The World Bank recently raised its economic growth forecast for central and Eastern European countries in 2021. It is expected that the economy of central and Eastern European countries will grow by 3.6% this year and 4.2% in 2022.

In the first three months of this year, consumer confidence index of central and Eastern European countries such as Poland continued to rise, and internal demand and investment continued to expand. The rapid development of e-commerce has become a new engine of regional economic development. In 2020, sales of Polish e-commerce increased between 35 and 60 per cent. E-commerce sales increased by 100% during the prevention and control of the outbreak in Serbia, and online income of small and medium-sized enterprises increased by 20 to 30% on average.

Since last year, central and Eastern European countries have become hot spots for new energy investment, and a large number of international automobile enterprises and new energy enterprises have invested and built factories here. Many Chinese clean energy enterprises have also increased their investment in central and Eastern European countries and become important participants in the European new energy market.

The economic recovery of central and Eastern European countries has been accelerated thanks to the timely economic support policies and measures issued by regional countries. In order to cope with the impact of the new round of epidemic situation, countries have introduced new economic assistance plans again. For example, the Polish government will recently allocate 4.5 billion zloty (US $1, about 3.8 zloty) to provide assistance to enterprises in distress. The new batch of assistance includes 1 billion zloty of social security free payment and 1 billion zloty of free assistance for small and micro enterprises. The Hungarian government will provide up to 10-year interest free loans to small and medium-sized enterprises across the country, with a loan ceiling of 10 million forints (US $1, about 299.2 forints), and can apply for a delay in repayment of principal for up to three years. This is a new round of supporting policies following the introduction of wage subsidies for catering and tourism at the end of last year.

In order to solve the problem of vaccine shortage, central and Eastern European countries have made efforts to expand vaccine import channels, including importing vaccines from China. Hungary is the first EU country to approve and purchase China's new crown vaccine. The Hungarian government announced on April 6 that the number of people vaccinated with the new vaccine has exceeded 2.5 million. Serbia has received four batches of China's new crown vaccine, with more than 1.1 million people vaccinated in China.

In the post epidemic era, the economies of central and Eastern European countries will pay more attention to innovative growth, green development and digital construction, which are the key to realizing economic transformation and development, said Aron gleben, chief adviser of the Economic Department of the European investment bank.