Poland's Foreign Trade in 2015

The year 2015 saw exceptionally successful foreign trade results. For the first time since we started recording turnover in the Euro, the exports volume (178.7 billion EUR) exceeded the imports level (175 billion EUR), which was reflected by a considerable trade surplus, amounting to 3.7 billion EUR.

The results were brought about by a few factors working together, including the falling price of oil, the depreciation of zloty against dollar, as well as the prosperous economy on foreign markets.

In 2015, as the case was in the previous year, trade exchange with markets well developed economically (where the exports rose by 9.8 per cent, imports by 5 per cent and surplus increased by 8.1 billion EUR to reach 36.5 billion EUR) looked considerably better than trade with less developed ones (where the 2.8 per cent drop in the exports and, at the same time, an increase in the imports by 1.8 per cent was reflected by a deepening of the deficit by over 1.8 EUR to 32.8 billion EUR).

The exports to the European Union improved more than moderately – i.e. by 10.3 per cent, reaching 141.6 billion EUR (with Spain receiving 16.4 per cent more of our exports, the UK and the Netherlands - 14.5 per cent each, Italy - 13.2 per cent, and our key trade partner Germany - 11.2 per cent). The twice as little increase (by 5.1 per cent) in the imports from the EU recorded over the same period resulted in the rise in the positive turnover balance by about 8.2 billion EUR, thus reaching 37.1 billion EUR.

What developed relatively slowly was the volume of sales to developed markets outside the EU (3.8 per cent increase to 11.4 billion EUR), which was determined by the downward trend of exports to Norway (decrease by 11.6 per cent), observed since 2014. On the other hand, as far as these countries are concerned, the volume of exports rose rapidly in the case of target markets of Canada (by 17.9 per cent), the USA (by 11.1 per cent) and Switzerland (by 14.6).

The previously mentioned drop in the exports to less developed markets was a result of their visible decrease in the case of the Commonwealth of Independent States (by over 20 per cent, to almost 10.2 billion EUR), including Russia (27 per cent), Ukraine (5.2 per cent) and Belarus (25 per cent).

Having said that, sales to developing markets other than the CIS rose by 13.8 per cent, reaching 15.5 billion EUR. As for this group of countries, particularly rapid was the increase in the exports to Egypt (by 70 per cent), Mexico (by about 60 per cent), Singapore (by over 25 per cent), Turkey (by about 20 per cent) and China (by over 8 per cent). On the other hand, there were lower volumes of exports to the UAE (by 17 per cent), Serbia (by about 6 per cent), Brazil (by 9 per cent) and Algeria (by about 40 per cent).

As for product groups, an increase in sales was seen in all of them (apart from minerals), with the fastest growth in the light industry goods (by 19.5 per cent). Also more rapidly than average rose the exports of woodworking and papermaking industry goods (by 9.8 per cent) as well as electrical and mechanical engineering products (by 11.2 per cent). The biggest balance improvement was seen in mineral products trade (by 3.8 billion EUR) and food and agricultural products (by almost 1 billion EUR), which more than compensated for the worsened balance in the metallurgy (by almost 0.4 billion EUR) as well as electrical and mechanical engineering products (by nearly 0.2 billion EUR).

Source: https://www.mr.gov.pl/