Contact:
In Tirana: Ana Gjokutaj, (355-4) 2280 655
agjokutaj@worldbank.org
In Washington: Dorota Kowalska, (202) 473-2676
dkowalska@worldbank.org
PNoWB: Zuleikha Salim Said, + 33 1 40 69 30 55
zsalimsaid@pnowb.org
TIRANA, June 4, 2008— Thirty-three Members of Parliament (MPs) from across Southeast, Central, and Eastern Europe discussed pressing development challenges of common interest this week, including investment climate, rising food and energy prices, and aging and demography challenges in the Region. The Tirana meeting of the Europe and Central Asia (ECA) Chapter of the Parliamentary Network on the World Bank (PNoWB) follows the 2006 founding of the Southeast Europe PNoWB Chapter in Greece, and the 2007 Europe and Central Asia meeting of parliamentarians in Bled, Slovenia. Under the theme of “Looking Beyond Transition,” the meeting provided MPs a chance to share lessons and experiences of the transition from centrally planned to market economies, and European Union integration. In her address to the MPs, Speaker of the Albanian Parliament Jozefina Topalli, who co-hosted the meeting, expressed her satisfaction with the opportunity for the Albanian Parliament to host this year’s meeting in Tirana. “It is very encouraging that the ECA PNoWB network is expanding,” said Topalli. “The network offers a unique opportunity to establish stronger relations between the parliaments in the Region, as well as between the parliamentarians and the World Bank.” For his part, Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha, emphasized the importance of sharing the lessons of what has worked and what has not in the transition of the past 18 years. “It is really important and fruitful to bring together parliamentarians from all these countries in the Region, and Western European and World Bank experts to share together the latest developments, research, and important issues about economy, politics, and integration,” said Berisha. Food and Energy Prices, Investment Climate, and Aging The Tirana MP meeting comes at a time when global issues, such as investment climate, the global food and energy price crisis, and impact of aging, are increasingly influencing the development agenda in the Europe and Central Asia (ECA) Region. Countries increasingly compete for investment in an ever-globalizing world, making national approaches to improve investment climates and improve productivity matters of priority in order to grow the economic pie and create the foundation for job creation and improving peoples’ lives. Much progress has been made in ECA countries but MPs also expressed concern that efforts should go beyond narrow investment climate issues to good quality and ethical public sector conduct. Participants discussed the substantial increase for food prices since 2007 that has boosted inflation. Food price inflation has varied across countries, rising between 2006 and 2007 from 5.6 to 13.8 percent in the new EU member states and from 6.5 to 20.3 percent in the middle income Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries. The increases were smaller but still large in the low income CIS countries – from 10.7 to 17.1 percent. The rising prices are largely due to a combination of last summer’s drought in many countries in the Region, increased demand for grains for bio-fuels production in other parts of the world, increased cost of inputs for agriculture production, including for fertilizers and transportation, and others. The rising food prices will have a larger impact in lower-income countries in the Region while higher energy prices will hit middle-income countries harder, Bank officials said. The impact may be particularly large for low income countries since spending on food is a larger percentage of their consumption, with food accounting for 50 percent of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) basket in low-income CIS countries. Simulations suggest that for some of these countries, even a 5 percent relative increase in food prices can increase poverty rates by 2-3 percentage points. MPs exchanged views about the appropriate policy responses in the available toolkit of instruments, with dual objectives of providing needed food security measures to the poor and vulnerable, and of eliciting a supply response for the agricultural sector. Parliamentarians further debated the implications of important demographic changes that countries in the Region are facing and which imply for most countries a graying and declining population with attendant challenges on labor force productivity, employment rates, health services, pension and other social safety net provisions. It also presents an opportunity to further undertake broader societal reforms and take advantage of longevity. Participants agreed that addressing the above mentioned challenges and, at the same time, exploiting the opportunities that this presents, requires lifestyle and behavioral changes to ensure that people live longer and healthier. “Years of reforms in Europe and Central Asia have given countries in the Region improved economic fundamentals and higher incomes, and this has made them very resilient to downturns in the global economy,” said Shigeo Katsu, World Bank Vice President for Europe and Central Asia. “Still, major challenges face them now, increasingly of a global nature, such as competing for investment euros and dollars, dealing with the increase in food and energy prices, and with unprecedented demographic changes. Governments must lift their sights to actively address these challenges, particularly with an eye to help their most vulnerable groups. Increasingly, parliaments have to ensure a strong oversight function to nudge governments in the right directions.” At the close of the meeting parliamentarians agreed on a number of follow-up actions, including proceeding with the formalization of the ECA PNoWB Chapter. The Parliamentary Network on the World Bank is an independent organization of over 1000 parliamentarians from 110 countries, which mobilizes parliamentarians in the fight against global poverty, promotes transparency and accountability in international development, and offers a platform for policy dialogue between the World Bank and parliamentarians. ### For more on the PNoWB, click hereand here. For more on how food and energy prices are affecting the Europe and Central Asia Region, please click here. |
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