An Enterprise Ireland trade mission, led by Minister for Small Business, John Perry TD will visit the Czech Republic and Poland from May 14 to 16. The focus of the mission will be to encourage more companies from the SME sector to export to these fast growing markets.  

40 Irish ICT, engineering, lifesciences and internationally traded service companies will take part in the mission. The delegation will undertake a series of high level meetings with government Ministries in Prague and Warsaw, together with a number of business meetings and business networking events in both capitals. In parallel to the trade mission, two IT recruitment events are being organised in Warsaw and Gdansk, under the banner "IT - It's Happening Here" seeking to fill resource gaps in the Irish indigenous software sector.  

According to Mike Hogan, Enterprise Ireland Manager for Poland, the trade mission will provide an important platform for Irish companies wishing to expand their market footprint in Central and Eastern Europe. Speaking in advance of the trade mission he said:  

‘The Czech Republic and Poland were recently described by Morgan Stanley's Head of Emerging Market Equities as Europe's economic 'Sweet Spot' *, countries with medium GDP per head levels moving fast to the EU average. Indigenous Irish industry is particularly well matched to serve such middle income countries in terms of our export offering. Poland for example, is already a Top Ten export destination for Enterprise Ireland client exports, and with the last Irish census showing the Polish Diaspora to be around 3% of Ireland's population, and Polish our second most spoken language, there is certainly no storage of resources to drive exports to Poland.  Irish goods and services exports to the Czech Republic and Poland are already Euro 1.9bn and this trade mission is part of our efforts to ensure Irish SMEs are part of this success story.

* Ruchir Sharma in his best selling 2012 book "Breakout Nations - In Pursuit of the Next Economic Miracles"


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