The six Eastern Partnership countries are all members of the Eurasia region of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and as such participated in the 3rd OECD Eurasia Week, held in Paris from 22 to 24 November. They are also all members of the OECD Eurasia Competitiveness Roundtable, which also met during the Paris week and acts as barometer of the progress they have made implementing reforms to strengthen their economies
Between 2000 and 2015, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita in the Eurasia region, which includes the six Eastern Partnership countries in the EU4Business programme, has more than doubled, and, in terms of reform advancement, many Eurasian countries are singled out among the star performers in the World Bank’s latest Doing Business report. This is the positive note on which the OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría began his address to open the 3rd OECD Eurasia Week in Paris on 22 November.
“All the countries in the region have implemented business regulatory reforms this year, while three were among the ten countries having recorded the biggest improvements,” noted Mr Gurría. “Moreover, despite their considerable diversity, Eurasia countries benefit from important competitive strengths, including proximity to major markets, near universal literacy, and for several of them, a wealth of natural resources,” he added.
There was still much to do, however, to overcome the “significant and persistent shocks” to which the countries are subjected, such as commodity price falls and slower growth in Russia and China. “Remittance flows, which remain critical to the prosperity of some Eurasia economies, have also dropped sharply, and we have seen currency depreciations, slower investment and falling consumption across much of the region.”
In the face of such challenges, he said, many Eurasia countries needed to double their efforts to keep promoting structural reforms and effective and innovative policies in key areas for their development.
But the region had become much more integrated into the world economy over the past decades, he added, and “connectivity” lay at the heart of reform priorities: “hard connectivity” in terms of infrastructure, but also “softer connectivity” in terms of open trade policies and less burdensome border formalities. Greater competitiveness, labour market reforms and the green economy were areas which would become more important as the region became better connected, Mr Gurría said.
The Competitiveness Roundtable was established in 2013 as a joint platform between OECD members and Eurasia partner countries to carry out peer reviews in the framework of the OECD Eurasia Competitiveness Programme.
During this OECD Eurasia Week, it was the turn of Belarus to present for “peer review” its latest reforms to strengthen SME capabilities through a sustainable market for business development services. Meanwhile Moldova’s attempts to improve access for SMEs to finance and business development services were subject to “monitoring” by OECD experts, which consists of a re-examination of its progress three years after an initial review and recommendations.