The FINANCIAL -- Despite an EU-wide downturn forecast next year, Poland will avoid recession in 2013, after growing by a forecast 2.5 percent in 2012, the country's Finance Minister Jacek Rostowski said Friday.

"We're forecasting 2.5 percent growth this year and we do not foresee a recession next year," Rostowski told reporters in Warsaw at a joint press conference with Germany's Economy and Technology Minister Philipp Roesler.

As EUbusiness reporetd, Poland has nevertheless revised its 2013 forecast down from 2.9 percent to at 2.0-2.5 percent on the prospect of slowed growth in main EU trading partners like Germany.

An ex-communist country of 38 million which joined the EU in 2004, Poland has made its entry into the eurozone contingent on a lasting resolution of the 17-member bloc's debt crisis.

Poland beat the odds in the EU by maintaining growth throughout the last global crisis which began in 2008. It scored robust 4.3 percent growth in 2011 and 3.8 percent in 2010.

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