Governor Gosev, ladies and gentlemen, dear guests

I am pleased to be here together with Governor Gosev to open this joint Public Information Center. This Center will represent a unification of the wealth of knowledge that both institutions can offer to the public. 

As of today, this Public Information Center joins the family of more than 100 centers opened throughout the World, and will provide access to information related to World Bank operations, publications, and reports, as well as different World Bank's online resources, videos, popular journals and periodicals.

The activities of the Center are well in line with the World Bank’s new Access to Information policy, one of several major reforms the Bank has undertaken to increase its effectiveness and accountability. Through this policy, which has become effective on July 1, the Bank makes much more information available on key decisions made during project development and implementation to enable greater awareness of Bank-supported operations and better development results. It will provide much greater access to information about projects under implementation to enable the public to track a project through the course of the project lifecycle.

But, at the same time, we would want this Center to be more than a set of books and computers. In our view, it should represent a Center for discussions, debates and exchanges of information on different development topics. Through these activities, the Center will aim to support an informed and participatory dialogue with all stakeholders in the country on important structural reform areas that would facilitate a faster, more inclusive and greener economic growth and better prepare the country for accession to the European Union.

We begin this cycle with today’s presentation, which I know you will find both interesting and challenging as it gives an overview of the regional and country economic developments and touches upon one of the key segments of economic development - competitiveness.

With that, I would like to stop here and give the floor to our competent moderator to start off this interesting presentation.