OREANDA-NEWS. December 03, 2007. In the presentation made at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in California, Prime Minister Andrus Ansip said that Estonia has managed to transform its economy from a strongly controlled system into an economy based one due to the fast reforms carried out with the support of the people. At the same time, the Prime Minister stressed that although the greater domestic reforms have been completed, our work is not done yet, reported the Official website www.valitsus.ee.

“We did not expect anyone else to make decisions for us or pressure us into reforms,” said Ansip, admitting that the rapid reforms made people make great decisions and even greater sacrifices. The Prime Minister praised his fellow compatriots who have been open to changes. “The people wanted and supported the changes,” said Ansip.

In his presentation “How One Former Republic of the Soviet Union Became One of the Countries with the Freest Economy in the World,” the Prime Minister cited the Estonian free trade approach as the main reason. “We allowed foreign companies to enter Estonia and provide competition here,” said the Prime Minister, admitting that the transfer to openness was not entirely painless, but we understood that this was necessary in order to rejoin the West.

In his speech, Ansip quoted Professor Razeen Sally from the London School of Economics and Doctor Magnus Feldmann from Harvard University, who have said: “unilateral free trade became the Estonian equivalent to the Nike strategy – Just do it. This quickly became a significant international trademark of Estonia – the Estonian equivalent to the Finnish so-called Nokia-effect”.

The head of the government also explained the high place held by Estonia in the ranking of economic freedom with our decision to adopt a very simple and transparent tax system. He also stated that it was not our tax policy alone that brought investments to Estonia. According to the Prime Minister, Estonia was intensively working towards establishing a favourable climate for investors. “We enforced explicit ownership interests, a foreseeable policy and a transparent procedure for making decisions,” listed Ansip.

As another important factor, Ansip pointed out, was Estonia’s high state of readiness to implement new technologies and IT solutions and cited examples from our popular e-solutions. At the same time, the Prime Minister admitted that all this does make us innovative, but also vulnerable, and recalled the cyber attacks against Estonia in May.

“Due to efficient and fast security measures, we were able to neutralise the attacks, but learned a valuable lesson here anyway – cyber security is a new measure of security, which must be actively engaged in both on the domestic and international level,” said Ansip.

To sum up, Ansip said that although at the moment, the GDP of Estonia makes up 72 per cent of the average of the EU, we would like to, and not in the too distant future, join the club of the rich countries of Europe. “We are not going to rest on our laurels,” Prime Minister Andrus Ansip assured.

Read the full speech by the Prime Minister at: http://www.valitsus.ee/brf/?id=1210