[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
ladies and gentlemen
welcome the moderator of the next
session vasil hudak
[Music]
good afternoon everybody good afternoon
from bratislava from this
wonderful event that globsec is hosting
here already since yesterday
i think it's a unique event because we
are not only
virtually connected but we have over 200
participants
who are here who are in british lava in
different parts of
of globsec event website forum and i
think it's uh it shows that
uh hopefully the pandemic is finishing
and we are beginning to meet in person
and uh to be together and be able to
discuss different issues
directly in person so wonderful to
be in charge and to introduce and share
this session on winners and losers of
the
pandemic we'll have about 45 minutes to
discuss this important topic i think
there are many discussions already about
who are the winners who are the losers
and what to do about both of them we
have
three panelists who are with us
virtually from different
parts of the world i will introduce them
now uh uncle korea former secretary
general of oecd
angel welcome thank you for joining us
arim still in paris
i know i'm in mexico now mexico okay
back home
pretty early great thank you
angel he has been coming to different
globe seg events including tatra summit
for several years and
is a great friend of slovakia of europe
and thank you so much for
for all that you have done at the oecd
uh really major work thank you
the second panelist is harry brodman a
partner and chair
emerging markets practice berkeley
research group
and faculty member of john hopkins
university uh harry
welcome greetings to washington dc thank
you very much russell great to see you
i think we know each other since uh you
worked at the world bank and
uh many other institutions so great to
have you at least virtually
in bratislava and the third one uh i
don't think we
need to really introduce too much i call
him mr europe
uh because he does represent europe from
different sides but
i mean good part of europe alex stoop
director school of transatlantic
governance european university institute
joining us from florence alex good
afternoon
thanks sir thanks vasil good afternoon
actually joining you from finland just
got back from florence a couple nights
ago and
if i sort of stop and shout at some
stage it's because finland will have
just scored a goal against russia
uh we're 20 minutes into the match and
we started by scoring in the third
minutes but this stupid var
system claimed that it was a offside it
wasn't but in any case congratulations
to slovakia for winning their first
match
wonderful thank you so much yes
unfortunately digitalization including
in soccer has some
negative consequences but
alex uh having been prime minister
foreign minister finance minister
vice president of the european western
bank where we used to sit together at
this uh
never-ending meetings uh uh he obviously
he's the person who has a lot to say
about
both winners and and losers of pandemic
so thank you of course all those who are
here in the audience
in person in bratislava thank you for
joining this session and
we have many others who are joining us
virtually
globally from different parts of the
world
i would just like to remind all of us
all of you that
it is possible to ask questions during
the session
there are three ways how to do it those
who are in the room
just please raise your hand and and when
i give you the floor please
come to the microphone which is right
here there is also a possibility to
ask questions online via globsec
application called and through slido
system
and the third one is connecting via zoom
uh to the virtual studio
actually we already have a question from
argentina
so close to close to mexico or where
where angel is now um
i would like to actually test this
system of questions
only about 10 000 kilometers away
for us from europe it seems like it's
all one big
big continent very close to each other
but yes thank you for reminding
of the distances
so before i ask the each of the
panelists to uh
to give the introductory remarks i would
like to test
the system itself and there is uh
one question which would be posed
by slido and we can test the the answers
i think the question could be on the
screen
soon
yes so the question is will our lives
after the pandemic be a better or
worse so those uh who are
on slido please uh check either a or b
it'll be interesting to see what the
feeling of the audience
both here but also internationally what
what it is
whether our lives will be influenced in
a better way
better good 88 better
that's great very optimistic audience we
have we have today which is
which is wonderful i think it's also
because finland is going to win so
everybody is in an optimistic mood uh
but uh let let's go now to the panelists
themselves and to the
introductory remarks um there are
basically
uh two two things which were put
in front of the panelists and the
session itself
two issues you would like to discuss in
particular but of course
we can go much broader one
question is who are those winners and
losers
of pandemic winners and losers both in
the context of
international environment global
