Published: 31/08/2020

At the start of April, 18% of companies surveyed did not have financial liquidity, and just 26% said that the financial resources available will enable them to operate for more than three months.

In the EU’s 27 member states, the lockdown caused retail sales to drop by 9.8% in March compared to the previous month, and by another 11.4% in April. Polish companies felt the consequences of the restrictions slightly less: the drop amounted to 7.1% in March and 7.7% in April.

The unfreezing of the economy around the start of May led to an increase in the value of retail sales; by 16.4% in the EU as a whole and by 10.1% in Poland. As a result, retail sales in the EU in May amounted to 93.0% of their value in February, before the pandemic; in Poland, this was 94.4%. Polish companies were therefore coping slightly better than other European ones.

“The studies conducted by PFR and PIE showed that the worst moment for Polish companies was at the end of April, when over two-thirds of companies surveyed reported a decrease in sales, and just 7% an increase. In May, the situation improved: 43% of companies reported a fall and 20% an increase. At the start of July, the percentage of companies reporting a fall declined to 36%. At the same time, during the whole period studied, large and medium-sized enterprises coped better with the crisis caused by the pandemic,” said Paula Kukołowicz, an analyst at PIE, who co-authored the report.

Changes on the labour market caused by the pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic pushed up registered unemployment in Poland. In June 2020, it amounted to 6.1%, with 1.03 million unemployed people registered at employment centres, 150,000 more than during the same period in 2019. We observed the first signs of rising unemployment in April, when the number of registered unemployed people rose by 56,400 compared to March. It increased by 45,900 in May and by 14,800 in June.