NYT: Poland Is Likely To Be The Next Rich Nation

Last week’s visit of the President of the United States Donald Trump and his wife Melania has put Poland in the spotlight and drawn international journalists’ attention to the country by the Vistula river. An important subject matter during the visit, during which the President of the US was accompanied by a delegation including Secretary of Commerce, was economy and trade links between the two countries.

The event caught the attention of Ruchir Sharma, a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times who decided to write a piece on Poland and Polish economy. The author of the book “The Rise and Fall of Nations: Forces of Change in the Post-Crisis World” names Poland “the next economic powerhouse” and predicts the biggest state of the CEE region may in the next few years join the ranks of the richest countries of the globe.

Sharma refers to the data presented by International Monetary Fund, which classifies global economies as belonging to one of the two groups: advanced and developing / emerging. Poland is currently being classified as a developing economy, yet, as the article indicates, this may soon change. Polish economy has been steadily growing for the last 25 years. Since its breakup with communism and administrative command economy, the country has not experienced a period of recession, even in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis.

According to the current statistical data, Poland ranks as the 24^th biggest economy in the world. The NYT article praises the state’s “long-term fiscal sobriety” and determination to introduce economic and institutional reforms and says it is “big enough to put all of Eastern Europe on the global economic map”. International Monetary Fund predicts that Polish GDP growth in 2017 is to reach 3.4%, while S&P estimates it to be 3.6%.