Country Economic Memorandum
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Publication Mongolia - Sources of Growth : Country Economic Report(Washington, DC, 2007-07-26) World BankThis economic report aims to inform the ongoing debate on the Government's long term development priorities in Mongolia. It discusses the key facts and potential implications the government would need to consider when determining its public spending, public investment program, fiscal space, and borrowing strategy going forward. The report begins by reviewing the Mongolian growth experience over the 1990s as a pre-requisite to understand the present endowments, and the circumstances under which one needs to think about the future. Chapter 2 applies the "growth diagnostics" approach to identify those factors that are "binding" constraints to growth and are areas in need of immediate policy interventions by the government. Chapter 3 discusses the issues that will need to be addressed in order to develop non-mining sector activities with the aim of economic and export diversification and suggests policies to encourage firm innovation'' and private sector growth. Chapter 4 discusses policies to relax infrastructure bottlenecks in the context of regional development and Mongolia's unique geography. Chapter 5 presents a menu of policies tailored to address the mismatch of skills workers bring to the market and those demanded by the market. Chapter 6 discusses issues related to appropriate management and development of its mineral wealth, as well as those arising from present practices in the livestock sector. Finally, in Chapter 7, the possibilities of governance failure, policy and other risks are analyzed to demonstrate their inhibiting effects on the achievement of much higher long-term growth rates in this natural resource dependant economy during a commodity price boom.Publication East Timor : Policy Challenges for a New Nation(Washington, DC, 2002-03-28) World BankThe main challenge facing East Timor, is how to reconcile a simultaneous existence of acute poverty and severe shortage of human management skills, with solid prospects of future flows from the country's natural resource wealth. Policies to meet these two priorities - sustained poverty and sound management of natural resources - are the focus of this report. It looks at the pressing concerns of managing the economic transition from the United Nationals Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) within the next two years; at the issue of wealth creation and the need to enhance the private investment climate; at the need to devise a framework for saving the oil and gas revenues; at the importance of raising human development standards; at the limited number of qualified personnel able to formulate high priority development objectives, compounded by the need to build effective governance; and, at the overwhelming incidence of poverty in rural areas, and the strong correlation between consumption poverty, and low levels of education. In setting a strategy for growth and poverty reduction, the report highlights the importance of maintaining the prevailing efforts at raising farm incomes, and productivity, while improving the quality of rural education, and health facilities, including a tax policy vision that can play a role to avoid exacerbating urban bias. On improving the business environment, there is need for capacity building, and micro-finance programs, but within an adequate legal framework, and prudential regulations. The administrative priorities would require enhanced citizen monitoring on government performance, with an input in public services to improve transparency - which would emerge from an assessment of cost, effectiveness, and capacity.