Is Polish Manufacturing Competitive in the EU?

Detailed information:
The conference presents the results of an international project: Changes in industrial competitiveness as a factor of integration: identifying  challenges of the enlarged Single European Market (*HPSE-CE-2002-00148*). The project has been funded by the 5th Framework Programme of the European Union, run in the years 2003-2006, coordinated by CASE.

• The majority of Polish manufacturing industries increased their shares in the EU market and improved their competitiveness, although this process was uneven over time (years 1995-1998 and after 1999) and industries (traditionally competitive industries, industries improving their competitiveness and the non-competitive ones).
• The main sources of the improvement in competitiveness were: a higher increase in the Polish labour productivity over EU and a higher dynamics of labour productivity growth over the wages growth dynamics. It was the competition with labour productivity and not with wages that dominated in the competitive fight. On the microeconomic side, the main barriers in the competitiveness improvement were the low level and growth of investment, low level and progress in innovativeness and a relatively low quality of goods manufactured in Poland. In Poland there are many industries competitive in the medium quality goods, for which the demand in the EU increases more slowly than for the high quality ones.
• Subsidies and selective state aid have not contributed to improvement in competitiveness of its beneficiaries.
• The differentiation of competitiveness across the industries contributed to structural changes in the Polish manufacturing and indirectly to the changes in employment. The improvement in competitiveness stimulated output growth or hampered its fall, which resulted in changes in employment.
• In the next years the output growth, structural changes and employment growth will be determined by investment dynamics and economy's innovativeness. Therefore the economic growth will depend on capital inflow (direct investments) and on the capability of absorption of structural funds.

Related CASE reports:

1. Differentiation of changes in competitiveness among Polish manufacturing industries
2. Competitiveness of the Polish Manufacturing Sector: Does Government Policy Matter?
3. Changes in the Competitive Position of the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland in the EU Market
4. Labour Costs Versus Labour Market Development. Empirical evidence for Polish, Czech and Hungarian manufacturing industry