World Bank: ECA 20 Years After the Fall of the Berlin Wall

Lots of publications coming out of the World Bank this week on ECA (Europe and Central Asia) which includes memberstates of the CIS too. The summary of the report on 20 years after the fall is linked here.

It looks like a pretty mixed bag of successes and failures, but transportation infrastrucre seems to have improved. In general, World Bank project ratings have improved. These ratings are from the report linked earlier today from the IEG.

Here's an interesting footnote though on how countries are classified:

The International Monetary Fund’s World Economic Outlook (October 2009) projects GDP in Centraland Eastern Europe and in the Commonwealth of Independent States (the former Soviet Union excluding the Baltic States) to contract by 5 percent and 6.7 percent, respectively, in 2009. In this book, Central and Eastern Europe comprises Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, FYR Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania,
Serbia, the Slovak Republic and Slovenia. Turkey is part of the World Bank’s ECA region but is not a transition country; thus, it is added selectively to the discussion. The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) includes Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Moldova,
the Russian Federation, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. Georgia is not part of the CIS but is included in the group because its economy shares many features of the other countries.

Looks like I'll have to add the IMF's outlook from last month to my reading list.