Poland expects to receive a record amount of foreign direct investment in 2007, the head of the national foreign investment agency PAIIIZ, Pawel Wojciechowski, said on Oct. 17. "This year we are expecting a new record," he said.
In 2006 the central European member of the EU received a record 15.06 billion euros (US$21 billion) in investment. An official from the Polish central bank said that between January and August the country received 8.5 billion euros in foreign direct investment, compared with 5.46 billion euros in the same period of 2006. Over 2006, foreign direct investment increased by 81.9% compared to 2005, Jozef Sobota, a member of the bank's directorate said.
More than one fifth of this sum, or 3.11 billion euros, was invested in Poland in transit and was later reinvested in projects outside Poland, Sobota said. Some 87.9% of the investments carried out in 2006 came from the EU, which Poland joined on May 1, 2004.
Of the capital committed, 24%, or 3.57 billion euros, came from Luxembourg. Two thirds of this sum was then reinvested in other countries. German capital accounted for 18% of the global sum invested in Poland, followed by Italy and the Netherlands, which both invested 9% and Britain 8%.
Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2007
