Digitization and technology adoption can lead not only to significant productivity improvements but can also increase the economy’s resilience to external shocks, such as the COVID-19 pandemic or the dynamically changing economic environment. Despite Poland’s remarkable economic growth performance in the last three decades and significant progress in digitization, Poland still struggles to keep up with its European comparators. Given the relatively low willingness of Polish entrepreneurs to train their labor force or adopt firm-level technology, as well as the only slow improvements made in managerial practices, policy interventions that facilitate the digital transformation of the economy may be needed.
Moreover, with challenges related to population aging, Poland’s long-term growth and pace of catch-up with advanced economies will increasingly depend on productivity advances. Publicly financed instruments can play an important role in maintaining strong economic growth. The World Bank’s productivity research provides insights for effective policy design aiming to foster firm-level technology adoption and digitization.
The World Bank’s project conducted in collaboration with the European Commission Directorate-General for Structural Reform Support (DG REFORM), Statistics Poland, and Polish Agency for Enterprise Development aimed to support the Ministry of Economic Development and Technology in enhancing the effectiveness of firms’ support systems in Poland by providing evidence-based information on firms’ capabilities and technological readiness, barriers and paths of productivity growth, as well as detailed policy recommendations to help decision-makers better channel public support to achieve development goals.
What were the paths of Polish productivity growth and firm-level technology sophistication? The Executive Summary includes key findings and recommendations for public policy to sustain strong economic growth.
DOWNLOAD Full Report | Executive Summary
What were the paths of Polish productivity growth in the last decade? What were the productivity growth’s drivers and barriers? How diverse in productivity growth are firms of different sizes and from different sectors? The full report with the results of the productivity decomposition based on Statistics Poland’s 2009-2019 firm-level data.
How technologically sophisticated and diverse are Polish enterprises? What are the barriers to technology adoption, and how to design public policy instruments to foster digitization and technology adoption? Includes the full report on the Technology Adoption Survey results and detailed policy recommendations.
How diverse in technology sophistication are Polish sectors? What are the Polish sectors’ growth perspectives? The Technology Adoption Survey detailed results for agriculture, food processing, wearing apparel, motor vehicles, pharmaceuticals, basic metals, wholesale and retail trade, financial services, and land transport.
What is the role of the services sector in the structural transformation of Poland? How can the services sector, given its characteristics, contribute to the productivity growth of Poland? What is the potential of the services sector to create high-quality jobs? This Policy Note applies the methodology of the flagship report “At Your Service?: The Promise of Services-Led Development” to the Polish data.
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Download the Technology Adoption Survey methodology:
Bridging the Technological Divide. Firm-level Adoption of Technology in the post-COVID World