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Knowledge exchange in Tbilisi.
Knowledge Sharing Event between Poland and Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine
June 22-23, 2015Tbilisi
In recent decades, Poland has accumulated experience that it now can share with other countries as they seek to determine their own transition paths. This will be an opportunity for thematic discussions between policy-makers from these countries and Polish experts.

The event is organized jointly by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland and the World Bank, in cooperation with the Ministry of Finance, and the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development of Georgia.

Since 1989, Poland has substantially transformed its economic and sociopolitical system and accumulated experience that it  now can share with other countries as they seek to determine their own transition paths.

The thematic sessions will provide a framework for candid, reflective and interactive discussions between the high-level policy-makers from the invited countries and prominent Polish experts and practitioners on key political and economic reforms.

Agenda:

DAY 1. Decentralization – empowering local institutions to provide better public services

                          Moderator: Leszek Kąsek, Warsaw Office, the World Bank

10:00 – 10:15      Welcome remarks: Mr. Giorgi Kvirikashvili, Deputy Prime Minister and

Minister of Economy and Sustainable Development of Georgia                 

10:15 – 10:30      Opening remarks: Andrzej Cieszkowski, Ambassador of Poland in Georgia/ or Zuzanna Kierzkowska     Director of Development Cooperation Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Poland

10:30 – 11:00      Qimiao Fan, World Bank Regional Director for Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine

                          Henry Kerali, World Bank Regional Director for South Caucasus

                          Marina Wes, World Bank Country Manager for Poland and the Baltic States

11:00 – 11:30      Coffee break

11:30 – 13:00      Thematic session 1: Intergovernmental fiscal relations

                          Moderator: Zuzanna Kierzkowska Director of Development Cooperation Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Poland

Speaker: Wojciech Misiąg, former deputy Minister of Finance, former Deputy President of the National Audit Office

13:00 – 14:30      Lunch

Keynote speech: Reforming doing business environment in Georgia

14:30 – 16:00      Thematic session 2: Primary and secondary education

                          Moderator: Dandan Chen, Tbilisi Office, the World Bank

                          Speaker: Zbigniew Marciniak, Warsaw University Professor, former Deputy Minister of     Education               

DAY 2. Macroeconomic and financial stability – supporting sustained economic growth

                          Moderator: Rashmi Shankar, Tbilisi Office, World Bank

9:30 – 11:00        Thematic session 3: Macro-prudential policy framework

                          Speaker: Piotr Szpunar, National Bank of Poland

11:00 – 11:30      Coffee break

11:30 – 13:00      Thematic session 4: Financial Sector supervision

                          Speaker: Elżbieta Pustoła, former Chair of the Central Securities Depository in Poland

13:00 – 14:00      Lunch

14:00 – 15:00      Take-aways and concluding remarks and expressing expectations of the EP participants

                          Moderator: Henry Kerali, World Bank Regional Director, South Caucasus

                          Speakers: Chairs of the country delegations for the next steps

  • Henry Godfrey Rupiny Kerali

    Regional Director for the South Caucasus: Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, Europe and Central Asia
    Henry Kerali is the World Bank's Regional Director for the South Caucasus, effective July 1, 2012, based in Georgia. Kerali has worked in different regions of the world including Latin America, Africa, East Asia, South Asia, and Europe and Central Asia (ECA), and in his last position he oversaw the Bank's transport program in the ECA Region as a Sector Manager. Prior to joining the Bank in 2003, Mr. Kerali was a Professor at the University of Birmingham, England, specializing in the development of transport infrastructure. He led the research of developed economic cost-benefit models for assessing the feasibility of infrastructure investments. Mr. Kerali, a dual Ugandan and UK national, was educated in Uganda where he studied Civil Engineering. He holds an MSc and a PhD from the University of Birmingham in England. He has over 100 publications in various books, journals and Bank reports.

  • Marina Wes

    Country Manager for Poland
    Marina Wes is the Country Manager for the World Bank program in Poland, based in Warsaw. Ms. Wes graduated from the Trinity College, Cambridge, and received a doctorate degree in economics from the London School of Economics. Ms. Wes joined the World Bank in 2000, where she has worked in the Europe and Central Asia region, as well as in India. Prior to joining the World Bank, she worked at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and she was an Assistant Professor at the University of Amsterdam. In addition to her work on macroeconomic and fiscal issues, her research record includes articles on trade and foreign direct investment. Ms. Wes is married and has two children.

