The road to a fragile recovery

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”…

The “invisible hand” of advanced country central banks in emerging markets

We all know that most emerging market economies have limited policy room to deliver massive counter-cyclical crisis response. This affects their risk perception, investor confidence, and capital inflows. Indeed, most emerging markets have limited fiscal space (except for those with a war chest of international reserves such as China and several other Asian countries, or Chile in Latin America). Untraditional monetary policy/quantitative easing is constrained by concerns over the possible

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In defense of foreign banks

‘Banker’ has recently become somewhat of a dirty word and ‘foreign banker’ a most reviled sub-species. Over the last months foreign banks have, amongst other things, been accused of abandoning some of the emerging markets that have contributed so much to their profitability over the last decade. When the going gets tough, so the story goes, foreign banks quickly cut back their lending abroad and refocus on domestic clients. Indeed,

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BIS data on cross-border flows – a closer look

Authors: Piroska Nagy (-7149) and Stephan Knobloch (-7065), 5 May 2009.

New BIS data for the last quarter of 2008 show that BIS-reporting banks significantly reduced their asset holdings across major regions of the world. While in absolute terms most of the reduction took place in advanced countries, in relative terms, emerging markets were hit harder. Our region has thus far been least affected. Furthermore, the decline has been concentrated…

The crisis has changed the EBRD

The debates among the G20 leaders about global architecture and the crisis response of the international institutions may seem abstract and removed from the concerns of most people. But the discussions are very real to those of us working in these institutions as we prepare to meet our key stakeholders at our Annual Meetings on May 15-16 in London.

The crisis has changed the way we operate. Today’s EBRD…

About EBRD

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development(EBRD) uses the tools of investment to help build market economies and democracies in countries from central Europe to central Asia (read more).