Nearly 6,000 companies with Belarusian capital are already active in Poland. A large proportion of them operate in the IT sector. There are 122 thousand Belarusians registered with the Social Insurance Institution (ZUS); they account for 10.2 % of all foreigners.

Dmitri Danilczuk, head of the internationally funded Belarusian Business Centre, which has been operating at the Union of Entrepreneurs and Employers since 2022, in an interview with ‘Puls Biznesu’, points out that the diaspora of entrepreneurs from Belarus is the largest in Poland.

“Estimates say about 150,000-250,000 Belarusians living in Poland and 5,988 companies with Belarusian capital in November 2023”, say Danilczuk. Most Belarusian companies operate in the service sector: trade, transport and logistics, construction, and IT. Although in terms of the number of companies IT is in fourth place, in terms of employment and revenue it is the leader.

According to Danilczuk’s estimates, the 20 largest Belarusian IT companies that relocated to Poland a year ago already employed 12,500 people. Some of them had more than half of their total workforce in Poland. Poland is also the favourite foreign country in the region for Belarusian start-ups: 64 % of them chose it in 2020-22, compared to 21 % for Lithuania and 15 % for Ukraine.

Citing a report prepared by the Belarusian Business Centre, the Belarusian think tank BEROC and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, ‘Puls Biznesu’ reports that 122,000 Belarusians are registered with the Social Security Institution (data as of mid-2023). They account for 10.2 % of all foreigners.

Already a few months ago, ‘Dziennik Gazeta Prawna’ reported that Belarus accounted for the largest number of foreign investments realised in Poland in 2023. At the time, data from the Polish Investment and Trade Agency indicated that in the first half of 2023, Belarusian investors carried out 12 projects in our country. In comparison, German business, which was the second most active in Poland, had five projects to its credit.

Arkadiusz Slomczynski