Country Economic Memorandum

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https://hdl.handle.net/10986/2184

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Mongolia - Sources of Growth : Country Economic Report
(Washington, DC, 2007-07-26) World Bank
This 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.
Country Economic Memorandum : Realizing the Development Potential of Lao PDR, Volume 1. Summary Overview
(Washington, DC, 2004-12-23) World Bank
To sustain or exceed the 1990s annual average growth rate of 6.3 percent, Lao will need to promote agricultural and manufactured exports, and increase the contribution of natural resources to development. This will require another round of reforms, and supportive public spending. These reforms should seek to create a more enabling environment for the private sector, and for exports, to raise revenue and maintain macroeconomic stability, as well as to improve the transparency, accountability and efficiency of public expenditure management, and public service delivery. To develop natural resources and mineral reserves, Lao will need to attract substantial international and domestic capital to meet the heavy front-end capital costs required to exploit mineral deposits. To bring in that investment, however, requires improvement in governance of the mining sector, particularly in regard to partnerships with the private sector. Looking specifically at growth and poverty reduction, three scenarios for growth - base, base plus and high - show aggregate GDP growth up to 2015, rising roughly by an annual average of 4-5 percent, 5-6 percent, and 6-8 percent respectively. These indicate that this long-term growth will be driven largely by manufacturing (industry) and services, with growth from agriculture though important in the initial years, its contribution declining in the long-term. These growth scenarios depend very much on the pace and depth of reforms the country implements. Additionally, rising government revenues from natural resources alone will not suffice to meet social needs. On current trends, for example, per capita recurrent expenditures in health hardly increase until 2015. The country will need to take additional revenue measures and reallocate expenditures to increase recurrent expenditures on social sectors. To be effective, such revenue and expenditure measures must also be accompanied by efficient improvements in the service delivery mechanisms, i.e., increasing the participation of the poor.
China - Promoting Growth with Equity : Country Economic Memorandum
(Washington, DC, 2003-09-15) World Bank
International experience suggests that the effect of globalization on economic growth, poverty and income distribution can vary significantly among countries, and that its impact depends crucially on national policies. This report assesses the possible patterns of inequality in China in the future, and outlines policy options that could help accomplish China's objective of growth with equity. For sustaining growth, the report emphasizes the freer flow of resources and goods and services in the economy, to be achieved by domestic market integration and flexibility. The report suggests that the cost of market fragmentation and rigidities is high, and highlights measures to reduce local protectionism, facilitate migration, and commercialize the banking sector. To optimize the results of domestic market integration and promote growth with equity, the report proposes a package of policy actions that would promote new job opportunities, especially in the less developed regions, and raise returns on farm labor and land. Among these, the report highlights investing in people, promoting the diffusion of technology, facilitating urban agglomeration, expanding services and enhancing farmers' prospects. Finally, the report tackles the social, economic and fiscal risks that may threaten future growth and distributional performance. In particular, it suggests extending different types of formal social security in both urban and rural areas, for fixing the inter- government fiscal system in order to facilitate the provision of public services, and for managing fiscal risk beyond the government budget and officially recognized debt.
East Timor : Policy Challenges for a New Nation
(Washington, DC, 2002-03-28) World Bank
The 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.