{"id":204365,"date":"2026-03-17T02:44:58","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T02:44:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/poland-is-now-among-the-worlds-20-largest-economies-how-did-it-happen-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T02:44:58","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T02:44:58","slug":"poland-is-now-among-the-worlds-20-largest-economies-how-did-it-happen-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/poland-is-now-among-the-worlds-20-largest-economies-how-did-it-happen-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Poland is now among the world's 20 largest economies. How did it happen? – NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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POZNAN, Poland \u2014 A generation ago, Poland<\/a> rationed sugar and flour while its citizens were paid one-tenth what West Germans earned. Today its economy has edged past Switzerland to become the world\u2019s 20th largest with over $1 trillion in annual output.
It\u2019s a historic leap from the post-communist ruins of 1989-90<\/a> to today\u2019s European growth champion that economists say has lessons on how to bring prosperity to ordinary people \u2014 and that the Trump administration says should be recognized by Poland\u2019s presence at a summit of the Group of 20<\/a> leading economies later this year.
The transformation is reflected in people like Joanna Kowalska, an engineer from Poznan, a town of half a million people midway between Berlin and Warsaw. She returned home after five years in the U.S.
\u201cI get asked often if I\u2019m missing something by coming back to Poland, and, to be honest, I feel it\u2019s the other way around,\u201d Kowalska said. \u201cWe are ahead of the United States in so many areas.\u201d
Kowalska works at the Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center, which is developing the first artificial intelligence factory in Poland and integrating it with a quantum computer, one of 10 on the continent financed by a European Union program.
Kowalska worked for Microsoft in the U.S. after graduating from the Poznan University of Technology in a job she saw as a \u201cdream come true.\u201d
But she missed having a \u201csense of mission,\u201d she said.
\u201cEspecially when it comes to artificial intelligence, the technology started developing so rapidly in Poland,\u201d Kowalska added. \u201cSo it was very tempting to come back.\u201d
The guest invitation to the G20 summit is mostly symbolic; no guest country has been promoted to full member since the original G20 met at the finance minister level in 1999, and that would take a consensus decision of all the members. Moreover, the original countries were chosen not just by GDP rank, but by their \u201csystemic significance\u201d in the global economy.
But the gesture reflects a statistical truth: In 35 years \u2014 a little less than one person\u2019s working lifetime \u2014 Poland\u2019s per capita gross domestic product rose to $55,340 in 2025, or 85% of the EU average. That\u2019s up from $6,730 in 1990, or 38% of the EU average and now roughly equal to Japan\u2019s $52,039, according to International Monetary Fund figures measured in today\u2019s dollars and adjusted for Poland\u2019s lower cost of living.
Poland\u2019s economy has grown an average 3.8% a year since joining the EU in 2004, easily beating the European average of 1.8%.
It wasn\u2019t simply one factor that helped Poland break out of the poverty trap, says Marcin Pi\u0105tkowski of Warsaw\u2019s Kozminski University and author of a book on the country\u2019s economic rise.
One of the most important factors was rapidly building a strong institutional framework for business, he said. That included independent courts,<\/a> an anti-monopoly agency to ensure fair competition, and strong regulation to keep troubled banks from choking off credit.
As a result, the economy wasn\u2019t hijacked by corrupt practices and oligarchs, as happened elsewhere in the post-communist world.
Poland also benefited from billions of euros in EU aid,<\/a> both before and after it joined the bloc in 2004 and gained access to its huge single market.
Above all, there was the broad consensus, from across the political spectrum, that Poland\u2019s long-term goal was joining the EU.
\u201cPoles knew where they were going,\u201d Pi\u0105tkowski said. \u201cPoland downloaded the institutions and the rules of the game, and even some cultural norms that the West spent 500 years developing.\u201d
As oppressive as it was, communism contributed by breaking down old social barriers and opening higher education to factory and farmworkers who had no chance before. A post-communist boom in higher education means half of young people now have degrees.
\u201cYoung Poles are, for instance, better educated than young Germans,\u201d Piatkowski said, but earn half what Germans do. That\u2019s \u201can unbeatable combination\u201d for attracting investors, he said.
Solaris, a company founded in 1996 in Poznan by Krzysztof Olszewski, is one of the leading manufacturers of electric buses in Europe with a market share of around 15%. Its story shows one hallmark of Poland\u2019s success: entrepreneurship, or the willingness to take risks and build something new.
Educated as an engineer under the Communist government, Olszewski opened a car repair shop where he used spare parts from West Germany to fix Polish cars. While most enterprises were nationalized, authorities gave permission to small-scale private workshops like his to operate, according to Katarzyna Szarzec, an economist at the Poznan University of Economics and Business. \u201cThese were enclaves of private entrepreneurship,\u201d she said.
In 1996, Olszewski opened a subsidiary of the German bus company Neoplan and started producing for the Polish market.
\u201cPoland\u2019s entry to the EU in 2004 gave us credibility and access to a vast, open European market with the free movement of goods, services and people,\u201d said Mateusz Figaszewski, responsible for institutional relations.
Then came a risky decision to start producing electric buses in 2011, a time when few in Europe were experimenting with the technology. Figaszewski said larger companies in the West had more to lose if switching to electric vehicles didn\u2019t work out. \u201cIt became an opportunity to achieve technological leadership ahead of the market,\u201d he said.
Challenges still remain for Poland. Due to a low birth rate and an aging society, fewer workers will be able to support retirees. Average wages are lower than the EU average. While small and medium enterprises flourish, few have become global brands.
Poznan Mayor Jacek Ja\u015bkowiak sees domestic innovation as a third wave in Poland\u2019s postsocialist economic development. In the first wave, foreign countries opened factories in Poland in the early 1990s, taking advantage of a skilled local population.
Around the turn of the millennium, he said, Western companies brought more advanced branches, including finance, IT and engineering.
\u201cNow it\u2019s the time to start such sophisticated activities here,\u201d Ja\u015bkowiak says, adding that one of his main priorities is investing in universities.
\u201cThere is still much to do when it comes to innovation and technological progress,\u201d added Szarzec, the Poznan economist. \u201cBut we keep climbing up on that ladder of added value. We\u2019re no longer just a supplier of spare parts.\u201d
Szarzec\u2019s students say more needs to be done to reduce urban-rural inequalities, make housing affordable and support young people starting families. They say Poles need to acknowledge that immigrants, such as the millions of Ukrainians<\/a> who fled the Russian invasion in 2022, contribute to economic development in an aging population.
\u201cPoland has such a dynamic economy, with so many opportunities for development, that of course I am staying,\u201d said Kazimierz Falak, 27, one of Szarzec\u2019s graduate students. \u201cPoland is promising.\u201d
The Associated Press
© 2026 NBCUniversal Media, LLC<\/p>\n

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news AlertsThere are no new alerts at this timePOZNAN, Poland \u2014 A generation ago, Poland rationed sugar and flour while its citizens were paid one-tenth what West Germans earned. Today its economy has edged past Switzerland to become the world\u2019s 20th largest with over $1 trillion in annual output.It\u2019s a historic leap from the post-communist […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":204366,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-204365","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204365\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}