lithuania, Latvia or Ukraine were affected by the crisis especially severely and their quarterly GDP fell even below 20% makes no sense. „Investors are convinced that a certain group of countries is characterised by a similar pace of development or a similar degree of investment risk. Therefore, we are often the victims and beneficiaries of such a perception at the same time. This is why we started to assert that the region is not homogeneous. We want to be separate and not be affected by the extremely negative situations,” – Ludwik Sobolewski, president of the Warsaw Stock Exchange.
There were also much more decisive opinions. „An investment of the value of EUR 1 billion in Poland means nothing in practice. Statistically, this value is unnoticeable, whether we like it or not. From the perspective of the Western bankers we are nothing, too. We are a minor percentage of their transaction values,” asserted Jacek Siwicki, president of Enterprise Investors.