community
but also in terms of countries
themselves and within the country
countries themselves
as well as economic sectors so
kind of defining who are those winners
and losers and the second one
is how can we help the winners and
or rather support the winners and how
can we help losers
so maybe those will be the types of
questions in general but uh
of course up to you uh our friends on
the panel to
to to uh describe as you as you want so
i would like to start with um
hell mr guria if you could maybe
start with your perspective and if we
could keep the remarks to
five seven minutes uh that would be
appreciated
well i was quite intrigued by
the title because um winners and losers
um
looks like it's a zero-sum game
and um there are uh opportunities or
there are occasions
in the world in history
where you have net losses and i think
this is one of them
this is a truly uh
global problem uh it's much more global
than the global financial crisis
of the 2008-2009
even the most remote island in the world
has not been spared um and um
that also creates a lot of challenges
for the future
uh when you have four million
deaths uh or close to four million
deaths
uh you had a large contraction the world
economy three and a half percent
last year we are uh
looking at a six percent growth for the
world economy in 2021
and perhaps four to five percent in
2022 so we're looking at a recovery
but uh basically the scars
of the pandemic will
be with us uh for much longer uh
even after we bit we beat the pandemic
if that is at all possible
in the next few years the scars of this
impact in terms of
trade in terms of investment in terms of
jobs in terms of poverty
and also in terms of uh
the future of work there are some things
which we are still processing and we're
still working on
um that and we don't know how um
uh how that will evolve but
uh what is important is that
as we build forward
better um that
we make sure that
this reconstruction rebuilding is
greener that it is more
equal in the sense of uh
not producing as many inequalities as
the pre-pandemic world
had which were widening
and now we have to move towards a
uh towards a less inequalities
not only for moral and ethical reasons
but also
for economic reasons and political
reasons
and of course it has to be more
resilient
in the sense of preparing better
for the neck shock which we know will
come
we don't know exactly when or in what
form
but i would say that the not not too
many
winners here uh you do have a few
companies that made a lot of money in
the process
um but uh you have to ask even if those
companies
uh given what's going to happen uh to
slow down et etc
are going to continue to be winners in
net terms
i would say this was a net loss for the
world
and my greatest single concern
now is precisely that we are doing both
the recovery
and the vaccination process uh as well
as the
um as the uh this this green
uh and the equal
recovery and the resilient recovery in
very clearly two speeds the developed
world
is doing much better much faster the
developing world
still waiting and
in some cases like vaccination very very
dramatic
differences uh promising that this one
billion vaccines
that just happened a few a few
days ago at the g7 uh very promising
um a set of promising uh commitments by
uh the largest economies in the world uh
but i think today uh when we take stock
of the impact of the pandemic i would
say
mostly losers thank you
thank you very much it's
kind of tough uh assessment of the of
the pandemic itself more on the
probably negative side uh it will be
interesting to hear from the others
whether there are positive aspects of
the pandemic which
might actually uh lead to some positive
developments uh in in the world
so i would go to to harry harry broadman
uh how do you see the
issue of winners losers uh including and
i know this has been
your focus of your research and
attention going back to
to the world bank in terms of uh also
in-country
uh developments and uh differentiation
in terms of uh
sectors but also regional inequalities
uh within the countries um so please
harry
yeah oh thank you very much i i have to
say i i do agree with angel that
we are all worse off as a result of this
pandemic
um it's and it's not this is not
like the financial crisis obviously in
the financial crisis
some scars were left in this case there
are
probably different types of scars and
long-lasting in terms of the economies
both of the advanced countries uh and
and the emerging markets um
i would say you know i would make a
couple of points one
uh the pandemic any disturbance
uh economic disturbance health
disturbance is going to produce
you know in effect uh winners and
and losers um however
if we think about the pandemic as a as a
as a one-time crisis hopefully
it's important to distinguish between
changes that were already underway
in other words structural changes and
the cyclical changes if you will
that were engendered by the pandemic and
so
when we think about uh industries and
countries
you know how how have they been affected
as we as we hopefully come out of this
one of the obvious changes is the way
that people
work and the way that the services
industries are going to be
