Other Public Sector Study

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  • Publication
    Return on Investment of Public Support to SMEs and Innovation in Poland
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-12-31) World Bank
    A Smarter Europe is a top priority of the European Union (EU), the core of which is innovation, economic transformation, and more competitive small and medium enterprises (SMEs). These themes account for a huge part of EU spending in the past, present, and future programming periods. Despite high expenditures, impacts on the economy often appear modest or are not well understood. EU, national, and regional policymakers want to know where and how to invest to get the highest return on investment (ROI). Poland was selected as the pilot country, since it is the largest recipient of EU funding, and has a rich set of support measures and implementing bodies. The remainder of the document is organized as follows. Section 2 summarizes the assessment of the needs of the Polish ecosystem, along with the portfolio mapping and policy mix analysis. Section 3 summarizes the functional analysis methodology and findings. Section 4 describes the ROI/effectiveness methodology and findings. And Section 5 offers conclusions and recommendations based on the combined analyses.
  • Publication
    Regulatory Governance for Development and Growth: Malaysia's Experience with Good Regulatory Practices
    (World Bank, Malaysia, 2019-06) World Bank Group
    Good Regulatory Practices (GRP) are a systematic application of tools, institutions, and procedures that governments can mobilize to ensure that regulatory outcomes are effective, transparent, inclusive, and sustained. Other terms used for GRP include ‘regulatory governance’ and ‘better regulation.’ Among the most common GRP tools used by governments are: public consultation, ex ante regulatory impact analysis (RIA), ex post review of existing regulations, administrative simplification, access to laws and regulations, forward regulatory planning, and regulatory oversight functions. This report focuses on GRP because by improving the regulatory environment, they can boost conditions for sustainable growth and investment. This is evidenced, among others, in the World Bank Group’s Global Investment Competitiveness Report 2017-2018, which surveyed 750 investors in developing and transition economies. The report found that next to ‘political stability and security’, the ‘legal and regulatory environment’ was the most important consideration of senior executives when making investment decisions (WBG, 2018). Similarly, evidence shows a positive relationship between the improvement of the regulatory environment and aggregate investment (and economic growth), suggesting that countries stand to gain from a broad push for streamlining regulations and procedures affecting business (Eifert, 2009). The report reflects on Malaysia’s formal experience with GRP because, although launched only relatively recently, results have been remarkable. Malaysia has demonstrated that more business-friendly regulations and a more favorable regulatory environment can contribute to economic growth and investment. Moreover, Malaysia’s regulatory reform success has been reflected in many international indicators, such as the Global Indicators of Regulatory Governance, Worldwide Governance Indicators, Doing Business, (all produced by the WBG) and those from the World Economic Forum that measure the burden of government regulations and transparency of the policymaking process. International indicators measuring GRP performance show that Malaysia is converging with high-income OECD countries.
  • Publication
    Guinea - Opportunities for Enhanced Domestic Revenue Mobilization: Value-Added Tax and Excise Taxes
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-05-01) World Bank
    Revenue mobilization is a key constraint to economic development in the Republic of Guinea. The government’s five-year development plan (2016-2020) aims at fostering higher and more inclusive growth through public investments that require financing beyond current fiscal capacity. In this context, Guinea is seeking to efficiently raise additional domestic revenues and external investment financing. Development partners are supporting Guinea with technical assistance for revenue mobilization. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Union are supporting authorities with direct tax policy, non-tax revenue, and administration issues. The objective of this report is to shed light on indirect taxes, particularly value-added tax (VAT) and excise taxes. The report provides an overview of the main features of tax policy and administration in Guinea, followed by a more detailed analysis of VAT and excise taxes. The focus on indirect taxation is a result of both its significant revenue potential and coordination with other development partners. The analysis presented fills an important gap in the understanding of how Guinea can increase its tax revenues. On VAT, the study finds that addressing policy and administrative constraints can mobilize additional revenues while improving the business climate. On excise taxation, the study finds that existing excise rates are unevenly applied, with scope for raising rates in the future. To systematically address its revenue challenges across all tax types, Guinea should also consider development of a medium-term revenue strategy (MTRS). The report is structured as follows: in the first section, an overview of the evolution and composition of domestic revenues in Guinea is presented. In the second section, VAT is analyzed. The final section reviews excise tax policy and its implementation on international goods and domestic goods.
