Poland Import/Export Analytics

The country of my choice to study their economics is Poland. Poland is within Europe. Their currency is the Polish Zloty. The exchange rate to USD on this currency is 3.99 Polish Zloty to every US dollar. In 2013 Poland imported $205,637,034,320 worth of goods.   They also exported $203,858,965,347 worth of goods. This caused a positive trade balance of $1,775,331,267 for the year of 2013.

Within their imports and exports their top five exports were nuclear reactors/ machinery, electrical equipment, vehicles other than railway, mineral fuels, and furniture and lighting. Their top five imports were nuclear reactors, mineral fuels, electronic equipment, vehicles other than railway, and plastics. It is interesting that nuclear reactors/machinery is both top import and export for 2013. They exported more nuclear reactors/machinery then they imported.

Examining the top import and export good, nuclear reactors/machinery, for 2013 from Poland shows a few things. First, with regards to imports, Germany is their highest provider with $6.7 billion. Second is China with $4.5 billion. Since Germany is so close to Poland it makes sense that a large country such as that would export the most to Poland. They can sell more to Poland for less shipping and transportation costs. Poland’s largest exporters are Germany with $5.8 billion and the United Kingdom with $2.3 billion. Again, Germany is the highest for these materials possibly due to low transport costs.

The second top imported good to Poland is mineral fuels and oils. This makes up for $24 billion dollars of their imports in 2013. The Russian Federation is their main exporter for these goods with $18.7 billion dollars. The second highest is Germany with $1.1 billion dollars.  This shows that Russia either has an abundance of goods in which Poland can deal primarily with them or Poland cannot get these types of goods in large quantities from other countries. Whichever the case is, Poland relies heavily on the Russian Federation for their minerals and oils. If Russia were to stop providing these goods, Poland might have a difficult time finding such large quantities of goods. The exports for this good are not as high as imports, with exports being $9.6 billion dollars. This shows Poland’s need for this resource. They import so much of this good, they cannot afford to export much since it is needed.

In the mirror statistics for both of these goods, there are discrepancies in what each country reported. Germany claimed they exported more to Poland then Poland claimed they imported. Germany claimed $42.8 billion while Poland claimed $33.1 billion. However, Germany and Poland’s claims on nuclear imports to Poland were very close to the same, with a $2 billion dollar difference. The Russian Federation claimed they exported less to Poland then Poland claimed. Poland claimed they imported $24 billion while Russia claimed they exported $18.5 billion. Again though, their claims on mineral fuels were similar with a $1.3 dollar difference. These totals could be different from each other because Poland does not claim on small imports. This can be said about Germany and Russia’s exports as well.

UN Comtrade Demo | SAS Visual Analytics. (n.d.). Retrieved December 13, 2015, from http://www.sas.com/software/visual-analytics/demos/un-comtrade-basic.html

XE - The World's Trusted Currency Authority. (n.d.). Retrieved December 13, 2015, from http://www.xe.com/currency/pln-polish-zloty