structured going forward and when you
think about
shopping as we all know going to a store
now to buy certain things not all things
you might well just do this by your desk
and wait for a company to deliver the
goods so there's
differences ways and work the question
though is you know how will certain
people of different incomes be able to
do that
how much access do they have to the
services
infrastructure will they be the ones
that need to go to the stores for
instance or go to the factories
um i think the other question is
when you think about uh structural
changes that were already underway
uh think about artificial intelligence
and digitalization
and so when we think about the logistics
industry or the shipping industry
there were already changes in in the
works except for
delivery of certain goods at the last
mile
where shipping and logistics was already
becoming digitalized
and more animated if you will and that
is a trend that is going to be
accelerated as a result of the pandemic
when we think in terms of the countries
you know the advanced countries
particularly because they
have more resilient health systems and
more resilient
economies you know they're they're
certainly coming out of this
at least according to the latest uh
forecasts
you know they're beginning to rebound
obviously whether that rebound will be
permanent
and and you know
lasting in terms of robust growth for
several years to come i think i think is
is an open question
and that brings me to the other part of
the world the emerging markets and the
poor countries
which i think are decidedly much worse
off both for the mortality issues that
angel raises that we're already
concerned about and
knowledgeable of but you know how will
they
begin to restructure their workplaces
how will they begin
to restructure how they trade with not
just
each other but with other countries of
the world and i think
net net i think populations in the
emerging markets
uh will be much worse off as a result of
of the pandemic um i do think that this
is we need to emphasize that this is a
work in progress
that yes we we appear to be coming out
of the pandemic
but i think it's really quite premature
for those of us uh who are on the front
lines at least thinking about this from
an economic
perspective uh to believe that that it's
over
it may be over for the wealthy countries
but it's certainly not
over for the vast population of the
of the planet and to the extent that
um those other countries are not
vaccinated there is not sufficient herd
immunity within the countries the
emerging markets
that means that all of us around the
world are not
going to enjoy any kind of herd immunity
if we believe that the globalized
economy is here to stay which i think it
is
but it does raise the question about
whether or not there will be
a splitting if you will a decoupling
from the advanced countries and the
emerging markets in terms of
economic growth for the last two decades
the gdp growth rate of gdp growth
real terms in in emerging markets
really was about twice the rate of gdp
growth in real terms of the advanced
economies regardless of the business
cycle
that is shown in the data very clearly i
think now the question before us is
whether
there's going to be a structural shift
in that whether or not growth in
emerging markets put aside china i'm
talking about
the other emerging markets and put aside
india
whether or not their growth will be uh
downgraded significantly and whether
there will be a structural split
between the poor and the wealthy
countries so those i think
when i think about the winners and the
losers so to speak of the pandemic
that's that's the way i think about
things and i think it's it's really a
decidedly
mixed picture and we are not out of the
woods yet by
by a long stretch in mice in my view
thank you very much harry i think you
are certainly right that uh
it is a mixed mixed picture in terms of
the recovery
the recovery is very uneven um i think
when
i go to the streets of bratislava i was
and i live in prague i was last week in
budapest
i can see many people outside there is a
kind of
good spirit uh that we are getting to
this recovery phase and
people can enjoy more the freedom and
being outside
so i feel a lot of optimism plus some
numbers which are coming out of
of of the economic situation in the
countries of at least of the european
union show to the
positive evolution and very strong
recovery
but at the same time as you mentioned in
the developing emerging markets
the picture is quite different so this
issue of decoupling as you
mentioned here is a is a real one and uh
question is how to
how to address it but let's go to to
alex
how do you see this issue of winners and
losers and what's uh what's your
point of view yeah
sure thanks and and you know thanks to
angel and harry for their
uh outlines um i agree with a lot of it
but i'll probably put a slightly more
positive spin to the whole package and
let me phrase it like this
i think probably the more relevant
question
than winners and losers is what did we
learn
and i think this is then going to
determine whether you're a winner or a
loser in this overall situation and and
