More government funding coming for clusters

Submitted by Alina Danieles… on 30 January 2017

According to the source: http://wbj.pl/more-government-funding-coming-for-clusters-deputy-development-minister/, Poland’s Deputy Minister of Economic Development, Jadwiga Emilewicz, said on Wednesday that she believed that taking advantage of the Internet of Things would be necessary to enhance Poland’s economic growth and development. She was speaking at the 4th Annual Congress of Polish Clusters. She told journalists that 16 key clusters would receive over PLN 33 million (in total). “We are on the eve of the revolution the Internet of Things. […] There is no turning back from this global trend. In order to become an economic driving force, clusters are the answer,” said Emilewicz.

She said that the cluster can significantly support small, medium and large businesses. “[It can] create a meeting place [for] large companies [and for] small. It is not without reason [that we] often talk about the success of southeastern [Poland’s] Aviation Valley, where large, global champions in the last couple of years have grown and also a number of small and medium-sized Polish entrepreneurs are cooperating and growing with that markets and other suppliers,” she added. Other examples of innovative business clusters in Poland are the Life Sciences Cluster in Kraków and another aviation cluster in Silesia.

The director of the Department of Innovation of the Ministry of Development, Małgorzata Szczepańska, who also spoke at the conference, said that clusters help to build the innovation economy because they become a platform for cooperation and exchange of experience, contributing to competitiveness. “The aim of the cluster policy is to support the best ones, indicating those that have the greatest potential,” she said, adding that these clusters bring together 1,195 companies, mostly small and medium-sized enterprises which employ a total of 105,852 employees. She added that almost half of these are companies from sectors of high and medium technology. She estimated that the share of exports of the clusters in the national economy is 28 percent. The Ministry of Development has indicated that it will support the development of clusters, including through regular meetings with the coordinators of the National Cluster Key. It sees great potential to compete in international markets through 16 specific economic clusters. Emilewicz said that, through the program Intelligent Development, companies have already been earmarked to receive PLN 33.25 million, with another PLN 27 million on the way.

The full article is available here.

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