TECHNOLOGY FORESIGHT SUMMIT - Unido

Part three. Ministerial Round Table 99
Milan and it was striking to see the comments of the Minister of Finance of
Latin America blaming all those policies that we implemented voluntarily at
the beginning of the 1990s.
What is wrong? Is there something wrong with the policy itself? Do we
need a new paradigm, a completely new one? I do not think there is anything
wrong in having open economies and fiscal balance. The trick is to
define a new paradigm that takes into account the reasonable and good policy
advice we received during the last decade, while building a new set of
policy recommendations because certainly we do need a new set of policy
recommendations. It is enough to look at the extremes of the last wave of
candidate countries to the European Union, currently the newest members
of the European Union, namely Spain, Ireland, Greece and Portugal. Not all
of them had the same success in converging towards the per capita income
levels of the European Union.
The problem is basically, in our view, about productivity. If you compare
what happened during the 1980s and the 1990s in the OECD countries, you
will see that productivity, total productivity as an annual average, grew at the
rate of 1 per cent during the 1980s and 1.4 per cent during the 1990s.
If you go to East Asia, then productivity grew at the rate of 3.6 during
the 1980s and 1.6 during the 1990s because of a financial crisis at the end
of the 1990s, 1997 onwards. Then look at what happened in Latin America.
During the 1980s, productivity decreased at the rate of 1.4 per cent, while there
was an improvement in the 1990s when productivity grew at 0.6 per cent.
But that explains precisely why, at the beginning of the 1980s, we all thought
that Latin America was converging in terms of per capita income to the OECD
countries while East Asian countries were fading away. And what happened
later, was exactly the opposite. The explanation in our view is basically this
performance of productivity.
Do we know what is going on in productivity terms here in Central and
Eastern Europe? Do we know what will be the result in terms of productivity
improvements after the accession? Because in all the countries, even in
Ireland, a country that did well, improved per capita income, converged
towards the average of the European Union, there were many people doubting
whether it was a good business or not to enter the European Union and
there is a lot of sectoral interests and people’s concern that we have to
address. That is why we organized this panel because we do want to know
more, over and above the political rhetoric. What will be the practical result
of accession in terms of employment, exports and growth for these countries?
Basically we believe that integration and enlargement of the European
Union is an excellent and extraordinary tool to deliver prosperity, peace and
security to all these parts of the world.
The discussions you had these two days here will help us to shape even
more and better our programmes for the region, renovate the way we have
been advising member States in these regions and given a renewed support
to the activities related to industrial development in Central and Eastern
Europe. We have been shifting from an old model of industrial policy to a