The paper aims at presenting the development of the venture capital sector in Poland against other Central and Eastern European countries, and at specifying its perspectives, taking the world trends observed into account. Analysis of these issues is important, in particular in the context of the Risk Capital Action Plan (RCAP).

The available statistics show the growing importance of the private equity sector in Central and Eastern Europe in the recent years. A comparative analysis of the American and European markets, and presentation of their characteristic features, enable to determine the potential of the private equity sector in Central and Eastern Europe on the one hand, and factors that may constrain its development on the other.

The Polish venture capital sector is the biggest in the region. Although it maintains its advantage in terms of the annual volume of venture capital investments, this advantage may become markedly limited as a result of the observed dynamic growth of the sector in the countries of the region remaining outside the European Union structures (especially in Romania and Bulgaria). It depends to a certain extent on the effectiveness of the initiatives undertaken in Poland, aimed at stimulating the venture capital sector, as well as on the active approach of the investors themselves.

The paper has been divided into parts that present the origin, the development, and the current condition of the private equity sector across geographical regions (i.e. by areas crucial from the point of view of the issues discussed herein - the USA, Western Europe, Central and Eastern Europe, and Poland). The observations have led to the conclusions presented in the final part of the paper, outlining the perspectives of growth of the private equity sector in Poland in the coming years.