Already 40 000 people work in the Pomeranian SEZ in outsourcing centres. Tricity is very advanced as far as the development of outsourcing services is concerned. There are 40 companies which provide this type of service, and they employ over 40 000 people, mainly in Tricity. We have a very large potential - young, educated people. In Tricity itself and the entire voivodeship there are several universities, says Józef Adam Bela, the vice-president of Pomeranian Special Economic Zone.
2013 was very positive for PSEZ - the zone attracted investments worth over 1 billion zloty, which are to create 630 new jobs. 23 new companies were issued business licences. As far as declared investments are concerned, the zone ranked second in the country (after Katowice SEZ), and as far as the number of new jobs is concerned - it was on the fifth place.
In the area of the PSEZ, there are about 100 companies, such as service centres, accounting centres, IT centres and pharmaceutical centres. Tricity is very attractive to Scandinavian investors: in the Pomeranian agglomeration, there lives more than half of the Poles speaking languages from this region of Europe.
For many companies, it pays to transfer some business processes to Pomerania, and it does not matter much what they do, as far as the given activity meets the requirements needed to receive a business licence. In such a case, an entrepreneur may receive investment allowance from 40 per cent to 70 per cent, depending on whether it is a large, small or medium-sized company, says Józef Adam Bela. Apart from financial support and tax concessions, PSEZ offers also office space.
According to the forecasts of the vice-president of PSEZ, in the first half of 2014 the activities of investors will intensify, as they would like to make use of public aid before amendments are introduced on 1 July. Then, the support for large investors will be reduced from the maximum of 40 per cent to 25 per cent. This year, we have already issued three business licences, which will result in investments amounting to 80 million zloty. This process will certainly increase until the half of the year, confirms Józef Adam Bela.
The largest investors in the Pomeranian SEZ include: Bridgestone, Cargotec, Lafarge, Solvay, Apator and Pharma (which created a modern research and development laboratory in Gdańsk Science and Technology Park).