During a meeting for High Commissioners of Small States, based in London, convened at the Commonwealth Secretariat, the Secretariat’s Director of Economic Affairs, Dr Indrajit Coomaraswamy last Friday launched the publication Building the Economic Resilience of Small States edited by Lino Briguglio, Gordon Cordina and Eliwony Kisanga.

The book is published by the Commonwealth Secretariat in collaboration with the University of Malta, and contains papers by several authors, including a study on the construction of a resilience index, authored by Lino Briguglio and other members of the Economics Department of the University of Malta.

In his speech Dr Coomaraswamy said that small states had a number of inherent features which rendered them very exposed to external economic shocks.

“Although economic vulnerability poses serious development constraints, many small states have taken steps to build their economic resilience in order to cope with and withstand their inherent vulnerability.

“The Commonwealth Secretariat, together with the University of Malta, has taken the lead in conceptualising and measuring economic resilience of countries, and three workshops have been organised on the island of Gozo, Malta on this issue. An important output of these workshops was the publication of three books, the most recent one of which, entitled Building the Economic Resilience of Small States.

He said the resilience index could be useful in setting targets and establish benchmarks. The index could serve as a guide for good practice, so that the successful policies adopted by some small states could be emulated by others.