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Emerging Europe |
HenryTo
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 Posted: Sat Jan 17, 2009 12:58 pm Post subject: Emerging Europe |
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Current Director of the European Department of the IMF (and former Polish Prime Minister), Marek Belka, discussing the financial crisis that is hitting Europe - and more specifically, Emerging Europe:
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/survey/so/2009/INT011409A.htm
| Quote: | In the span of a few months, the IMF has approved emergency loans for Hungary, Ukraine, Iceland, Belarus, and Latvia worth more than $39 billion, and a request from Serbia will be considered soon. In this interview, Marek Belka, who took over the reins of the IMF's European Department on November 1, 2008, talks about Europe's prospects for recovery and the principles that guide the Fund as it seeks to help Europe's emerging economies counter the fallout of the crisis.
Former premier
Belka is well acquainted with the challenges of managing emerging market economies. Before joining the Fund, he served as prime minister of Poland from 2004 to 2005 and as deputy prime minister in 1997. He was minister of finance from 2001 to 2002. A professor of economics, Belka also has extensive international experience, serving as Under-Secretary General at the United Nations and as Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Europe.
IMF Survey online: What will be the impact of the financial crisis on Europe in 2009?
Belka: Because Europe is very open in terms of trade, and because its financial sector is so closely integrated with the rest of the world, the region cannot avoid being significantly impacted by the financial crisis.
But how the crisis will play out in Europe will differ from how it plays out in the United States because the economies are structured differently. While Europe has very few toxic assets of its own, European banks owned a lot of bad U.S. assets, and were more highly leveraged than American ones. So we can expect more deleveraging in Europe than in the United States. |
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HenryTo
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| Posted: Thu Jun 25, 2009 1:25 am Post subject: |
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The European Commission revises its outlook (downwards) on Bulgaria:
http://www.sofiaecho.com/2009/06/24/742836_outlook-for-bulgarias-economy-is-negative-european-commission-says
| Quote: | In a report released on June 23 2009, the European Commission (EC) revised to negative its outlook for the Bulgarian economy published in April and now expects public finance to wade in the red this year and the next.
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The report came as global agency Standard & Poor’s told Reuters that Eastern Europe faces an axe on credit ratings and economic outlooks, a mountain of private and national debt and growing insecurity. |
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HenryTo
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| Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 12:23 pm Post subject: |
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The IMF admits that it had previously overestimated the indebtedness of Eastern Europe - thus raising borrowing costs for the whole region as well as Austria, which has a significant exposure in the region:
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2009%5C05%5C16%5Cstory_16-5-2009_pg5_30
| Quote: | The IMF chief was speaking just as official data showed that recession is biting ever deeper into eastern Europe because of the global downturn. The Austrian economy, which has huge exposure in central and eastern Europe, entered recession in the first three months of the year, according to data published by the WIFO economic think-tank on behalf of the government. Romania similarly entered recession ending nine years of continuous growth.
Neighbouring Hungary, which had to be bailed out by the IMF, the World Bank and the EU last year, saw its GDP decline for the third consecutive quarter. And the economies of Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia are also in trouble. Strauss-Kahn acknowledged that the IMF had overestimated the indebtedness of some eastern European countries, which had led to a rise in borrowing costs in those countries, as well as in Austria, which has huge exposure in the region.
“We made an error, a human error. That should not happen, but that may happen,” he said. “It has now been fixed." |
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rffrydr
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rffrydr
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rffrydr
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rffrydr
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