Financial Cooperation within the Black Sea Region: The Experience of the Black Sea Trade and Development Bank

Abstract

Over the last decade, most of the new independent states in the Black Sea region have staged steady and buoyant economic growth thanks to their rich natural resource endowments and to the positive attributes of their human resources. Such growth, supported by international financial institutions (IFI), has proved quite resilient to cyclical downturns in the global economy. Still, much of the region remains short of the physical and institutional infrastructure to create optimal conditions for long‐term income growth. These characteristics implicitly assign regional IFIs the tasks of providing long‐term development finance to key economic sectors and of establishing effective transmission mechanisms between ‘deficit’‐ and ‘surplus’‐generating sectors. This article seeks to highlight the role of the Black Sea Trade and Development Bank as a regional IFI in elevating and sustaining economic growth and development in the Black Sea region.