The project will be conducted in the context of the ongoing war in Ukraine and Russia’s increasingly assertive regional policy, which will continue to affect the economic situation of the three analysed countries via various channels – trade of goods and services, remittances of labour migrants, financial flows, energy dependence (all countries are net energy importers), perception of security risk, etc. Even if the war in Ukraine stopped during the project life, the problems it created would not disappear immediately. The entire Eastern European and Central Asian region will require economic stabilization, reconstruction, and rebuilding of its economic ties with the rest of the world. Therefore, the project agenda will not lose its relevance even if the case of the most optimistic scenario (ending the war soon). On the other hand, a high degree of political and economic uncertainty and unpredictability in the region and analysed countries requires a flexible approach to a project agenda, its analytical framework, methodology, and operational modes, that is, the ability to adjust them whenever new challenges and circumstances appear.
The project’s overarching goal will be the diagnosis of economic determinants of fragility in three analysed economies (Armenia, Georgia, and Moldova) and economic policy measures to increase their resilience to external and external and domestic shocks of various kinds. Despite the importance of geopolitical and security factors, the proposed project will not deal with them as they require different expertise. Pragmatic considerations (the limited project resources and time horizon of project implementation) suggest concentration on a few critical areas of economic resilience. Therefore, we propose four policy blocks to be analysed in the project. These are:
- External economic relations: trade in goods and services, labour migration and remittances, foreign investments, and broader economic integration
- Energy sector and energy policy
- Stability of a financial sector
- Macroeconomic stability (fiscal situation, public debt, monetary policy, inflation, balance of payments)
Client: Open Society Foundations
Project leader: CASE
Partners: Modex, EPRC, Expert-Grup
