Ukrainians set up some 8,000 SMEs, 50,000 register as individual entrepreneurs in Poland since Feb 2022

Ukrainian citizens have opened around 8,000 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and over 50,000 Ukrainians have registered as individual entrepreneurs in Poland since the end of February 2022, Ukrainian media cited Polish-Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce First Vice President Dariusz Szymczycha as saying in a statement at the 3th Forum for the Reconstruction of Ukraine in Kiev.

The forum was organized by the Kiev office of the Polish Investment and Trade Agency.

Polish Chamber of Commerce board member Marek Belski, in turn, believes that Ukrainian business has vast prospects in Poland.

“Polish companies, which were created in Germany in the early 2000s, returned to the Polish market over a period of 10-15 years and were crucial to Poland’s transformation due to their European experience,” he said.

Polish Investment and Trade Agency Board Chairman Andrzej Dycha, for his part, said that a priority for the Polish government is to maintain cooperation between SMEs of the two countries, as large companies can develop contacts on their own. Necessary infrastructure for that is being created, he said.

“The Polish Investment and Trade Agency has opened its regional offices in Rzeszow and Lublin – the administrative centers of the Subcarpathian Voivodeship and Lublin Voivodeship. The agency’s office will soon be opened in Lvov,” Dycha said.

A co-working space for Ukrainian entrepreneurs and a Diia. Business office have been opened in Warsaw since the start of the crisis in Ukraine, he said.

Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce and Industry President Gennady Chizhikov, in turn, said that Poland is an example of the largest relocation of Ukrainian capital and workforce.

Ukraine and Poland should allow enterprises of the two countries to operate unimpeded on their internal markets, Irina Vereshchuk, Ukrainian deputy prime minister, reintegration minister and co-chair of the Polish-Ukrainian intergovernmental economic commission, said at the forum.

According to Eurostat data, Poland in late April 2024 housed 953,930 people who left Ukraine since the start of the crisis and received temporary protection. They account for 22.7% of all people with this status in the European Union.

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