you know in academia you never get black
and white dancers
you just the every answer to every
question is well it depends
so it depends i mean first observation
much like was said earlier this is a
global crisis
uh and in many ways it's a crisis that
uh
from a health perspective uh hit us
symmetrically in other words we're all
uh equally touched
by the virus in one way or another
there's no defense mechanism as
as such but then in terms of the actual
impact and how it hit
us globally regionally and otherwise
it is of course very asymmetrical
i think this crisis is transnational
across
border and i think what basically
we need to try to assess and understand
uh
is is three elements of it the political
the economic and the health perspective
and if i wind those i think a lot of
political leaders at the moment
they understand that they will be judged
on the basis of three criteria
in how they have managed this pandemic
number one is very morbid
it's the number of dead it can either be
you know
counted by per capita or accrued
casualties so in the united states uh
just today or yesterday i think
it surpassed the figure of 600 000
casualties to to the pandemic
the number two criteria is the rollout
of the vaccines
and i fully understand that i'm looking
at this now from a western developing
country perspective
uh and perhaps a little bit sort of
internally
of you know how the rollout has happened
in europe how it's happened in the uk
and the us
and how then the developing world is
able to
export the vaccines as harry mentioned
earlier
in the aftermath of the g7
meeting the third criteria is going to
be economic in other words how quickly
do you recover
uh from uh the impact of the pandemic
because
of course the economic impact was
radically different from the one that
you know vasil and i and many others saw
during the financial crisis and the euro
crisis
because this was both a supply and a
demand sign
crisis and here we then come to to to
basically lessons
learned now the reason i fall onto the
you know if this was a really binary
question did we win or lose on this
the reason i say that we will most
probably win is the following number one
the the biggest winner in this is is
science
i think was it not for uh crispr
technology
as put forward and then rewarded
by jennifer doudna and emmanuel
charpentiere with the nobel prize of
crispr technology we would have not
gotten this vaccine
so fast so you know i i mean i'm really
really impressed what science was able
to do and also what big pharma was able
to produce
uh in terms of vaccines
the second winner in this i think is
actually global corporation
to a certain extent a lot of political
leaders who had some nationalistic
tendencies i'm not saying that they
haven't gone away
uh realized that on this one we need to
cooperate
even uh you know of course we were quite
lucky in the sense that in the united
states they'll switch from donald trump
to to
joe biden so that sort of accelerated
the idea of of corporation the w.h.o
uh etc etc and actually today the
commission has come out with uh
10 points or 10 lessons learned from the
pandemic which we can discuss but
they're sort of quite global lessons uh
if you will
um a third one is a bit of a soft one i
i think this has been a collective human
experience
you know we as human beings understand
each other
from all around the world differently uh
as a result of
of this pandemic because we understood
understand what
what a pandemic means how it can hit all
of us
uh in no matter where we are and in that
sense there's a collective experience
which goes beyond the
sort of more traditional identity or
national
collective experience and i think that's
uh an important one
the two other winners of of of this uh
crisis albeit short term
uh one is climate um and
the reason i say this is i just read
bill gates
latest book on the climate crisis where
he says that
in order for us to solve the climate
crisis we need to reduce
the greenhouse emissions
per annum right now there are 51 billion
tons
actually we need to reduce them to zero
so there's a long work ahead
uh but the estimate that we have seen is
that the the kovidia brought it already
down to 47 billion tons
so i think this was a good awareness
type and then finally i
you know for us information managers who
sit in different
capitals around the world in front of
screens and put numbers and
letters together and express them either
on video or in writing or in speech or
however it might be i mean you know the
future work is different
i know vasil you like to travel a lot
right uh
but you know to be honest uh you'll have
less of an argument to
take every trip in the future a lot of
our future work is going to be behind
the screen
especially in the line of work that we
do for better
or for worse having said that i do miss
the social contact as well
so this is my take on the pandemic
perhaps attach more optimistic than that
of harry and angel thank you
thank you alex yes i do like to travel
because i
i like meeting people on the other hand
i have to say that
during the pandemic and lockdown my wife
was very happy
because we were after a long time
together as a family and it was
