F35 - Foreign AidReturn

The infrastructure investment could strongly influence the economic growth in the Western Balkans countries and contribute to improved regional cooperation and reconciliation and to faster integration into the EU. However, it is essential that public investments in infrastructure are properly financed and managed. To measure the impact of infrastructure indicators on economic growth, panel regression analysis was used for the period 2000-2021, in six Western Balkan countries. The paper addresses the important question of how to intensify investments in infrastructure to achieve sustainable growth in the Western Balkans. The obtained results confirm the earlier findings about the significant impact of energy, ITC, and road infrastructure on economic growth in the Western Balkans.

The paper describes the development cooperation of the Czech Republic within the European Union. It has briefly analyzed the evolution of development cooperation until 2004 when Czech Republic joined the European Union and further the situation from 2004 to present. The paper also evaluated the financial resources for development cooperation, bilateral cooperation and the comparison with other EU Member States, background on the progress of Official Development Assistance in European Union.

Since the mid-1990s, the IMF has provided large financial assistance to a number of member countries affected by serious financial and exchange rate crises. Because of the unprecedented size of these packages and possible negative side effects, the desirability of such assistance has become a hotly discussed issue. A consensus is now forming that official lending to country in crisis should not cease completely, but at the same time, official funds cannot be expected to fill in any existing financing gap. The article evaluates the risk of moral hazard connected with IMF lending. Although the substantial assistance inevitably influences the behavior and expectations of all players, there is little support for argument that lending created serious moral hazard. The role of the IMF conditionality as the traditional tool of reducing moral hazard is described in the circumstances of the new capital account developments.