'..Poland must close the productivity gap with western Europe; invest in growth industries such as specialist machinery; and become more global. Polish firms’ productivity per hour is still only around 60% of companies in the EU15 countries (the members before enlargement to the east), partly because training and equipment lag behind and partly because companies are badly managed..'<blockquote>'When the Iron Curtain came down in 1989, Poland was nearly bankrupt, with a big, inefficient agricultural sector, terrible roads and rail links and an economy no bigger than that of neighbouring (and much larger) Ukraine. At the time the ex-communist countries with the best prospects were widely thought to be Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Hopes for Poland were low.
But rigorous economic shock therapy in the early 1990s put Poland on the right track. Market-oriented reforms included removing price controls, restraining wage increases, slashing subsidies for goods and services and balancing the budget. The cure was painful, but after a couple of years of sharp recession in 1990-91 Poland started to grow again. It has not stopped since, and received a further boost when it joined the EU in 2004. Since then economic growth has averaged 4% a year. GDP per person at purchasing-power parity is now 67% of the EU average, compared with 33% in 1989, and the economy is almost three times the size of Ukraine’s. The country has redirected much of its trade from its eastern neighbours to the EU, started to modernise its transport infrastructure and restructured some of its ailing state-owned industrial behemoths.
..
Daniel Boniecki at the Warsaw office of McKinsey, a consultancy, identifies three “pillars of change” for his country: Poland must close the productivity gap with western Europe; invest in growth industries such as specialist machinery; and become more global. Polish firms’ productivity per hour is still only around 60% of companies in the EU15 countries (the members before enlargement to the east), partly because training and equipment lag behind and partly because companies are badly managed. Polish firms are good at enhancing a product before putting it on the market, but mostly for foreign outfits or by using foreign technology. The majority of firms lack scale and tend to focus on the domestic or regional market. The only truly global Polish company is the state-controlled KGHM, one of the world’s largest copper and silver miners.
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The most urgent task for Poland, however, is to slim down its bloated public sector. Since the end of communism the number of civil servants has nearly tripled, to at least 460,000. Successful private companies are being held back by an overly bureaucratic public sector..'
- The Economist,
For the first time in half a millennium, Poland is thriving, says Vendeline von Bredow., June 28, 2014</blockquote>
Context<blockquote>
Association Agreements with Georgia, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine, June 27, 2014
Ricardo SemlerEpisode 11: Ricardo Semler'First, Let's Fire All the Managers' - Gary Hamel</blockquote>