quite a actually quite very nice
experience so
uh and all it's all relevant anyway uh
i would like to combine some questions
my wife was very happy at the beginning
and now she says well what you find
something to do you know
so so it's it's a it's a question of
relative
relatives yeah my wife has
a loud spouse problem
[Laughter]
does it mean in finland
well it means that when i have these
earphones airpods in
and she's having her zoom in the other
meeting she comes to the door and says
[Laughter]
i i can i can understand that uh
but uh i can maybe uh a question
question to you and uh i would like to
i would like to combine some questions
which are coming through slido
and one is actually coming from mexico
uh
uh from from your home country and hell
and uh
it says uh it's coming from mauricio
meshulam and says special health from
mexico to mr guria you can actually see
it
on the screen in countries as ours and
most of the world's poverty and
inequality are increasingly
increasing severely why you feel will be
better
i think it's more reaction to the poll
which we did at the very beginning which
showed that
most of the people are optimistic at
least those who are connected to this
session
over 80 percent but i think i hear what
you described was actually much more
sobering evaluation of the
impact of pandemic but if you want to
uh respond to mauricio from mexico yes i
think
what what what he needed was the third a
c
item because it was binary it was better
or it was worse and the the
the c one depended a lot on what harry
mentioned which is what do we do
about these challenges today are we
going to build
greener well we're not doing a great job
uh we have spent about 16
trillion which is about 75
of the us economy just to put in context
um by the way oda
overseas development assistance is only
160
billion that's one percent of what has
been spent
in you know throwing at the the the
virus
and it just gives you an idea of how
much more
room there is uh for
developed countries for richer countries
to spend more on what would be
not only generous but very smart
spending going forward to help the least
developed countries but the
now what are we doing in terms of green
even
in these trillions that we've spent it's
only
uh a very small fraction that is
deliberately green
most of the money is being invested and
thrown
at uh well jobs and companies and
whatever all the support systems but
basically
uh what i would call the traditional
type of
uh investment the status quo uh very
little
is being deliberately green and a very
large
part also is being harmful
deliberately you know it's it's it's
harmful to the
to the environment so basically we are
undoing with one hand
what we're very strenuously doing with
the other hand
so we're not doing great on the green on
the equality
well the problem is that uh the
crisis itself you know we had a bad
situation before the pandemic
okay we had a bad situation in terms of
uh trade it was flat with all these
these tensions between the united states
and china and everything else and
in the united states and and europe and
and
south korea and and what have you in
japan etc
so we had a problem before
we had a problem with investment because
[Music]
well insecurity uncertainty
breeds low growth
why through the investment uh channel
and investment had flattened
uh the same thing uh you know you
you you did not have um
productivity growth was was very low
uh if at all um
business dynamism the so-called churn in
terms of jobs
and in terms of creation of new
companies vis-a-vis the ones that
disappeared
and then the question i repeat of
unequal opportunities the question of
uh inclusiveness so that was bad
before the pandemic and then the
pandemic struck
and the pandemic has been terrible in
terms of
inequality so again
i refer to to harry's point about what
do we do
about the opportunity now what do we do
about the policies now
so we don't really know how we are going
to
end up it depends a lot on the policies
that we take
and also because a very very large part
of the world
the larger part of the world which is
the developing world
we still have not taken a very clear
position
the only thing that has started now is
the question of vaccination
but as tedros at the who said
we don't need 1 billion we need 11
billion vaccines
now but a billion is a starter it's a
good way to start
and then maybe with availability and
with
uh greater financial support we will get
better
and then the question of resiliency i we
were caught
with our parents down absolutely uh in
terms
of our health systems and that includes
the uh more developed countries in the
world uh
so now clearly the the question is
we have already rebuilt in this last
year
but the question is what to do going
forward
and then again the developing world the
developing world the emerging economies
what are we going to do about them uh
so i think the the question is
rather than being optimistic or
pessimistic
the question is how to be activistic
how to get on with it how to start to
work
uh towards uh what we can build about
uh you know do a better future the
digitalization question
which was uh uh evoked for example is
absolutely crucial
