2019-05-13 20:20 update: 2019-05-17, 22:18
Photo PAP/ Hanna Bardo
Improved productivity, increased investment and innovation should be the main methods of enterprises and economies to cope during the slowdown, symptoms of which are visible in various parts of the world, experts at the European Economic Congress have said.
The congress is being held in the southern Polish city of Katowice.
Participants in a panel discussion devoted to the European economy in times of slowdown agreed that after a period of prosperity come worse times. Carlos Pinerua from the World Bank stated that additional uncertainty is connected with the situation in the USA, in China and trade wars, among others. In some EU countries disturbing signals are also appearing that within the Community the situation is additionally complicated by Brexit, all of which weakens the trust in markets, he said.
Despite that, economies as a rule are still growing and consumption remains at a high level, Pinerua observed. The news is still relatively good, he asserted, though he admitted there are of course certain weaknesses in the euro zone, which are starting to have an effect, though that is not yet something to worry about, in his view.
Deputy Finance Minister Leszek Skiba drew attention to the fact that the state of the global economy is not at the moment at all interpreted as a period preceding a crisis, although if one wants to look for warning signs one can find them.
"It's a basic problem, that in fact we don't have a single factor, of which either in the euro zone or in the American economy, or globally, it could be said - as in the times of the last crisis - that it is an important factor, that presages the appearance of a deep slowdown of some great scale," Skiba explained. In his opinion, unbeneficial mechanisms in the economy can start political crises, such as trade wars or military interventions.
"Poland as an economy in the European Union is strictly dependent on what happens in the world and - in another direction - of course what happens in Europe. That dependency is, we can say, standard, and is connected with how well Polish industry is coping in the world. That has its pluses, but really that dependency on the external situation is a minus of an open and competitive economy," Skiba explained. (PAP)
ej/
