Competitiveness through new industrialisation in the EAEU

Having recently passed its first five-year anniversary, the Eurasian Economic Union is still strolling economic shallows determined by commodity dependence and deindustrialisation of postcommunist political economy. Potentially these challenges can be overcome by a new industrialisation effort targeting macroeconomic competitiveness as a comparative capacity of adapting to globalisation. Indeed, while commodity exports currently dominating the mutual trade in the EAEU bound its members by the inherited infrastructure, as well as discounts on oil and gas, manufacturing can do so through value chains, which would also require more sophistication in common economic regimes, particularly concerning technical and financial regulation. A common industrialisation agenda would be helpful here, yet to be efficient in the specific postcommunist context of the EAEU it would have to depart from the existing paradigm and get focused on managing institutional misalignment, eschewing from communist-era grandeur, upkeeping the social sector and promoting private–public partnerships in innovative manufacturing activities.