It will take until 2012 for all the countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) to recover from the global economic crisis, according to an Austrian think tank.

The Vienna Institute for Comparative Analysis (WIIW) said yesterday some CEE countries will experience economic growth this year. But the body warned it will be another two years before the entire region is back on track.

WIIW said Poland – the only European Union (EU) member state with a positive gross domestic product (GDP) last year – will lead the way among the new EU member states. The think tank expects the Polish economy to grow by 2.5 per cent in 2010.

WIIW also said there was light at the end of the tunnel for struggling Ukraine as the country’s economy would expand by around three per cent this year.

It said growth in Slovenia, Albania, Slovakia and the Czech Republic would be around one per cent this year, and Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia and Hungary would see zero growth.

WIIW’s research also suggests the economies of Croatia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina will shrink further this year, Austrian Times has revealed.

WIIW was more optimistic for 2012. It said the economies of the CEE region would see two per cent more growth than those of western European countries.

The predictions come the day after the Austrian Institute for Economic Research (Wifo) revealed that the country’s companies have drastically reduced investment in the CEE region.

The institution said the companies spent only 0.7 billion Euros on investment activities in the region in the first nine months of 2009.

It said Austrian companies invested 7.6 billion Euros in CEE in the same time span for the previous year.

Wifo said this was a throwback to 1998 figures.