uh what are we gonna do about it because
digitalization can actually
produce a lot of lost jobs
uh in the lower part of the workforce
the lower skilled part of the workforce
the question is
how are we going to upskill how are we
going to uh
you know reskill
uh the working force so uh what i see
uh is is a la vasil is is a lot of
a lot of challenges and a lot of
question marks
but also i would say very clear paths
to action and to policy
and therefore i would say let's get on
with it
uh rather than say winners or losers or
optimistic or pessimistic says well we
got what we got uh we got the situation
now
uh huge amounts of money unprecedented
amount
of money but been allocated and
dedicated to
fighting the pandemic the question now
is we got to get
a lot more targeted build resilience
build sustainability
[Music]
and upskill
build a more inclusive more sustainable
recovery
because we're not doing uh a very great
job so far
thank you i fully agree with you and i
think it goes back to the
uh to the point that alex made which is
uh
uh what have you learned from this
pandemic from the crisis and how
are we going to rebuild in a better way
and i think about this new policies and
ways how we tackle
uh some of the issues uh i mean they
have been with us
the inequalities etc uh but they have
been aggravated by by the pandemic
but i would like to move to to to harry
and uh
kind of two types of questions one is
about the supply chain
and uh the impact on global trade etc we
have seen obviously
during the especially in the beginning
of pandemic many disruptions
to the supply chains many countries kind
of focusing
internally on their own problems um
big issues for the global trade decrease
in
in the international cross-border
investments etc
a lot of discussion for example in the
european union union about so-called
strategic autonomy
as a response to this fragility
what do you think is the status or the
situation now and how can we deal with
these issues for the future
and the second issue is as
macroeconomist what do you think about
the
growing inflation and uh to what degree
is this a
big issue or is it something which is a
kind of just temporary phenomenon
you know it's very interesting about
about the supply chain
uh because i i not only was a private
equity investor in companies that
engage in the shipping and logistics and
supply chain management but now i'm i'm
an advisor to them
and deal with investment disputes around
them
was that many people in industry even
very senior people
in industry when china went offline
because of the pandemic and sort of the
world
shut down for for a moment and and
that's being optimistic
all of a sudden executives were finding
out that you know it's not just a
question of
the supply chain running you know
bilaterally
if you will between china let's say in
the united states
rather what happened over the last two
or three decades
is supply chains have become
extraordinarily complex
and tiered so that a product that
you know might have a label made in
china on it that comes to us shores
you know some component maybe a basic
component is manufactured in china
that then is shipped over to let's say
thailand
where an additional component is put on
it more value added
and then it gets shipped maybe to brazil
where there's more of a finishing
of of the product and then it comes to
the united states
and so when china went offline all of a
sudden many firms recognize that
it's not just because china went offline
but because they were the
maybe the producer of the first link
in that chain and they realized oh my
god the supply chains are
extraordinarily complex
people in middle management and people
who are you know working the ropes
they understood this so i think that has
really been
an eye opener for much of industry today
and i think when you combine this this
issue which i raised and i'm sure
also echoed with the digitalization i
think
it really means that supply chains in
order to become more resilient from
shocks
whether it's a health shock whether it's
a pure economic shock whether it's a
natural disaster
i think people are beginning to rethink
how can we make these supply chains more
resilient and one of the things that's
beginning to happen
is adding redundancy uh
into supply chain it's almost like when
a power plant
goes offline you have spare capacity
to take care of peak problems i think
what we are beginning to see now
in industry is investment in uh
second tier uh other types of ways of
supplying into the supply chain from
places that you might not have
ordinarily have thought of as being part
of the supply chain
i think with respect to inflation
you know there's a raging debate here as
many people may know
about whether or not inflation at least
in the united states
where i'm sitting is going to be a
significant problem
now i think a lot of people have been
surprised at
how much pent-up demand there was for
products for services
and as a result of some policy mixes
people are at record levels applying
for new jobs and leaving other jobs
but i think what also has been under
misunderstood
is that although there is a rise in
prices now
this is a natural part of macroeconomic
resiliency of you get you get a blip
