INVESTMENTS AS A REGIONAL POLICY INSTRUMENT

he aim of the study was to evaluate disparities between provinces in investment acquisition. The evaluation was based on an analysis of investment outlay inflow to provinces with varied economic development level in the years 2002-2006. According to the hypothesis adopted in the study, provinces at a higher level of economic development are more attractive to investors. The analysis shows that the level of a province economic development affected the amount of total investment acquired. Therefore, the study hypothesis has been corroborated. Public, as well as private, investment was largely localised based on the attractiveness criteria which were in turn founded on the province's economic development level. According to the evaluation, distribution of investments reduced the existing disparities between groups of provinces with different levels of economic development. Private investment, in turn, with liberal criteria of allocation do not deepen the existing inter-regional disparities, but they alleviate them to a similar degree as public investments. Only in the group of investments with the lowest level of economic development (the provinces of Lublin, Podkarpacie, Podlasie, Swietokrzyskie and Warmia and Mazury) was the private investment growth rate lower.