CIC Meeting - Remarks by Dr Brian Hindley at the CIC launch in London - 5th November 2003

Your Royal Highness, my Lords, ladies and gentlemen,

Thank you for being here this evening. Among our many distinguished guests, I am especially pleased to note the presence of H.E. Erlan Idrissov, the Ambassador of Kazakhstan in the United Kingdom. I’m going to introduce His Royal Highness Prince Michael of Kent, who will say a few words. Then I will introduce Gerald Frost, the General Director of the Caspian Information Centre, a new addition to the ranks of London’s think-tanks.

My slim qualification for being chairman this evening is the foreword I wrote to the Centre’s first publication, which deals with the economic, political and civic development of Kazakhstan since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Copies are available here this evening, and if you don’t already possess one, I hope you’ll remedy that.
The states surrounding the Caspian, and Kazakhstan in particular, are important in economic and strategic terms – and are set to become much more important. This is a part of the world that, in our own interests, we ought to know more about.

For that reason, I welcome the initiative to create a small think-tank-cum-information-centre, and its first publication on Kazhakstan, both of which aim to increase understanding and knowledge of Kazakhstan and the Caspian region.

Possession of huge oil riches has not always been an unmixed blessing. Kazakhstan, however, has so far displayed an admirable combination of political stability and economic advance. British investment – part of a much larger flow of Western investment - plays an important part in this process.

It is therefore a very great pleasure to welcome His Royal Highness, who has done so much to promote the cause of British business, and who has always shown a shrewd awareness of the wider social and political benefits that business can bring.


Brian Hindley - Short Biographical Note

Brian Hindley is an economist specialising in international trade. He is an expert on antidumping but also advises on economic aspects of litigation and legal matters in other areas of trade and competition policy. He has worked on problems involving aircraft production, motor-cars, chemicals, textiles, metal trading, alcoholic beverages and intellectual property.

He is trade-policy consultant to several international organisations, including the World Bank and the OECD. He lectures on the WTO and WTO-related matters at the London School of Economics, where he is Emeritus Reader in Trade Policy Economics, and at the University of Amsterdam Law School, where he is a visiting Professor.

He is the author of more than eighty articles or books on international trade or related matters.

Brian Hindley is British, but his A.B. (1961) and Ph.D. (in economics, 1967) are both from the University of Chicago.