Monthly Meeting January
All you need is cash! The Polish Trade and Investment Agency will have a lot to offer to foreign investors
T
omasz Pisula, the new Chairman of the Polish Information and Foreign Investment Agency (PAIiIZ), a government organization charged with helping foreign investors in Poland, met with AmCham in January to talk about government plans to reform the agency. PAIiIZ is an organization with which the international business community, including many AmCham member companies, have worked with for many years on a range of different projects. During this time foreign investors saw it evolve from a inefficient and bureaucratic organization unable to meet the expectations of the investors back in the late 20th Century, into a modern, well-organized and efficient one-stop-shop which provides investors with up-to-date information and value-added services. The change for the better took place at the turn of the century, and the agency continuously grew its value for investors, especially so under the leadership of Sławomir Majman, the head of PAIiIZ from 2009 to 2016.
MEET THE SPEAKER
The fund But the days of the PAIiIZ are numbered as the agency is in transition to become a part of a broader network of government agencies and organizations—the Polish Development Fund (PDF)—where it will be known as Polish Trade and Investment Agency. The PDF is a newly formed group of financial and advisory institutions which are charged with helping business as well as local and regional governments build a sustainable economy. It includes other agencies such as The Polish Agency for Enterprise Development, PARP. “The idea was to bring all the state agencies into one organizational framework so they don’t compete with one another and their responsibilities do not overlap,” Pisula said. He added that in future “we might consider more meetings including the heads of the State Development Bank of the Polish Development Fund, who might have things to say” to the American business community in Poland. experience in business The Polish Trade and Investment Agency (PTIA) will continue to be the one-stop-shop for foreign direct investment, Pisula said, not-
Investors should look for opportunities in locations other than just the most popular ones because some of those have a shortage of manpower. Tomasz Pisula, president of PAIiIZ, on behalf of Ministry of Development supervised a number of ministry-affiliated entities whose total assets exceeded PLN 300 billion. He was pivotal in establishing the Polish Development Fund. Prior to the work for the ministry Pisula worked for Bank Zachodni WBK. In 2006-2014 he was president of the Freedom and Democracy Foundation, an NGO promoting human rights and democracy in Cuba, Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, Azerbaijan, and Egypt. In 1998-2003, Pisula was advisor to Senator Zbigniew Romaszewski in the Foundation for Human Rights, where he was responsible for the Senator's foreign contacts. In 2000 Pisula won an internship from the Committee on Foreign Relations of the United States Senate. Pisula earned a PhD in philosophy and sociology from the Polish Academy of Sciences.
16
AMERICAN INVESTOR WINTER 2017
ing that the now the agency will be directly supervised by the Ministry of Development. The difference is significant, according to Pisula, because the ministry is now ran by individuals “who have business backgrounds” including the head of the ministry, deputy prime minister and the minister of development Mateusz Morawiecki. And Minister Morawiecki is not the only one at the ministry who understands business: “A significant portion of directors who are responsible for the economy have worked in the financial sector before or have run successful companies in the past,” Pisula noted. “In a natural way there is a lot of under-
standing for business across the board in the ministry and that includes foreign business too. They are an institutional partner for you.” In January PAIiIZ was assisting 64 US companies which represented an aggregated investment of EUR 1.1 billion. When all the projects materialize they will create 16,000 new jobs in Poland. Pisula added that PAIiIZ represents the interest of investors vis-a-vis the administration and acts as a voice for them voice for them if they encounter problems across issues that they face. He encouraged members to come and talk to PAIiIZ because “we (at PAIiIZ) know whom to address.” Beyond PTia The PTIA will continue to do what its predecessor did—assisting foreign investors in finding the most suitable location, negotiating with local governments for tax incentives and exemptions on behalf of foreign investors, and even assist foreign investors in helping them with selling their investment ideas in Poland to the decision makers in their coroprations. The PTIA will also act as a matchmaker between investors and the Polish Development Fund. “If you have a project and look for a partner this is a place to be,” Pisula said, adding that “Not only does the fund bring money to the project but also stability.” investor havens Pisula said that Poland continues to be an attractive country for foreign investors and citied different investment attractiveness rankings which showed Poland among the best countries in the world for FDI. He said that today, iInvestors should look for opportunities in locations other than just the most popular ones because some of those have a shortage of manpower. He also said that the tax havens, the Special Economic Zones, are places where investors should go, because the agency “works with local governments and the Special Economic Zones to unleash their potential for foreign investors and there are really exciting opportunities for business there.” He hinted on the Ministry of Development plans to reform some of the not-so-well performing zones by applying to them the best practices developed by the successful zones. The ministry will also cluster some of the zones so they do not compete against each other but are “areas of business which create jobs, as we will put them together as local hubs.”
•