South-South Integration - Sharing of Policy Experiences

Meeting the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is inextricably linked with the process of structural transformation. Macroeconomic and financial policies are a key area in which many developing countries face limitations in their capacity to effectively design, manage, coordinate, implement, and evaluate the policy levers of structural transformation. South-South sharing of policy experiences can help to address this shortcoming and assist national capacity-building.

The recent increase in inflation, which in advanced economies has attained the highest rate in several decades, has led to a debate on whether such elevated rates of inflation should be checked by “tapering”, i.e., a sooner and faster pace of scaling back asset purchases and hiking interest rates than policymakers first thought. Economic downturns in developing countries for the last decade have already been more persistent and recoveries weaker, and there is now a risk that, in a repeat of the taper tantrum of 2013, tapering will cause foreign funding to dry up, capital to flow out, currencies to depreciate, and the ability to service existing debt burdens to become ever more limited. A combination of slower growth and increased vulnerabilities could create a trade-off between supporting a weak domestic economy and safeguarding external sustainability, hence undermining the possible achievement of the SDGs.

This event is co-organized by Policy Studies Institute (PSI) Ethiopia and UNCTAD. It launches the country-case studies on macro-financial and debt-sustainability policies that were prepared for Ethiopia under the UNCTAD-project “South-South Integration and The SDGs: Enhancing Structural Transformation in Key Partner Countries of the Belt and Road Initiative” and discusses their findings in the context of the challenges of tapering for macroeconomic and debt policies in developing countries. It brings together policy makers and researchers from various developing countries and addresses a wide audience.

Guiding questions for panellists:

• What is the experience of Ethiopia regarding macroeconomic and debt policies designed to foster industrialization and structural transformation?
• What challenges does tapering pose for macroeconomic and debt policies in developing countries?
• What lessons can other developing countries learn from the experiences of Ethiopia, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka?

Programme

14:00–15:30 (Central European Time)

Moderator: Ms. Penelope Hawkins, Senior Economic Affairs Officer, UNCTAD

14:00–14:10       Introductory remarks, Ms. Stephanie Blankenburg, Head, Debt and Development Finance Branch, Division on Globalization and Development Strategies, UNCTAD

14:10–14:20       Keynote address: Professor Beyene Peteros, Executive Director, PSI

14:20–15:05       Panel discussion

• Firew Bekele Woldeyes, Lead Researcher, PSI Ethiopia
• Andualem Telaye Mengistu, Senior Researcher, PSI Ethiopia
• Abdul Manap Pulugan, Indonesia
• Kenneth de Zilwa, Sri Lanka

15:05–15:25       Open discussion

15:25–15:30       Concluding remarks, PSI

The event will take place through zoom. Online registration is required.

Watch video recording