Bureaucracy a barrier in Poland

Problems with regulations and officials are the most commonly cited obstacles to doing business in the construction market in Poland, a PMR survey has found.

Companies are, however, expressing "slightly more favourable assessments of the economic situation in the Polish construction market", the report found.

PMR - which provides market information, advice and services to international businesses in Central and Eastern Europe plus other emerging markets - found that construction activity in Poland was still hampered by market barriers, but that more and more companies were identifying factors which had a positive bearing on the market.

It conducted a survey of high-level professionals from the management and operating divisions of 200 of the largest Polish construction companies. PMR said the results showed that sentiment in the industry had "taken a slight turn for the better".

PMR said the companies which tended to see more negatives than positives in the current situation were still more numerous in the market, but added that the number seeing more negatives had decreased in the past six months.

The most frequent obstacles, cited by 41% of responding companies, were problems related to legal regulations and difficulties in dealing with officials.

In September, PMR reported, it noted that the respondents were less concerned about the lack of relevant regulations to protect the Polish market against competition from foreign providers of construction services than they were six months earlier, while more responses indicated excessive bureaucracy, overly-complicated regulations and lack of understanding of the nature of respondents' business by legislators and officials.

Strong market competition was the second most frequently cited barrier to doing business, which PMR said was mentioned primarily by smaller companies.

The survey found that the most conducive factors to doing business in the Polish construction market were said to be EU subsidies. This, it said, to a significant extent helped the public sector outweigh the fall in private sector investments.