The Expected Inflow of Foreign Direct Investments in Poland: Focus on Regions

The key aims of this work are: assess the future inflow of foreign direct investment (FDI) to Poland as an aggregate of its regions and to the regions themselves, both have not yet been seen in the literature on the topic. To achieve the first goal, an Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) model is built using Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) method of estimation of data on FDI inflows to Poland for years 1990–2004. After being positively evaluated with an ex post forecast (2005–2011), the model is then used for an ex ante forecast for years 2012–2020. Due to a significantly shorter time period (2005–2012), for which data on the number of foreign investors in each of the regions was available, a much simpler statistical approach had to be applied, that is a naïve forecast with a linear trend line where period is the only independent variable. Due to the wide variance of the number of investors, four determinants of FDI (i.e., gross domestic product with its per capita permutation, unit labor cost and unemployment) were correlated with the dependent variable of interest in order to assess the strength, direction and statistical validity of a possible linear relationship. Results show that as an aggregate, Poland can expect an increasing inward activity from foreign investors, both in their number and in the inflow of money. This conclusion carries over to most of the regions as the number of foreign investors in them is forecasted to increase.