Special Economic Zones in Poland

Abstract

In the early years of the Polish economic transition, the fast growing economic performance gap between the regions emerged as a serious socio-economic issue. Regions holding heavy industrial areas, rural agricultural areas and R&D centres were hit hardest and unemployment as well as great decline of outputs reached a formidable level. The Polish government established Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in such regions, introducing investment incentives to attract foreign investors. Though major multinational enterprises often choose SEZs as their plant locations in Poland, only a small portion of FDI has been realized in SEZs and the amount of employment generated in SEZs is far from its original target number. The conclusion of this paper is that SEZs as an FDI promotion policy instrument brought a certain level of success but not as much as the Polish government expected.