International Herald Tribune Investment Summit: Greece at the Crossroads: Can Reforms bring Competitiveness and Investment?
31 Mar 2010 | Posted By: Maria Markenroth
By: Emanuel Raptis, International Economics and Policy student and Trainee at the Swedish Trade Council
During Monday and Tuesday, March 22 and 23, I attended the International Herald Tribune Investment Summit in Athens, Greece with the theme “Greece at the crossroads: Can Reforms bring Competitiveness and Investment?”. The main issue that was to be addressed and discussed during this conference was the issue of the low, and falling, competitiveness of the Greek economy. Several ministers attended the conference, giving speeches and discussed what kind of reforms that would help Greece regain its competitiveness and bring investment. Furthermore, speakers from the World Economic Forum, Barclay’s Wealth, Invest in Greece Agency, and other organizations also gave their valuable insights on what needs to be done in order to achieve this.
Since I came to Athens, Greece has been in the spotlight of the financial markets due to its large budget deficit and public debt. This has led to anxiety about whether the Greek government will be able to collect the funds needed in order to service the interest rates on its debt as well as the upcoming debt maturities this year. As a consequence, several of the credit institutes has downgraded Greece, making it even more difficult, and most important more expensive, for Greece to borrow these needed funds on the market. As serious as this is issue may be it is mainly a problem coming from the underlying fact that Greek productivity has been lagging behind for a long period. Therefore, this conference was very much needed and although it came too late – the crisis has shown the real weaknesses of the economy and by doing so, it has also identified many opportunities for reforms that can be made to change the path of the economy.
One thing that especially caught my interest was to learn about the Greek Ministry of Economy, Development, and Maritime’s operational program put together to increase Greek competitiveness by efforts aimed at stimulating the fields of Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Research. One of the core pillars in this program involves making it easier and more accessible to start new businesses already at the student level by the use of for example Science Parks and Business Labs, and a strong connection to the industry integrated in the education. Here, our own school, JIBS, stands a perfect example of how effective this approach can be.
For more information about the issues discussed at the conference, here is the programme.
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Being a Trainee at the Swedish Trade Council in Greece
29 Mar 2010 | Posted By: Maria Markenroth
By: Emanuel Raptis, International Economics and Policy student and Trainee at the Swedish Trade Council
Last semester, in early November I think it was, I accidentally came across a webpage on our schools Career Center. “Job opportunities”, I got a little curious about what kind of jobs that were available at that point in time so I clicked the link, having no intentions what so ever of seeking any jobs because, “hey, I’ve got one and a half year left of my studies”, I said to my self. But there it was, right in front of me, a job that I had dreamed of just a couple of months ago – “Internship at the Swedish Trade Council (STC) in Athens, Greece”. What a rush! I immediately decided to send in my application, but realized that I had to make serious preparations before I did so. Once again, I turned to the Career Center for advice about how to structure my CV and my cover letter, and even how to prepare for a possible interview. Furthermore, since the internships at STC are unpaid, you have to be able to fund it yourself, ideally making the internship part of your education and thereby have access to funding through CSN. Luckily, there is a course available at JIBS that assures exactly this – “International Internship in Economics”. All set, I sent in my application and the rest is history. This introduction is meant to be an example of how well our school, JIBS, is supporting and encouraging students that wants to go abroad and work at a Swedish International organization.
Now, why should you take the effort to actively seek International Internship opportunities? For me, the answer is straightforward – it is an extremely valuable experience. Giving the students the opportunity to apply the theory gained in class to real world problems, and when I say real, I mean real. Since I came to STC in Athens, just about two and a half months ago, I have been involved in several projects. Stretching from performing market analyses for Swedish companies, conducting visiting programs in Greece for these companies, attending large International conferences, arranging seminars in Greece and Sweden, to ordering office supplies. All these experiences have developed my skills in, and understanding of International Economics, Finance, International Marketing, Export Management and Sales in a way not easily gained through regular teaching. However, I realize now that the knowledge gained in class has given me a solid framework on which I can rely upon.
