In Mongolia, as in numerous other countries, microfinance has attracted attention as a potentially powerful tool to generate pro-poor growth. Many Mongolians live in poverty and income disparities between urban and rural areas are significant. The rural economy remains vulnerable to variations in weather conditions; droughts and harsh winters often lead to large-scale livestock deaths, also this year. As a result, there is wide-spread migration from the countryside to urban…

Authors: Ralph De Haas, Alex Plekhanov
As of January 2010, Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus apply a common external customs tariff (CET) to imports from third countries. The CET is mainly based on the Russian duties that prevailed until last year. Since these were the highest among the three countries (Figure 1) there have been significant duty hikes in Belarus and Kazakhstan. For example, in Belarus the import duty on a

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By Ralph De Haas and Asel Isakova

Why do private equity funds have difficulties with finding interesting mid-sized investment opportunities in Kazakhstan? And why does economic diversification remain such an elusive policy goal for the Kazakh government?

These are complex questions to which the table below may provide a partial answer. It shows the contribution of small firms (less than 50 employees), medium-sized firms (50-250 employees), and large firms (>250 employees)…

This year has been an exceptional one and the EBRD’s Transport team has played a big part in the Bank’s crisis response. Nearly doubling last year’s business volume, we’ve responded flexibly to client refinancing needs and ensured priority investments remain on track. Many smaller transport projects – particularly private sector investments in ports – have struggled to find funding since the start of the crisis and have turned to the

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Press freedom has declined over the past year in the majority of countries where the EBRD invests, according to the global media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RWB). The media monitor’s annual Press Freedom Index, published last week, also showed that standards had slipped generally in many European countries which should, it claimed, be setting an example for newer democracies.

Of the EBRD’s 29 countries of operations, only nine showed…

The EBRD has released its latest economic forecasts. Signs of positive growth in the third quarter suggest the recession is bottoming out in much of the EBRD region - but any upturn in 2010 is likely to be fragile and patchy.

At the start of this year, the global economic crisis was hitting central and eastern Europe with unimaginable force. Any illusion that this region was somehow immune from the “western”…

In just a few weeks’ time, commemorations in the German capital will mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall. As the world reflects on the events of November 1989 that paved the way for a new era in eastern Europe, the EBRD is looking to hear the stories of people from former communist states who were born during that momentous year.

If you are a citizen…

Recent stress tests, while admittedly not perfect, have proven useful to bring a degree of clarity over banks’ portfolio quality. When backed by credible financing plans, the tests have helped confidence in battered banking sectors. In Europe two major regional exercises are under way: a CEBS-coordinated and nationally-implemented testing of the largest EU-based bank groups, and a regional exercise by the IMF, both with expected results around September.

Peer pressure, positive…

Authors: Ralph De Haas and Stephan Knobloch , 16 July 2009.

When the  global financial crisis hit the transition region, worries among policy makers  centred on the local banking systems and the potential for financial contagion  from west to east. And when unemployment started to rise and output declined sharply  as of Q4 2008, the attention shifted towards the real-economic impact of the  crisis.

Now, notwithstanding more frequent discussions about green shoots…