On May 13th Yaroslav Lissovolik, Programme Director of the Foundation for Development and Support of the Valdai Discussion Club attended the 2nd Annual Belt and Road Forum as well as the 4th Annual BRICS Economic Think Tank Forum organized by the Center for China in the World Economy, Tsinghua University, the Reinventing Bretton Woods Committee as well as the BRICS Economic Think Tank.
The event included the following sessions:
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“Belt and Road”: A New Solution to Current Economic Problems
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Deeper cooperation, diversified investment and financing system
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“Belt and Road” and new world order
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The global economic situation and the future of BRICS & the “Belt and Road”
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“Belt and Road” and BRICS Cooperation Seminar
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BRICS and Global Economic Governance
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BRICS & “Belt and Road”
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Reform of the International Financial Order and the Role of BRICS
Yaroslav Lissovolik participated as a speaker in the panel “Deeper cooperation, diversified investment and financing system of the OBOR project”. In his speech he stressed the importance of connectivity in Eurasia given the significant limitations of the region’s landlocked economies in gaining access to international markets due to high transportation costs. In this regard, OBOR serves to assist such economies in surmounting transportation and logistical bottlenecks and improves their export capacity, all of which creates the conditions for attaining the UN development goals for the region’s economies.
The discussion at the Forum also focused on the ways of providing financing for OBOR’s infrastructural mega-projects. One of the discussed venues was the co-financing coming from the development institutions such as the BRICS New Development Bank as well as AIIB, The Silk road fund, the Eurasian Development bank, China’s Development Bank and other regional development banks.
The key message from the Chinese participants was that the OBOR project is a new kind of integration in the global economy, which is open for participation for all countries (developing and developed), with a particular focus on investment cooperation and the improvement of infrastructural connectivity among the project’s participants. Ultimately, the project was termed by the Forum’s participants as a “win-win” option for pursuing globalization on an open and equal basis at a time when integration and globalization impulses in parts of the developed world appear to have weakened.
