Project title: Promoting Good Governance through Independent Economic Analysis and Forecast;

Implementation period: June 30, 2010 – June 30, 2011 (second year);

Funded by: Soros Foundation – Moldova, Good Governance Program;

Project goal: Encourage public discussions and interest on economic policy, enrich these discussions with independent policy analysis, forecast, and promote best policy solutions to economic and social problems via open dialog with relevant Government and society actors.

Main activities:

• Provided the Government, private companies and citizens with up-to-date, sound and relevant economic analysis and forecast in core areas of the economic policy;
• Monitored the economic policy and raise awareness of the Government, private companies and citizens regarding the most important economic trends and risks;
• Encouraged unbiased and solution-oriented debates on the economic policy in order to generate new ideas to appropriately respond to new economic risks and opportunities;

Main outputs and outcomes:

• Real Economy no.14;
• Real Economy no.15;
• Real Economy no.16;
• Real Economy no.17;
• Real Economy no.18;
• Real Economy no.19;
• Real Economy no.20;
• 40 issues of Economic Commentaries;
• Policy Study “Performance rating of commercial banks in Moldova, Q4 2010”, author Adrian Lupusor;
• Policy Study “Performance rating of commercial banks in Moldova, Q1 2011”, author Adrian Lupusor;
• Policy Study “Why bank loans are so expensive in Moldova and what solutions exist?”, author Adrian Lupusor;
• Policy Study “Efficiency of the local public authorities in Moldova: importance and causes”, authors Adrian Lupusor and Adrian Babin;
• 11 public events (7 press-conferences and 4 roundtables) organized for presentation and public discussion of the project outputs;

Project impact:

This project contributed to increasing the trust of the Government in the civil society organizations’ analytical capacities. This was reflected by inclusion of the EXPERT-GRUP representatives in the Consultative Group of the Ministry of Economy and Collegial Body of the Ministry of Finance. Interviews conducted with the senior economic policymakers proved the high respect that the project publications enjoy in the policymaking community. The policy studies and periodicals published as part of this study proposed many economic policy solutions, some of which have been taken by the Government. The forecasts done by EXPERT-GRUP, particularly those on inflation and exchange rate, served as reference for Governmental bodies.