A member of the European Union, Poland was the only one of 27 EU states to avoid recession during the global economic crisis in 2009. The eastern European country of 38 million people posted growth of 1.7 percent that year, followed by an expansion of 3.8 percent in 2010.

"We have many reasons to believe that in 2011 Poland's economy grew at a real pace in excess of 4.0 percent," Finance Minister Jacek Rostowski told parliament at a special budget discussion today.

"There will likely be a slowdown this year, but if not for the crisis in the eurozone, we wouldn't experience a deceleration," he added.

Although Poland does not use the euro, major trade partners like Germany are members of the currency bloc that is slogging its way through a grinding debt crisis.

The Polish central bank has nonetheless estimated that growth could top 3.1 percent in 2012, better than a government forecast of 2.5 percent.

Rostowski also confirmed Poland's 2011 public deficit stood at 5.6 percent of gross domestic product, down from 7.8 percent a year earlier.

Warsaw has vowed to respect the EU deficit ceiling of 3.0 percent of GDP by 2015 but leaders have adopted a wait-and-see attitude towards joining the eurozone, something the country agreed to do when it became an EU member.

Poland was the largest ex-communist economy to join the Union in the bloc's "big-bang" expansion of 2004.

Its big domestic market is seen as one of the factors that enabled it to sustain growth as other European economies were torpedoed by the debt crisis.

AFP