Eurasian Integration Yearbook 2012

Ella Baybikova. “Multilateral and Regional Development Banks in Northernand Central Eurasia: Overview of Activities in 2011”2011: Data and Reviewshelp mitigate key government and project risks, making them more attractive toprivate investors and improving financial sustainability.Moreover, the MDBs held a series of seminars and forums on issues of thepublic private partnership. BSTDB sponsored the Southeastern Europe and theMediterranean PPP Forum organised jointly by the Greek Ministry of RegionalDevelopment and Competitiveness and the World Bank Institute. ADB heldtwo thematic seminars, The Role of the Private Sector in Promoting RegionalIntegration: Trade and Cross-Border Infrastructure and Bridging the Gap:Catalyzing Private Capital for Investment in Infrastructure. The participants ofboth seminars noted that the PPP issue is relevant to all organisations. Public andprivate sectors should work together; with governments and development banksunable to finance the gamut of investments needed in the region, private sectorparticipation is key. Development finance institutions around the world shouldencourage greater use of risk-sharing models like public-private partnerships toensure critical infrastructure gets built in developing countries. The institutionsshould do that by helping create the right regulatory and market environmentand offering risk mitigation instruments to spur private capital.Integration StudiesADB and ADBI recently published a new book, Institutions for RegionalIntegration: Toward an Asian Economic Community. The authors of thejoint study believe that more effective and efficient institutions are neededto complement Asia’s market-driven regional integration and to manage thechallenges of Asia’s expanding role in the global economy. The institutionalarchitecture needs to be strengthened to consolidate Asia’s hard-won economicgains, extend the benefits of cooperation beyond East Asia, and ensure thecompatibility of regional and global integration. The book also offers threespecific recommendations: strengthening and rationalising existing institutionsfor regional integration such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations(ASEAN), the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, and the PacificIslands Forum; further developing existing institutions to exploit functionalopportunities; and establishing new pan-Asian institutions and empoweringexisting ones.The EDB Centre for Integration Studies, established in 2011, presented anew study, Scientific and Technological Cooperation between Russia andUkraine: Forecasting Opportunities and Mechanisms for Their Implementation,conducted by the Institute of National Economy Forecasting of the RussianAcademy of Sciences and the Institute of Economics and Forecasting of theNational Academy of Sciences of Ukraine on the initiative of the EDB. Thestudy stressed that reviving cooperation in science and technology will giveboth economies a real chance of becoming prominent players on internationalmarkets of science-intensive products.Eurasian Development Bank317