LONDON (Pacnews) — Leading economists and policy-makers around the Commonwealth will meet in Valletta, Malta, this month to address challenges in the building of economic resilience of small states.
The meeting, an international conference on small states and economic resilience, is organized by the Economic Affairs Division of the Commonwealth Secretariat together with the Islands and Small States Institute and the Department of Economics of the University of Malta.
The conference will take place at the Foundation for International Studies building, University of Malta, from Apil to 25.
The main objective of the conference, according to Professor Lino Briguglio, the director of ISSI and one of the convenors, is “to bring together policy-makers and practitioners from small island states, from international and regional organizations and from academic institutions, to discuss and propose suitable policies for economic resilience building and to explore ways in which the Resilience Index could be operationalized.”
In an abstract to the paper to be presented at the conference, the director of the economic affairs division at the Commonwealth Secretariat, Dr. Indrajit Coomaraswamy, asks the following questions: How do the inherent vulnerabilities of small states and the intensification of external influences and constraints on national policy targets and options define the role of government in the building of small states resilience?
How do regional initiatives and regional integration movements absorb some of the traditional roles of government? How much government intervention is needed for small states to build resilience?
Coomaraswamy, who is also one of the convenors, states that his paper “will show that the role of government is changing due to the number of international agreements and regional initiatives that countries have signed up to and the development paradigm that countries have embarked on.”
In another abstract, Professor Briguglio explains the methodology the University of Malta has developed to assess the risk of being negatively affected by external shocks.
Lawrence Schembri from the international department of Bank of Canada, notes in an abstract that macroeconomic stability is a critical element in a country’s economic resilience — that is, its ability to avoid, to withstand and to quickly recover from external shocks.