  • Zuzanna Kierzkowska

    Director of the Development Cooperation Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Poland
    Zuzanna Kierzkowska is the Director of the Development Cooperation Department in the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs since March 2014. Previously Deputy Director in the Development Cooperation Department of the MFA for almost 4 years, responsible for: international development agenda; CODEV, COHAFA and ACP working parties; humanitarian aid and evaluation of assistance projects. In the second half of 2011 Zuzanna focused on development cooperation and humanitarian agendas of the Polish Presidency in the Council, chairing the COHAFA working party and running preparations for the EDDs2011. In 2013 Zuzanna managed the process of Poland’s accession to DAC/OECD. Before joining the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2010, Zuzanna worked for the Office of the Committee for European Integration where she was responsible for the EU-funded institution building projects for the Polish administration. As a deputy PAO, she gathered knowledge and experience of the transformation processes in Poland in late 90’s and early 2000’s.

  • Elżbieta Pustoła

    Elżbieta Pustoła, between 1991-2009, was a member on the management board of infrastructural institutions of the capital market. She served three years as the deputy CEO of the Warsaw Stock Exchange and later, for fifteen years, as the CEO of the Management Board of the National Depository for Securities. She was also involved in the process of designing and establishing both of these institutions in 1991and 1994 accordingly. Until 2009 she was a member of – the Advisory Council to the Chairman of CB of Poland. Payment Systems issues,the Advisory Council to the Minister of Finance for Financial Market Development, a member and secretary of European Central Securities Depository Association, a member of European Clearing Houses Association and World Clearing Houses Association.

  • Piotr Jacek Szpunar

    Piotr J. Szpunar is Advisor to the President and Acting Deputy Director of the Financial System Department of the National Bank of Poland (NBP). He graduated from the Academy of Catholic Theology and the National School of Public Administration in Warsaw. He obtained a Ph.D. in economics at the Warsaw School of Economics. Since 1995 he has held several positions in the NBP, including Head of Division in the Monetary and Credit Policy Department, Deputy Director of the Macroeconomic and Structural Analyses Department and Director of the Financial System Department. He served as a member of the Advisory Technical Committee of the European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB). In 2011 he chaired a working group preparing the first set of recommendations of the ESRB on foreign exchange lending. In March 2014 he was nominated as a member of the Assessment Team of the ESRB aimed at evaluating macroprudential policy measures applied by UE member states. He has actively participated in numerous technical cooperation activities coordinated by the NBP and the IMF.

  • Zbigniew Marciniak

    Professor of mathematics at the Warsaw University. Former Polish vice-minister of education (2007-2009) and of higher education and science (2010-2012); former chairman of the Polish State Accreditation Commission (2005-2007). Member of the Steering Committee of Education Research in OECD, an advisor at the Brookings Institute (Washington DC). Chairman of the Math Expert Group of the OECD PISA Program. Vice-chairman of the Polish Main Council on Science and Higher Education, chairman of the Bologna Commission of the Conference of Rectors of Polish Academic Higher Education Institutions.

  • Wojciech Misiąg

    Born 1951 in Kraków (Poland), Ph.D. in Economics, professor and the Director of the Institute for Financial Research and Analysis in the University of IT & Management in Rzeszów, adviser to the President of Supreme Audit Office (SAO). Expert in public finance, author or co-author of more than 140 books and papers concerning public finance and econometrics. Deputy Minister of Finance (1989-1994), i.e. in the government of. T. Mazowiecki, vice-president of SAO 2011-2013. Member of the Polish team supporting the decentralization reforms in Ukraine.
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    Panelists - from the left: Andrzej Cieszkowski, Ambassador of Poland in Georgia; Giorgi Kvirikashvili, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy and Sustainable Development of Georgia, Henry Kerali, World Bank Regional Director for South Caucasus.
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    Panel discussion.
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    Henry Kerali, and Marina Wes, World Bank Country Manager for Poland and the Baltic countries
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    Marina Wes, and Leszek Kąsek, Warsaw Office, the World Bank
  • Date: June, 22-23, 2015
  • venue: Radisson Blu Iveria, 1 Rose Revolution Square, Tbilisi, Georgia
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