was also influenced by the growing competition on the part of neighbours of Poland,
especially the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
From 2003 the value of foreign investments grew again; Poland turned out to be
a relatively stable country (despite the changes of cabinets), with numerous human
resources of better and better educated employees 1 [Yearbook ... 2005]. It is also an
attractive large (38.2 m people) outlet neighbouring the huge markets of Russia and
Ukraine.
Besides the value of investments in particular years their aggregate value is also
important. We present its level in the years 1993 - 2004 in figure 2.
Figure 2. Aggregate value of foreign investments in Poland in the years 1993 - 2004
Source: Data of the Polish Information and Foreign Investment Agency, 2006.
Poland is not a country which is a special place for foreign investments; however,
during the analysed period of twelve years almost 85 bn USD were invested here. For a
country which is not very affluent and was destroyed by the many years of the
communist rule, this is a considerable amount. To understand its magnitude it should
be said that the whole Gross Domestic Product of the country in 2003 amounted to 252
bn USD (6.6 thousand USD per 1 citizen) and increased in relation to 1995 by 81.3%
(from 139.1 bn USD) [Yearbook ... 2005]. It was foreign direct investments that had a
great significance for this increase.
2. Significance of investments in the food industry within
the total foreign direct investments
Funds from abroad were invested in production, financial, commercial activity
etc. We present detailed information in this respect in table 1.
Table 1. Value and structure of foreign direct investments in Poland in the years 1993 -
2004 ______________________________________________________________________________
I Item I Type of activity ∣ Capital invested [m ∣ Structure [%] ∣
1 In Poland in 2004 there were 535 students to every 10 thousand of the population
while in the whole EU 371 only. People with at least vocational secondary education aged
from 24 to 64 constituted 89.5% in Poland while 76.7% in the whole group.