Thanks to the diversification of Poland's export destinations, the embargo imposed by Russia is becoming less noticeable. Poland will increase its shipments to EU markets and developing countries by between 9 and 20% compared to last year. In this search for new customers, the Ministry of Agriculture is playing a key role. This week, Marek Sawicki has been promoting Polish food in Algeria, and other promising markets include China, Turkey, India and Iran.
"This year, at the SIAL China fair, we want to focus mainly on Central and Western China. We also want to intensify our promotions in Algeria and I hope we'll be able to increase our presence there. Furthermore, the priority is to strengthen relations with Turkey and two very promising markets where we are still only marginally present; I'm talking about India and Iran," said Marek Sawicki, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, to the news agency Newseria.
Marek Sawicki stated that the structure of Polish exports is slowly changing, with a growing focus on third markets, i.e. outside the EU, which requires more discipline on the part of exporters.
"The Russian embargo prevented us from maintaining our export growth dynamics in 2014, but we still managed to grow by 4.5%, while the majority of EU countries recorded declines," assured the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development.
According to the CSO, the value of exports to Russia in January-February 2015 dropped by 28.1% compared to 2014. On the other hand, exports to the EU in the same period were 8.6% higher. The biggest growth, however, was reported in exports to developing countries (+20.9%), which already account for 8.9% of the total turnover generated by exports, compared to 7.8% a year earlier.
Source: wprost.pl
