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Poland has made it into the ranking of top 20 countries most targeted by global retailers for the first time, according to the 2012 edition of CBRE's annual global retail report presented this week ahead of the annual ICSC conference in Berlin. With 34% of all international retail brands surveyed already present in the Polish market, Poland moved up to 19th place in 2012 from 22nd position in 2011among the countries most targeted by global retailers.

Russia has also risen in the rankings, to 8th from 9th position in 2011. Czech Republic maintained its position at number 20 alongside Canada.

The survey entitled 'How Global is the Business of Retail?' is now in its fifth year. It maps the global footprint of 326 of the world's top retailers across more than 200 cities to identify trends in global retail expansion at national and local levels.

When looking at countries most targeted by global retailers, the UK (56.7%) holds onto the first position in the rankings before the United Arab Emirates (53.1%) and the US (50.3%).

Spain is in fourth position (47.5%) closely followed by China (47.2%), with France and Germany (46.9%) joint sixth in the rankings. Russia (44.5%), Italy (43%) and Saudi Arabia (41.1%) make up the remainder of the top 10.

The report found that retailers expanded into a wide range of markets in 2011, with 74% of the countries in the survey seeing at least one new retailer enter the market last year. The overall global footprint of retailers grew by 2.1%, similar to the previous year, demonstrating that retailers continue to grow their cross-border businesses in spite of a challenging consumer environment.

CBRE said Poland is benefiting from its robust economy with GDP growth of 4.3% in 2011 and expected growth at about 3% in 2012. At the end of 2011, shopping centre stock in Poland amounted to 8.8 million m² located in 381 schemes, which puts Poland on a par with the region's most rapidly developing markets of Russia and Turkey.

Magdalena Fr¹tczak, Retail Director with CBRE Poland commented: 'Poland is constantly progressing on the global ranking list of desired retail locations, and a visible effect of that is the growing presence of leading international retailers in Polish shopping centres and high streets. With increasing purchasing power, strong domestic economy and growing retail sales level reaching $3,000 per capita/ per annum, Poland is now seen as one of the few remaining markets with unsatisfied demand that should generate growth in terms of retail product offer, as well as investment in new retail properties.'