Other Infrastructure Study

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  • Publication
    Greening ICT: A Case Study in Singapore
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-12-05) World Bank
    This report is based on a targeted review of Singapore’s approach to climate change, focusing on how the country drives energy efficiency and reduces GHG emissions in the ICT sector, particularly in data centers. It aims to reflect the various measures undertaken by the Singapore Government, present lessons learned, keytakeaways and challenges that continue to lie ahead. The information in this version is current as of end November 2023. The purpose of this report is to provide the key lessons for broad, multistakeholder consideration and dialogue forwhat countries could consider as they approach “greening” the ICT sector. It is important to note that addressing all the issues raised in this report does not guarantee a perfect, or even workable, enabling environment to meet theglobal climate change challenge. This is because the effectiveness of these measures can be affected by exogenous factors and the unique national circumstances of each country.
  • Publication
    Bangladesh Land Acquisition Diagnostic Review: Legal and Institutional Framework, Procedures and Practices - Analysis of the Challenges of and Proposals for Strengthening the Country’s Land Acquisition System
    (Washington, DC, 2022-08) World Bank
    Bangladesh has experienced a rapid pace of economic growth in the last two decades, with notable achievements across several social development parameters. To ensure sustained higher economic growth, the government of Bangladesh (GoB) aims to expand infrastructure related investment in the areas of strategic connectivity, industrialization, tourism development, and trade promotion, all of which require a significant amount of land. Age-old legal and institutional legacies and practices, issues pertaining to institutional capacity, and the lack of interoperability between departments involved in land administration make the overall land acquisition (LA) process extremely complicated and lengthy, with the scarcity of land making it even more challenging. The overall objective of the study was to assess the challenges and identify a mechanism for system strengthening and the scope of needed legal and institutional reform to improve the speed, accuracy, and accountability of the LA process. This report is presented in five chapters that discuss the study method, the analysis of the existing system and its challenges, measures to address the challenges, and the scope of possible legal and institutional reform. After introducing the study in this chapter, Chapter 2 discusses the country’s LA system and the process in practice. Chapter 3 describes the overall land administration in Bangladesh, including the method for transferring property rights, the creation and updating of khatians, and the complexity involved in the ownership decision process, one of the primary causes of delays in the payment of compensation. Chapter 4 presents the key challenges in the LA process, from the frustrations faced by IAs, who watch the timelines for their projects extended years longer than planned, to the worries and concerns of affected landowners waiting for compensation. Chapter 5 presents the proposals for improving and strengthening aspects of the LA process, including pertinent issues identified for possible land administration reform.
  • Publication
    South Asia’s Digital Opportunity: Accelerating Growth, Transforming Lives
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-03-27) World Bank
    The report presents both the opportunities of and the bottlenecks for furthering the digital agenda. It emphasizes that the first step is to get the basics right. This includes enabling access to and adoption of high-quality affordable broadband, initiating a paradigm shift in building digital public platforms and accelerating digital financial services. Part of this includes integrating digital ID, digital payments, and data sharing platforms so they can become ‘digital stacks’ that allow service providers to build and innovate their own platforms and systems on top. Supporting digital businesses, fostering digital skills, and creating the necessary trust environment are also critical to the digital agenda. Further, a successful digital agenda at country levels would benefit from regional integration that entails cross-border connectivity, data infrastructure, and payment systems.
  • Publication
    Renewable Energy Jobs and Sector Skills Mapping for Pakistan
    (Washington, DC, 2022) World Bank
    The Government of Pakistan (GOP) has adopted ambitious national renewable energy (RE) targets under the RE policy 2019. The policy sets out a growth trajectory for grid connected, non-hydro renewables, mandating at least 20 percent renewables in the country’s installed power generation capacity by 2025 and 30 percent by 2030. The government has simultaneously approved a comprehensive power generation capacity expansion plan, the integrated generation capacity expansion plan 2021-2030. Since large hydropower makes up the bulk of capacity additions in the IGCEP, new wind, solar, and bagasse projects in the IGCEP account for approximately 11,700 MW compared to 16,300 MW of non-hydro RE needed to meet the national RE targets. To capitalize on the employment creation potential of the RE targets and the IGCEP, policy makers will have to anticipate changes in workforce trends and develop a preemptive plan to manage skill requirements and prevent workforce shortages. This study was commissioned by the World Bank to facilitate cohesive RE workforce planning and identify skill gaps that can inhibit RE investments in Pakistan. The findings of the study will help inform skill development in RE by providing policy makers and other stakeholders, including the higher education commission (HEC) and the national vocational and technical training commission (NAVTTC), with indicative employment projections required for long-term planning.
  • Publication
    Financing India’s Urban Infrastructure Needs: Constraints to Commercial Financing and Prospects for Policy Action
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022) Athar, Sohaib; White, Roland; Goyal, Harsh
    India is rapidly urbanizing, with about 600 million people expected to be living in cities by 2036. This will put additional pressure on the already stretched urban infrastructure and services in these cities. This report estimates that India will need $840 billion in investment into urban infrastructure over the next 15 years—or $55 billion per year on average—if it is to effectively meet the needs of this fast-growing population. Despite a recent increase in public sector financing, there is still a large shortfall of resources relative to these needs. Financing from private and commercial sources, such as through municipal debt and public-private partnerships, can play a substantial role in addressing this shortfall. However, the use of such financing is very limited at present even in financially strong cities. This report analyses the demand- and supply-side constraints to raising private financing for urban infrastructure and provides policy actions to address them. It first presents latest estimates of future infrastructure investment needs for Indian cities and reviews recent trends in municipal finance and private commercial financing to meet these needs, focusing on municipal debt (such as loans and municipal bonds) and public-private partnerships. It then assesses the key constraints that undermine the mobilization of private finance for urban infrastructure. Finally, it provides proposals for policy action on how these constraints can be addressed at the demand and supply sides and shows how the Government of India can play an important role in removing various market frictions faced by cities. It proposes sequenced measures that can be taken at the city, state, and federal levels to create an environment in which private commercial finance becomes a much bigger part of the solution to India’s urban investment challenge.
