The OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials continues to make progress. Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Paris last fall and made a point of calling on the OECD's Secretary-General, Donald Johnston. For more than 10 years, OECD's experts and officials from member-country governments have been quietly working with a wide spectrum of Russian officials to help lay the foundations for lasting economic and institutional reform in that country. This is not the kind of work that makes Page One headlines. Experts have provided advice and review on a whole host of matters, from taxation systems to environmental recommendations.
Officials meet with their counterparts in various policy areas to exchange best practices.
The meetings and the reviews provide Russian government officials with suggestions and structures that can then be used on a very practical level to bring about change in government policies and practices. Well, one indication could be the recent reform program which President Putin's Minister of Economic Development and Trade, German Gref, has submitted to the government, outlining his proposals for reform. It is encouraging to see that a number of the proposals of the Gref Program are similar to recommendations in the 1999-2000 OECD Economic Survey of the Russian Federation, right down to the phrasing, especially in the areas of fiscal federalism, monetary policy, currency policy, repressed energy and transportation prices, tax reform, creditors' rights, remonetization of the economy and the implicit subsidies through the natural monopolies. The OECD's members at that time proposed exploring ADRs as a way of moving forward. Given the rapid growth of international e-commerce, doing nothing was not an option.