Foreign investments in Polish agribusiness as a
factor increasing the pace of its development
Bogdan Klepacki, Barbara Gotçbiewska
Warsaw Agricultural University
Faculty of Agricultural Economics
Abstract : The study presented the scale of foreign direct investments in Poland in the years 1993-
2004. It was found out that these investments related both to production and financial, commercial
and logistical activity. A considerable part of investments was made in the agricultural and food
industry, especially in the first years after the transition from a socialist economy to a market
economy. The greatest resources were invested in the tobacco industry and then in the production
of sweets and beverages. As a result of research it was found out that the agricultural and food
industry in Poland developed dynamically after the transformation, both increasing the value of
production and investing more than the consumption of fixed assets amounted to.
Keywords: foreign direct investments, agricultural and food industry.
Introduction
One of the basic problems of the development of states in the contemporary world is
to obtain economic (financial), real and human capital. Countries which first stepped
onto the path of capitalist development, which are also leading now, such as England,
the USA or Germany followed the development process for decades using own and
foreign sources. Modern societies as a result of the development of means of
communications, travel and other contacts would like to reach the development level of
the leading countries as soon as possible. Meanwhile the less developed states most
frequently lack the most important factors of growth and development, especially funds,
state of the art technologies and human resources to employ advanced methods in
management and marketing. Saving funds, developing effective technologies and
educating human resources are a long- lasting process. Foreign direct investments made
usually by large international consortia with all attributes of modernity at their disposal
give an opportunity to shorten the process and in consequence to speed up the
economic development. That is the cause of the existence of a specific type of
competition in the contemporary world - competition for encouraging resource owners
to invest precisely in our country either by buying out existing companies or by making
greenfield investments. The scale of foreign investments is enormous. In the years 1998
- 2004 it fluctuated between 560 bn USD (2003) and almost 1.4 million million USD
(2000) annually [List ... 2006].
1. Scale of foreign direct investments in the 1990's in
Poland
Poland became such a competitor after the transformation from a socialist
centrally planned economy to a capitalist market economy. About 25 to 36 bn USD
would come yearly to the countries of Central and Eastern Europe from the beginning of
the 1990's to 2004; investments in Poland constituted a considerable part of that. For
example, in 2004 only in Russia greater investments were made (27% of the total in the
countries of Central and Eastern Europe) than in Poland (14%) [List ... 2006].
The scale of foreign investments in Poland was diversified in particular years. We
present its level in figure 1.