  • Publication
    Vulnerability to Human Trafficking in Nepal from Enhanced Regional Connectivity
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-12) World Bank
    Trafficking in persons is a serious crime and a grave violation of human rights. It is a form of modern-day slavery that involves the recruitment, harboring, or transportation of people into an exploitative situation by means of violence, deception, or coercion for the purpose of exploitation. In Nepal, the most widespread forms of human trafficking are for forced labor, domestic servitude, prostitution and sexual exploitation, and organ extraction. The country’s open borders with India, and to some extent China, with limited border surveillance, have enabled transnational crimes such as human trafficking. The World Bank has extended technical and financial assistance to large-scale infrastructure projects in Nepal, some for improved transport connectivity and trade facilitation both within the country and within the region. The nature of these investments must be looked at through the lens of enhancing long-term economic growth and prosperity, which is jeopardized by human trafficking. As a result, this study was conducted to draw links between the various aspects of development projects, in particular, improved transport connectivity and migration, that either contribute, mitigate, facilitate, or prevent trafficking in men, women, and children.
  • Publication
    Business Regulation in South Asia and the Belt and Road Initiative
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-11-24) World Bank
    This study provides a comprehensive comparative analysis of the business environment in six South Asian countries, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, to examine whether business regulatory requirements in these countries hinder them from fully benefiting from BRI project spillovers. The analysis is based on available secondary data sources and responses to a structured questionnaire sent to selected private sector participants in each of these countries, eliciting information on the law, regulation, and practice in a wide range of thematic areas influencing the overall business and regulatory environment. Survey respondents identified nine key themes as the most challenging for the private sector, including from the perspective of potential benefits from BRI-induced opportunities. The thematic areas are: (a) licensing and inspection requirements; (b) regulations and practices governing foreign investment; (c) access to resources such as land, credit, and electricity; (d) regulatory restrictions on the operation of foreign firms, such as local content requirements and currency repatriation; (e) regulatory governance and corruption and state capture; (f) predictability and quality of the regulatory framework, especially corporate taxation; (g) government procurement laws and practice; (h) effective dispute settlement and grievance mechanisms; and (i) trade and customs regulations. The identified thematic areas promote connectivity and regional integration and thus are particularly relevant from the BRI perspective. Improvements along different dimensions of these thematic areas will likely enable countries in the region to gain from BRI-induced opportunities.
  • Publication
    Nepal Energy Infrastructure Sector Assessment
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-03) World Bank Group
    The purpose of this report is to identify how to maximize finance available to Nepal in the electricity sector. This report identifies financing needs and constraints for the energy sector in the short to medium term and outlines a road map for overcoming these constraints and seizing opportunities to gradually achieve a sectoral transformation. The report forms part of the World Bank Group’s Infrastructure Sector Assessment Program (INFRA-SAP).
  • Publication
    Nepal Infrastructure Sector Assessment
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-02-28) World Bank
    Despite several severe shocks in the past, conflict, unstable governments, earthquakes, and trade disruptions, Nepal has made strong progress in reducing poverty and boosting shared prosperity. With the decade-long peace and constitutional process concluded, the Government of Nepal is keen to accelerate economic growth and become a middle-income country by 2030. Between 1996 and 2011, the proportion of households living in extreme poverty fell from 46 to 15 percent. Nepal's macroeconomic fundamentals have remained sound. This report takes place as Nepal transitions to a federal structure. This poses a unique and unprecedented opportunity to establish clarity of functions, expenditures, and revenue assignments, as well as changing jurisdictions across various levels of governments and agencies, including as they interface with the private sector. The new government is in place and emphasizing the need for stronger cooperation between the public and private sectors. Against this background, this report assesses the energy (electricity generation, transmission, and distribution), transport (roads, airports, and urban transport), and urban (water supply, sanitation, and solid waste management) infrastructure sectors. The report recommends interventions that combine short-term and longer-term structural and policy changes with tailored project implementation approaches. Completing projects will help stress test the framework and system and identify potential bottlenecks that can be corrected. Such a learning-by-doing approach will further help prioritize the implementation of the initiatives proposed in this report and target capacity development initiatives in the areas of greatest need.
  • Publication
    Information and Communications Technology Sectoral Analysis: Nepal
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-12) World Bank
    Nepal’s information and communications technology (ICT) services are nascent, informal and centered in Kathmandu. The supply of skilled manpower is not well-oriented to the needs of ICT firms. Similar to other sectors, Nepal’s ICT sector also faces severe cross-cutting business climate challenges, the most critical relating to institutions and infrastructure. Limited access to finance and excessive barriers to foreign investment and foreign-exchange transactions also hamper the ICT sector. Reform efforts should focus on improving access to skills, infrastructure and finance, together with regulatory simplification. The education sector reforms are required to increase the pool of skilled manpower for the ICT sector. This report provides recommendations on key horizontal and cross-cutting challenges that are essential to develop the ICT sector in Nepal. Furthermore, it provides a strategic segment analysis applicable to a small number of niche ICT firms that can develop specialized software and services in focused sectors such as tourism and mountaineering.