Kennametal looks for site for EUR 50 million investment

American Kennametal has been distributing tools for many years in Poland and the company has a facility in Rybnik, which is supplying products to the mining and construction sectors. Now Kennametal is considering new investments of $12 - 18 MN in the Central Europe. One of the key reasons in deciding to go to Poland is its central geographical location in Europe.

   Electrolux to create 600 new jobs in Poland

  
Swedish Electrolux Group, the world's largest producer of electrical appliances for kitchen, cleaning and outdoor use, will build a new dishwasher factory in Zarow (southwestern Poland). The new plant will be the second Electrolux manufacturing facility in Poland, the investment of $26 MN. First dishwashers will leave the assembling line in December 2005. The full annual production will be 360,000 units of dishwashers. Around 40% of materials, elements and components for production will be obtained from Polish suppliers.

   Human insulin firm BIOTON debuts on the Warsaw Stock Exchange

Warsaw based pharmaceutical Bioton is one of the domestic producers of so-called human insulin and has a 7.2% share of the domestic market. Bioton's IPO will see 16 million new shares released on the market. The income will be used to finance the testing of a new medicine, an analogy of human insulin.

   Electronic signature

The customs administration has began a pilot implementation of the electronic signature procedure in customs documents. This is the first segment of Polish public administration to embrace the electronic signature. It will be tested by the Katowice Customs Office and Opel Poland (GMC) carmaker of Gliwice.

   Investments

The countries of East-Central Europe attracted 20% of all foreign direct investments made in Europe in the first half of 2005, according to Ernst&Young. Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland and Russia, called the Big Four by the European Investment Monitor report, recorded the greatest increase: from 156 to 283 projects. In Poland alone there were 69 new projects in the first half of 2004 compared with only 18 in the same period of last year and 46 in the whole of 2003.

   Car production grows

395,195 passenger cars rolled of the assembly lines of Polish factories between January and September 2005, what is 76% more than in the same period of last year. At the same time 92,501 new vans were produced, an increase of 350%. 83.5% of passenger cars and 89.7% of vans were exported. Italian Fiat was the largest car manufacturer in Poland with a share in total output of 58.4%. Opel (GMC) (21.6), Volkswagen (11.2), FSO (8.7) and VW Caddy (7.1) followed it. 44.2% of all passenger cars made in Poland were the Pandas. VW Transporters and VW Caddys were the best selling vans

   45 credit institutions want to come to Poland

45 foreign credit institutions have so far declared their intentions to start activities in Poland after it joined the EU on May 1, the Banking Supervision Committee (KNB) said recently. They come mostly from Britain, Germany, Austria and Ireland. All of these institutions notified KBN about plans to conduct trans-border financial operations in Poland.

   Poland - Economy in brief

Interest rates - economists believe that the Monetary Policy Council (RPP) will not raise interest rates this month. The basic NBP rate - the so-called referencing rate amounts 6.5%.

The WOK consumer optimism index rose almost 1 point in October, reaching 88.59 pts, the IQS Quant Group announced. The largest increase, of 3.28 pts, was reported in the economic climate sub index, which now stands at 81.49 pts.

IPO market - analysts at Bank Handlowy (BH) brokerage house believe the value of public offer shares in Poland will amount to $6 BN between October 2004 and December 2005.