Poland faces competition from higher-paying Western European nations in recruiting workers from Ukraine, said the Personnel Service job agency, which specialises in recruiting Ukrainians for Polish employers.

The agency said that in the first half of 2019, Poland issued over 35,000 work permits to citizens of Asian countries such as Nepal, India and Bangladesh.

That was 42 percent more than in the same period the previous year, the agency said, quoting figures from the Polish labour ministry.

“Recruitment of Ukrainian employees is becoming more difficult. Other European countries, such as Germany and the Czech Republic, are tempting Ukrainians with better salaries,” said Krzysztof Inglot, head of Personnel Service.

He added that Poland still had advantages over other countries, such as linguistic and geographical proximity to Ukraine.

“But this does not change the fact that a growing number of companies will be reaching further and further to the east to fill the staffing gap. Asian countries will become an attractive source of employees,” he said.

Poland welcomed the largest number of temporary economic migrants in the world in 2017, the Rzeczpospolita daily reported last month, citing data released by the OECD.

Piotr Bujak, chief economist with the PKO BP bank, was cited by the paper as saying that as the number of people of working age shrinks in Poland, an inflow of foreign workers is needed for the economy to grow as fast as it has in recent years.

(pk/gs)