National Bank of Moldova deputy governor links competitiveness to institutional agility, sector prioritisation and European integration at Bank of Lithuania conference

The National Bank of Moldova reported that Deputy Governor Mihnea Constantinescu spoke at the Bank of Lithuania’s annual economics conference, co-organised with CompNet, setting out three conditions he framed as central to improving competitiveness in small open economies: institutional agility, discipline in selecting priority sectors for development, and credibility supported by European integration. He pointed to Baltic examples where sector strategies such as Estonia’s e-government and Lithuania’s fintech and biotech produce durable results only when accompanied by complementary institutional reforms that translate government agility into a competitive advantage for the private sector. Drawing on Moldova’s experience, he argued that repeated energy price shocks and geopolitical uncertainty have frozen investment and slowed convergence, and that investment in energy infrastructure can both improve the efficiency of existing industries and enable new activities such as data storage and processing and the operation of artificial intelligence clusters. The discussion also highlighted that small economies outside the euro area face, on average, higher financing costs than those in the European Union, reinforcing integration as an anchor of credibility for long-term investment and strategy.