in demand but then it settles down to
its more stable state
and so for instance there was a really
interesting article in the wall street
journal
yesterday or the day before about where
lumber prices
have gone through the roof from you know
home depot and other package stores for
building supplies
oh and people began to buy excess amount
of lumber thinking that they could then
resell it by making a profit all of a
sudden
they're realizing that there's excess
supply of lumber out there and
lumber prices now are beginning to
decline so i think there's
there is very much an open question
about whether
these tendencies will result in in a
stable state of inflation
inflation does not necessarily just mean
a rise in prices it means a sustained
rise in prices and that it permeates the
economy
not just in wages but in the prices of
goods and the price of utility services
and the like
i i don't know uh whether we have a
serious inflation bound uh but i do have
a
fair amount of confidence at this point
with respect to
the federal reserve policy where you
know interest rates are extraordinarily
low so there's there's ammunition that
they could use
the question is will they overshoot and
that's what the debate is about whether
or not
they might raise interest rates too
quickly and then force us into
a deep recession but i think this is
still
very much a painting in progress and i
would tell people who are
extraordinarily worried about
inflation to take a deep breath and
let's just see
how things pan out over the next month
or so to figure out whether or not this
is a sustained
change in demand leading to real
rises and prices thank you harry
thank you and uh because we don't have
much time we have uh
uh three minutes left uh so before i go
to alex
uh i want to use the question which came
via slido
basically i think we can show the
question itself
should companies with fragile balance
sheets even
pre-endemic right to the recovery wave
benefit from the government help
i i think i would formulate it in a way
what is the role of governments in this
recovery phase
and we have seen many types of responses
during the pandemic especially in the
form of providing a lot of liquidity
to the markets monetary easing different
guarantee schemes which were developed
for small medium enterprises to be able
to survive
now as we are getting out of this
situation of course with high
public debt deficits etc to what degree
should governments play a proactive role
maybe
in the process itself uh we know that
we have the recovery and resilience plan
750 billion coming in the in the eu
and many other uh instruments which are
which are coming so is is this uh
the right way should it be more maybe
kind of less affair
um alex uh how do you see the role of
governments in this
post-pandemic or recovery phase
no in one minute keynes or adam smith
brief answer i think in the first year
the european union and the united states
if i may use
developing economies developed economies
used every club in the bag
to get out of this the european union
did in four months
what it was not able to do in four years
during the euro crisis number one
the ecb's pep program number two the eib
is program from small and medium-sized
businesses
uh number three converting the european
stability mechanism into a health
mechanism number four the commission's
sure and trust plans
and number five the recovery and
resilience facility in other words next
generation europe
that was huge on top of what the member
states themselves did
i can just give you an example from the
country that i know best
20 billion euros in excess
lending during the first year of the
pandemic and remember this is a country
with an
annual budget of roughly 55 billion and
with a gdp of roughly a little bit over
200 billion
so i would probably at this stage tone
down
a little bit uh the government stimuli
packages
especially uh in the west
thank you thank you alex i think we are
just on time except
just if we have anybody here in the room
who are ready to
ask question please but
we don't have any time left i was just
told
it's very strict yes please
let me just say uh leonard cohen
said even dabnation is poisoned
with rainbows so i would end
on a more positive note and say let's go
and find those rainbows together
thank you thank you very much thank you
again thank you harry
alex thank you so much for being with us
all of you who came here and
very participating i'm sorry we didn't
have more time to actually
ask questions from the from from the
auditorium here
all those who are connected uh uh
virtually
and uh i think we have certainly a mixed
picture but i
believe that we have learned at least
something from uh
from pandemic and will be able to
rebuild the world in a better way
especially in dealing with the
inequalities both
among the countries within the countries
and among the different sectors of
economy
so thank you so much and i wish you a
wonderful day
to mexico to united states to finland
good luck with russia it's always
difficult
historically but we'll come back okay
it will get better thank you all have a
nice day and
see you at the other sessions we have
here in globsec bye
you