Is Polish manufacturing prepared for integration with the European single
market? Does it have sufficient capacity to cope with the competitive pressures
within the Union? Integration theory indicates that adaptability to the single
market depends on a country's ability to accumulate and re-deploy resources
rapidly in pursuit of new opportunities, while at the same time fully exploiting
existing competitive strengths. Accumulation of resources was very successful
in the majority of industries at the beginning of transformation and then
dramatically deteriorated in the second half of the nineties. It may suggest
that Poland was losing its ability to accumulate resources in manufacturing on
the eve of accession. The speed of structural change in manufacturing has
been increasing over the whole decade, indicating a high degree of industrial
mobility of the Polish economy. Resources have been relocated across industries.
Re-deployment in exports is much more pronounced than shifts in production
and employment. The existing competitive strengths are exhibited
mostly in traditional low-skill and labour-intensive industries. Nevertheless
the structure of industry has dramatically changed over the period. The share
of industries with medium-skill intensity of blue collar workers has crucially
increased, the same trend has been reported for research- intensive sectors.
Productivity analysis reveals that the rate of labour productivity has been
much higher than the rate of TFP growth in the majority of industries in the
years 1993-2000.
