Egypt has become the first Arab and first African country to sign the OECD Declaration on International Investment and Multinational Enterprises. Egypt has made impressive progress in reforming its investment policies in recent years–foreign investment in manufacturing has been fully liberalised, for instance, with the exception of defence-related industries–but significant barriers to both foreign and domestic businesses remain. According to a new report on the country’s investment policies presented at the signing ceremony in July, barriers to entry have been eased for both domestic and foreign investors, customs procedures streamlined and a dedicated ministry set up in 2004 to promote and manage investment. The tax system in particular has been streamlined, with the corporate income tax rate cut from between 32% and 40% to a uniform 20% and the approximately 3,000 different types of exemptions eliminated.

An assessment of India’s short-term economic prospects appears for the first time in the latest OECD Economic Outlook, so adding to the coverage in this report of key non-OECD economies Brazil, China and the Russian Federation. India has been one of the most rapidly growing economies in the world over the past five years. Nonetheless, with a slightly lower population than China and significantly lower average incomes, the economy is only half the size of China’s, though double that of Brazil and Russia.

Latvia has signed up to the OECD Declaration on International Investment and Multinational Enterprises. The invitation from OECD members recognised Latvia’s general openness to foreign direct investment and will reinforce the Latvian government’s efforts to pursue investment-friendly economic reforms.

Health before wealth is more than just an old adage, and in the build-up to the WTO meeting at Cancún in September, we look at why programmes that aim to protect and improve the health of poor people can help in the battle against global poverty.

Your article “Ukraine : A miracle in waiting?” is a very thorough, well-documented and fair analysis of the economic evolution in Ukraine.

Ukraine is a large country of some 50 million people that shares a border with OECD member, Poland. It was also the Soviet Union’s second largest republic after Russia. Like Russia, it has been rather slow since the Union’s dissolution in undertaking decisive economic reforms. The economy is improving, though there is much to be done before Ukraine can fulfil its undoubted economic potential.

Your article, “Ukraine: A miracle in waiting?” (OECD Observer No. 234, October 2002) identifies the problems preventing Ukraine from realising its considerable potential. It also notes the positive changes introduced by the reformist government appointed three years ago and maintained – at least in part – by that government’s successor.

During the early 1990s, the least developed countries accounted for a paltry 0.5% of world trade, while carrying a burden of total external debt that in some countries, such as Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique and Uganda, amounted to more than ten times their export earnings. This meant that, at times, a third or more of their export revenues went towards servicing financial obligations. And as their debt was denoted in hard currency, it could not be paid for with earnings made in the domestic economy, where weak currencies or barter predominated.