| The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies - WIIW |
Foreign trade in services in the CEECs
The fall of the iron curtain revealed differentiated stages of development
in the CEECs' services sectors. Whereas the CEECs seemed to be well developed
in transport, construction and partly travel services, they face considerable
disadvantages in the more sophisticated, producer-oriented services. Hence,
we expect the CEECs to be in most cases net exporters of transport and
construction services, while they will be net importers of high-skilled
producer services.
Agriculture in Eastern Europe in 1999: Agro-food sectors affected
by market depression
Agricultural output of the CEEC-6 rose slightly despite lower grain
harvests in the CEEC-4. As support to farming is lower in the CEECs than
in western countries, the CEECs have suffered more from the depressed international
agro-food markets. Still the CEEC-6 agro-food trade deficit rose only modestly,
to USD 0.5 bn, due to additional tariff and non-tariff barriers. Russian
agricultural production grew slightly in 1999, while that of Ukraine continued
to decline. Agricultural subsidies in Russia decreased. With slowly shrinking
import volumes, Russia remains one of the world’s largest agro-food importers,
while Ukraine still registers a (steadily diminishing) marginal surplus.
From the state to the market? Pension reform paths in CEE and the
Former Soviet Union
In CEE and the FSU, the process of economic transformation put great
strain on the existing retirement systems and made pension reform inevitable.
The paradigm choices made in the region reflect considerable diversity,
extending beyond the privatization of publicly provided old-age security.
Observed reform paths include parametric reforms of the existing public
schemes, the introduction of notional defened contribution schemes, the
– full or partial – shift to mandatory fully funded schemes, or a combination
of these three options. Some of the radical reforms recently enacted still
suffer from significant implementation problems. And by embarking on radical
reform, the transition countries did not necessarily tackle the most pressing
issues facing their pre-reform pension schemes.