Capital Flows to Central and Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union

Abstract

The capital flows to Central and Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union (CEE/FSU) represent a relatively small, albeit growing share of capital flows to developing countries. Taking all flows together, the total net flows to these 25 countries (Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan) were about $44 billion in 1996 or about 1/8 of aggregate net flows to all developing countries. These countries accounted, however, for about 20 and 22 percent respectively of all developing countries Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and exports in 1996. As a fraction of their GDP, total inflows were consequently smaller than for many other developing countries, and averaged about 5.4 percent over the 1990-96 periods. In more recent years, there has been a more rapid inflow of private capital, as reform efforts have consolidated and economic prospects improved and, for some countries, as European Union (EU) integration became a possibility for the near future. For some countries, short-term capital has recently become an important source of external financing. Since most countries have been late comers to the phenomenon of large private capital inflows, they have not experienced much of the overheating phenomena which have affected other developing countries in the past (Latin America) and recently (East Asia). The paper is organized as follows. Section II briefly describes the facts on capital flows to these countries. Section III discusses important links and relationships between macroeconomic variables and the capital flows, including some of the basic motivations, and causes for capital flows. Section IV describes and analyzes the policy framework and policy responses in those countries that received the bulk of capital flows. Econometric tests are presented in section V, while section VI discusses the issues which may be arising with capital flows in these countries in the future and provides some conclusions.

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