I now have about three and a half months left of my adventure in Greece before I return to Jönköping and finish my studies. During this time, I will continuously post my experiences on this blog and I hope that it will inspire other students to look for similar opportunities. I hope I will succeed in this!
The STC team in Athens, from left: Chris Söderman, Emanuel Raptis, Elza Kazemi, Elisabeth Seferidis, Dimitris Oreopoulos
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SIAJ´s Russian Trip 2010
26 Mar 2010 | Posted By: Maria Markenroth
By: Martin Hill, Treasurer, Society of International Affairs in Jönköping
Last week (15-22 of March) Society of International Affairs in Jönköping (SIAJ) in corporation with UF Linköping arranged a trip to Russia. The idea with the trip was to learn more about the country and remove all previous prejudices about Russia.
The trip started 01:45 the night between Sunday and Monday when we took the night buss from Jönköping up to Arlanda where we met up with the people from Linköping. We checked in and took a flight directly to Moscow and arrived to our enormous Hotel Cosmos close to the center of town. This first day of the trip most of us just went for a meal and then back to the hotel and went to bed.
The second day started with a meeting at the EU delegation where we had the pleasure to listen to four different speakers. The first one talked about how they are trying to make EU more popular in Russia and how they are using different methods to achieve this goal. The second speaker talked about the Relation between EU and Russia. The third one had a presentation of Russia’s future energy plans and the last speaker had a presentation of about what EU is doing in Russia concerning Human Rights and democracy.
After our meeting at the EU delegation we carried on to the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs. Here we had the honor of meeting two officials from the Nordic department. They talked about the relation between Sweden and Russia and that many different Swedish companies have been established in their country and these companies are very satisfied with the cooperation with Russia. They also brought up the different problems and issues there have been between our countries, for example the Wallenberg case during the 1940’s. The main point the two Russian officials tried to make was that “Russia just wants to be friends with Sweden”.
The third day we went to the radio station Echo Moscow where we met the most legendary radio profile in Russia, Aleksey Venediktov (he can be compared with K-G. Bergström). When we got there we had a tour through the corridors were we could see pictures of hundreds of famous politicians who had visited them. Big names like Bill Clinton and Tony Blair had been there and the very next day Ban Ki-moon was coming there for an interview. After our tour we sat down in Aleksey Venediktov office and he explained what they did at their radio station and how they worked in such a way so the government in Russia would not be angry with them.
After this visit we walked over to the Swedish radio’s correspondent Fredrik Wadström’s office. He is the only Swedish correspondent in Russia. He talked about his work tasks and that he is not only responsible for reporting from Russia but for almost the whole former Soviet Union. He explained what it is like to work as a journalist in Russia and told us about all different works he has been working with and the projects he is working with right now.
The fourth day we went to the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) and met two students from the MGIMO’s Swedish group. They explained how it was to live as a student in Russia and told us about their view of Russia and the world. This discussion was really interesting and gave us (at least me) a new and better view of the Russian society.
We spent Friday and Saturday sightseeing the beautiful town St. Petersburg and some of us went in to the famous State Hermitage Museum. After this wonderful weekend in St. Petersburg we went back to the capital with the Saturday night train and ended our trip at a big market in Moscow where we bought souvenirs before we took the flight back to Sweden on Monday morning.
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Open House at JIBS
17 Mar 2010 | Posted By: Maria Markenroth
On 13 March, Jönköping University and JIBS opened their doors to prospective students and the public.
The visitors could meet representatives from the student organization JSA, international students, counselors and programme managers. For the prospective students, a study group, a UN simulation and food from different cultures conveyed a sense of what it is like to study at JIBS.
There was a great interenst in the study programmes and a lot of questions from prospective students and their parents were answered. Most visitors were from the region of Jönköping, but visitors had also traveled from cities like Linköping and Örebro to visit the Open House and JIBS.
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