The ministerial meeting dedicated to dialogue between OECD countries and the countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is GOING TO BE held from 30 March to 1 April. The meeting, which takes place five years after the previous one, will be dedicated to the difficult situation in the region due to the pandemic and to the policies for economic recovery. The Middle East and North Africa were particularly affected by the pandemic crisis which significantly penalized workers in the informal sector and worsened the condition of women. Governments are committed to designing programs to relaunch the economy with the reopening of construction sites for infrastructures and national energy plans, and in the next two years, growth in the region is expected to resume by around 5%. The Ministerial session will be opened by the speeches of the Secretary General of the OECD Gurria, the head of the Tunisian government Mechichi and our Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio. The intervention of the Prime Minister of Palestine Shtayyeh and of numerous ministers and senior officials of the MENA and OECD countries is foreseen.
For Italy, the intervention of the Minister for Public Administration Renato Brunetta is also foreseen, who will open the event dedicated to digitization in the public sector organized by the OECD-MENA center in Caserta and the Minister for Youth Policies Fabiana Dadone, which will bring the Italian experiences into the forum dedicated to social inclusion.
The OECD MENA Regional Program, in its component dedicated to governance, is co-chaired by the Permanent Representative of Italy in Paris Antonio Bernardini and the Tunisian Minister for Public Administration, Hasna Ben Slimane.
Italy has supported the OECD MENA Program since its foundation in the 1990s, considering it a useful platform for dialogue, exchange and mutual understanding to foster institutional reforms and promote economic-trade relations between neighboring countries.
OECD MENA Ministerial Program on Governance:
https://oecd-events.org/governance-forum/fr
