Obtaining grants just for the sake of grants will not make your business take off on its own. You must have a business idea and invest in research and development. If you do this, you will develop much more than entities that do not use subsidies - according to InfoCredit's analysis.

In the years 2019-23, almost 110,000 projects were carried out in Poland with the participation of EU funds. investments and projects for which the beneficiaries obtained a total of PLN 103.07 billion. Based on our own databases and information from, among others, from the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection and other open sources, we decided to check how Polish companies have used EU funds in recent years and how this translated into their development. We analyzed all projects with EU funding whose implementation started after January 1, 2019. We only included EU funds. In total, we analyzed 110,000. entities.

According to InfoCredit statistics, the largest beneficiaries of EU funds turned out to be public administration and national defense and compulsory social insurance (32.2 thousand completed projects), industrial processing (13.6 thousand), consortiums composed of several entities from various sectors (7, 5 thousand), education (6.9 thousand), entities conducting scientific and technical activities (6.8 thousand), financial and insurance activities (6.1 thousand), other service activities (5.7 thousand) , as well as entities from the health care industry (5.4 thousand) and information and communication (3.9 thousand). At the bottom of the ranking is mining and quarrying, which implemented only 169 projects with the use of EU funds. This sector was characterized by the most effective use of these funds. Here, the profitability of companies using subsidies increased the most compared to entities that did not use them - by 6.5 percentage points. For example, across the country the difference was 1.1 percentage points.

In terms of numbers, the largest number of projects were implemented under two regional programs: for the Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship (over 17 thousand) and the Greater Poland Voivodeship (11.2 thousand). In terms of funding amounts, the most popular were: the Smart Growth Operational Program, from which Polish companies obtained over PLN 24.6 billion, the Knowledge Education Development Operational Program (PLN 11.4 billion) and the Infrastructure and Environment Operational Program (over PLN 9.4 billion zloty).

Companies from the Silesian Voivodeship turned out to be the most active in obtaining EU funds, receiving a total of PLN 9.9 billion for the implementation of nearly 8.5 thousand. projects. Next came enterprises from Małopolska (PLN 7.9 billion) and the Łódź Voivodeship (PLN 6.6 billion). However, in terms of numbers, the largest number of projects with EU funding were implemented by companies in the Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship (almost 18 thousand), Greater Poland Voivodeship (13 thousand) and Łódź Voivodeship (10.8 thousand).

The largest number of projects implemented by beneficiaries concerned the promotion of social inclusion, the fight against poverty and discrimination (almost 30.9 thousand) and strengthening the competitiveness of SMEs (over 27.2 thousand). However, the largest amount of funding (over PLN 18.1 billion in total) went to enterprises for activities related to strengthening scientific research, technological development and innovation.

Analyzing data from approximately 110,000 companies that received EU funding, it is clearly visible that their revenues and profitability increased compared to those that did not receive them. A good example here is the wholesale trade industry. Thanks to EU funds, companies from this sector recorded twice as much revenue growth in 2018-2021 compared to entities that did not receive funding. On the other hand, statistics show that companies that did not originally apply for EU funds are also doing well. This means that aid funds are not necessary to function quite well in competitive conditions. Of course, if the company is well managed.

Our analysis shows that wholesale and retail trade, but also vehicle repair, are the industries that benefited the most from EU support. In the years 2018-2021, companies from these sectors that received EU funds increased their revenues by as much as 55%. For comparison, the revenues of companies not using EU support increased by 27% at the same time. A similar relationship is most clearly visible in the health care and education sectors, as well as in the water supply, sewage and waste management industries, as well as in agriculture and forestry.

The most active in terms of the ability to use EU funds to generate new revenues were companies from the West Pomeranian Voivodeship - in this region, the revenues of enterprises that benefited from such support increased by 65% in 2018-2021. For comparison, the revenues of companies not using EU funds increased by only 16 percent at the same time. In the second-ranked Silesian Voivodeship, these indicators were 52 and 25 percent, respectively.

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