The Participation of the Polish Manufacturing in Global Value Chains

Increasing liberalization of the world economy has led to the intensification of international trade, especially of an intra-industry character. A specific feature of modern trade is the growing share of semi-finished and intermediate goods. At the same time global trade integration has caused the spatial fragmentation and disintegration of industrial production. This phenomenon is associated with the expansion of international production networks, or other global value chains. Value chains have become a basic tool for analysing changes in the scope of international trade and manufacturing organizations. The fundamental determinant of manufacturing realization within international production networks is the optimization of the production process by using the existing differences between countries in terms of production costs. Liberalization of Polish economy in the early 1990s has enabled the development of foreign trade and the steady increase in trade. The aim of the study is to determine the share of foreign and domestic value of Polish exports based on available statistical data, in particular including the OECD-WTO statistics. They suggest the so-called participation index, which describes the share of domestic value added in foreign exports (forward participation) and the foreign value added in domestic exports (backward participation). Taking into consideration the current data, 45% of Polish exports of manufacturing s realized within GVCs. It seems important to also examine the structure of exports and developments in this field, which will enable further debate on the competitiveness of Polish exports.