Foreign trade

Poland's foreign trade grew from about $30 billion in 1991 to close to $86 billion in 2001, an almost threefold rise. This was mainly on the back of significantly higher growth in imports than exports. At the end of 2001, the value of exports stood at not much over 70% of imports. Despite the visible progress in the development of foreign trade in this period the current level of exports, measured both in relation as well as to GDP per head of population, is still significantly lower in Poland than in other Central and Eastern European countries.

In 2001 the value per capita of Poland’s export was US$933, while in Slovakia it was US$ 2,337, US$ 3,050 in Hungary, nearly US$ 3,248 in the Czech Republic, and over US$ 4,650 in Slovenia (all these countries have a smaller population than Poland, which partly accounts for the unfavourable balance).

In 1993 the balance of foreign trade in monetary terms (according to the CESTAT figures), which in 1992 had still been in the black and amounted to over half a billion US dollars, went into a gradually widening deficit, amounting to US$ 18 billion by 1998. But since 1998, a reverse trend has been observed, with the foreign trade deficit shrinking. In 2001 it was just over US$14 billion.

Since 1996 most of Poland's foreign trade has been with partners in the EU. In the first six months of the year, in comparison to the analogous period of the previous year, Poland's exports to EU countries increased by 8%, reaching 15 billion euros. In this period Poland's imports increased by only 1%, rising to 18.6 billion euros.

Poland is the EU's seventh largest trading partner, exceeded by the US, Switzerland, China, Japan, Russia and Norway. Poland is the largest trade partner with the EU of the current candidate countries.

source: www.poland.gov.pl