Untitled - Ministerstwo Rozwoju Regionalnego

lopment in the future, e.g. Turkey, Mexico. By assigning a small proportion of
GDP to knowledge, Poland diminishes its development opportunities. Furthermore,
Poland has a faulty structure of funding the knowledge sector because
most of the resources for this kind of activity come from the state budget. Under
the innovation policy, the State makes efforts to change this negative structure
by applying various instruments. Today, the most often applied instruments in
Poland for innovation and science policy can be divided into two groups. The
first group covers instruments related to fiscal policies:
– acknowledging the taxpayer's spending on scientific research or development
work as cost;
– acknowledging the taxpayer's spending on the results of scientific research
or development work as cost (provided they are linked with property
rights acquisition);
– making innovation spending deductible from taxable income for a longer
period than one fiscal year;
– providing tax allowance for individuals who are authors of new innovative
solutions.
The next group covers financial and organisational instruments like:
– accelerated depreciation;
– allowances and credit preferences (linked with state guarantees) for modernisation
of production by implementing new domestic technologies;
– new legislative and institutional solutions for the capital market;
– investor insurance for implementing new technologies;
– licence and science policies coordination;
– regulation covering inventions.
The significance of innovation policy for modern economy is exceptionally
great because well defined and efficiently performed invention policies contribute
to economic growth and improvement of the competitive advantage in the
international arena. Additionally, skilful support by the state of innovative processes
in the free market involving private and state institutions is advisable as it
should lead to greater competitiveness in both social and economic terms as
well as in terms of regional development.
The first stage of the development of Polish innovation policy under examination
was connected with the beginnings of free market economy in Poland
and economic transition processes. The next stage started with Poland’s accession
to the European Union in 2004 when, as a Community member, Poland was
obliged to adapt its policy to Lisbon Strategy principles.
Since the 1990s, many documents referring to the innovation policy were
adopted, which are presented in Table 14. According to Jasiñski 48 , Polish innovation
policy in the years 1989-2004 depended on the economic development cycle
48 A. H. Jasiñski: op. cit., pp. 201-203.
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