Saturday, January 24, 2009

Poland lands huge Dell production facility

Yahoo! News: Poland lands huge Dell production facility

Commentary

Perhaps President Obama can create similar special economic zones in the US for alternative energy and green industries. Instead of cutting taxes across the board, especially unnecessary tax cuts for the rich, legislate a simple zero rate for businesses that create jobs, at least for two or three years.

Excerpts

While forecasting the EU economy will shrink by a grim 1.8 percent in 2009, a recent European Commission report said Poland would see 2.0 percent growth, after an expected 5.0 percent last year.

The factory lies inside one of Poland's fourteen Special Economic Zones (SEZ), where investors enjoy exemptions from both property taxes and Poland's 19 percent corporate income tax while often getting public aid to boot.

Lodz city hall created all the necessary infrastructure -- including fences, roads and public bus service -- on the property slated for Dell.

This "the customer is always right" and "full service" approach has attracted 980 foreign investors to Lodz so far, among them Proctor and Gamble, Bosch-Siemens, CitiFinancial, Indesit, Gillette, Infosys, ABB, DHL, TNT and Flextronics.

Both production plants and business processing offshore (BPO) facilities are mushrooming in the city known until recently as a 19th Century industrial boom town gone-to-seed after being hit hard by waves of industrial collapse.

The investment boom has seen unemployment in Lodz dive from 20 percent four years ago to 6.5 percent in December 2008.

It is now aiming to attract enough investors to create 40,000 new jobs by 2015. Under EU rules, Poland's SEZs can operate until the end of 2020.

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