Covering EBRD annual meetings for Global Markets

Phil contributed analysis pieces to the coverage of the annual meetings of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in May by Global Markets magazine. The meetings were held in May 2022 as the military attacks by Russia on Ukraine were well into their third month.

One piece looked at the likely negative impact that the conflict would have not only on Russia and Ukraine but on the EBRD’s central and eastern European (CEE) region. A partner piece examines the impact on inflation and interest rates in the region.

A key element of that is the likely disruption to regional and global oil markets which this piece looked at. While oil price rises will cause problems for many CEE countries, Russia and Ukraine’s place in global food markets will cause major problems and misery for countries on the North African fringe of operations. This piece looks at that.

The EBRD is one of many international financial institutions to have offered to increase funding for projects in Ukraine: this piece looked at who has given what, and how much the likely final bill will be.

Finally, there may be some glimmer of hope from the unity that the conflict seems to have inspired within the European Union and NATO. This piece looks at how this might bring together the EBRD’s shareholders and recipient countries 31 years after its foundation in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

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How falling oil has hit Latin America

The drop in the price of crude oil from around $115 a barrel to as low as $44 a barrel has had a major impact on Latin America, where many countries are dependent on “black gold” for import and tax revenues.

We were asked by LatinFinance, the magazine that covers the region, to look at how the impact of cheaper oil had impacted the main economies and what the effect might be of a return to previous three-digit prices.

In this article we contributed the results of interviews with leading private sector and multilateral institutional economists as well as comments by the Colombian finance minister Mauricio Cardenas. We saw howe the region was divided into winners and losers and how economists believed the region would cope wth low oil – but benefits is prices rebounded. The full article is here (login).