Presenters: - Renato Baumann, Director of UN-ECLAC Brazil
- Jose Maria Figueres, Former President of Costa Rica and CEO of Concordia 21
- Ritva Reinikka, Sector Director of the World Bank’s Social and Economic Development Group
- Esko Aho, Executive Vice President of Corporate Relations and Responsibility of Nokia, Finland
Video Recording of the Event Description: From the world’s middle class to the most vulnerable populations, the financial crisis is predicted to affect millions for the next few years. Aimed at gathering specialists and lead economists to discuss the economic landscape, the World Bank Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network (PREM) convened in its annual PREM Week 2009 conference to exchange ideas about pressing economic issues. Issues discussed were public finance, sustaining poverty reduction, economic competitiveness, and lessons learned from the global financial crisis. The event took place on April 28, 2009 at the World Bank headquarters in Washington, D.C. In the fourth session of PREM Week 2009, panelists discussed methods of increasing competitiveness in times of crisis. Ritva Reinikka, Sector Director of the World Bank’s Social and Economic Development Group prefaced the session by offering a framework of the discussion. She stated that the current economic crisis is challenging governments to pursue long term policies for competitiveness, and efforts to improve the supply seem less of a priority for policy-makers. There is a danger that growing government ownership, protectionism and subsidies can have negative effects on competitiveness among countries. The first presentation was given by Esko Aho, Executive Vice President of Corporate Relations and Responsibility of Nokia (Finland.) He explained the case and key lessons of Finland, which was severely hit by the economic crisis in the 1990’s. In the late 1980’s, Finland liberalized their market and had high leverage of capital, which enabled high debt growth. High growth rates and inflation rates occurred, and by the 1990’s the difficulties began—stagnated growth rates, difficulty in export markets, and the collapse of the Soviet Union further enabled a loss of 10 percent of total export markets. Key lessons learned were taking the worst case scenario as a basis for policy solutions. Second, create a strategy to know where to invest in and create inclusion is necessary. Finally, he said, “crisis is always both a disaster and opportunity.” Next, Jose Maria Figueres, Former President of Costa Rica and CEO of Concordia 21 spoke from his experiences leading a country, private firm and working on the World Forum. As President of Costa Rica, he spoke of the importance of branding Costa Rican eco-tourism and marketing its potential to firms such as Intel. Collaboraton with the private sector, civil society and universities gave rise to a growth of 8% in the country’s GDP and direct foreign investment, as well as a decline of unemployment. Success was also met in his experience at the World Forum, were he established a better focus on hard data from international organizations and revamping the microeconomic model that produces data indexes. Finally, Director of UN-ECLAC Brazil Renato Baumann spoke of the Latin American experience after its crisis in the 1980’s. Given the crisis, the region adopted short term measures such as enabling sustainable participation in international markets. Baumann argued that competitiveness requires policies to be maintained for long periods of time, sustainability in the capacity to predict what can be done, and the effective use of public institutions. The session concluded with a panel discussion over questions from the audience, and closing remarks. Related Materials: |
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