Alexandra Zeitz (Global Economic Governance Programme, University of Oxford)
Speaker:
Jeromin
Zettelmeyer, Director-General, Economic Policy,
Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy, Germany
Chair:
David Vines, Department of Economics, University of Oxford
Germany is considering restructuring how it
finances domestic infrastructure. This is of interest to non-Germans too, since
infrastructure spending could eat into some of Germany’s 8% current account
surplus, helping to correct the macroeconomic imbalances currently plaguing
Europe.
But while that might be a pleasant side
effect, that’s not the German motivation for this investigation. Instead,
Germany wants to rejuvenate its domestic infrastructure, some of which is
languishing after municipalities’ spending on construction and maintenance
dropped to an all-time low.
In May, Jeromin Zettelmeyer, currently Director-General of the Economic
Policy unit at the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy in Germany, delivered
an excellent PEFM seminar on strategies for fuelling infrastructure investment
in Germany.
In the World Economic Forum’s 2014-2015 competitiveness
rankings, Germany’s infrastructure ranks 7th globally, ahead of
France (8), the UK (10), the USA (12) and Canada (15). But a gap has
accumulated between the desired and actual infrastructure stocks: the German
infrastructure is in some cases not meeting the public or the economy’s needs.