  • Publication
    Gabon: Assessment of the Impact of Tobacco Excise Tax Increases on Price, Consumption and Tax Revenue over 2018-2021
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-04-25) World Bank Group
    This report presents the results of the assessment that simulates the fiscal revenue and consumption impact of proposed tobacco tax increases in Gabon in the period 2018–2021.
  • Publication
    Time to Quit: The Tobacco Tax Increase and Household Welfare in Bosnia and Herzegovina
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-01) Fuchs, Alan; Orlic, Edvard; Cancho, Cesar
    This paper uses an extended cost-benefit analysis to estimate the distributional effect of tobacco tax increases in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The analysis considers the effect on household income of an increase in tobacco prices, changes in medical expenses, and the prolongation of working years under various scenarios, based on data in three waves of the national Household Budget Survey. One critical contribution is a quantification of the impacts by allowing price elasticities to vary across consumption deciles. The results indicate that a rise in tobacco prices generates positive income variations across the lowest income groups in the population (the bottom 20 percent). At the same time, tobacco price increases have negative income effects among middle-income and upper-income groups. These effects are larger, the higher the income level. If benefits through lower medical expenses and an expansion in working years are considered, the positive effect is acerbated among the lowest income groups. The middle of the distribution sees the income effect turn from negative to positive, and the top 40 percent, although continuing to experience a negative effect, see the magnitude of this effect diminish. Altogether, these effects mean that increases in tobacco prices have a pro-poor, progressive effect in Bosnia and Herzegovina. These results also hold within entities and across urban and rural areas.
  • Publication
    Creating a New Tourism Licensing and Grading System: Lessons from Rwanda
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019) International Finance Corporation
    The tourism sector in Rwanda is growing rapidly, largely driven by gorilla trekking and the Meetings, Conventions, Incentives and Exhibitions (MICE) segments. Despite this growth and government prioritization of tourism, there had been a gap in the regulation of the tourism sector, which was potentially affecting the attractiveness of the Rwandan market as a tourism destination and reducing the competitiveness of firms providing tourism services. To help address this gap, the World Bank Group (WBG), through the International Finance Corporation (IFC) Advisory Services, provided technical assistance in Rwanda over three years to support the creation of a new tourism regulatory agency, operationalize two new regulations, and license over 400 tourism entities under challenging time and resource constraints. In working with the Government of Rwanda and other stakeholders, IFC learned several lessons that may be useful to other practitioners who are considering: how to create and develop a regulatory regime from scratch to respond to a specific regulatory gap; how to place an emphasis on implementation beyond pure policy work; and how to be flexible and innovative to make the system as efficient as possible under time and resource constraints. This note sets out what was achieved, how it was achieved, and what was learned in the process. Together with material on global best practices, it is designed to provide a practical case study and share implementation insight for.
  • Publication
    Stimulating Business Angels in the Czech Republic
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-10) World Bank Group
    This report provides a systematic assessment of business angel activities, and the ecosystem surrounding innovation finance, in the Czech Republic. Based on literature reviews, published data sources and local stakeholder interviews, the report distills findings related to the demand for and supply of risk investments, and offers policy recommendations for stimulating business angels. The report characterizes the Angel ecosystem as emerging with potential for growth. It is small both in terms of the number of investors and the amount invested. There appears to be a general lack of syndication of investments and concentration of investments in the capital (Prague) and in the information, communication, and technology (ICT) sector. On the demand side, a credible deal flow does exist, although it falls short of constituting a critical mass needed to support the development of the market. While issues in the local environment may affect the flow of angel investments, these are not insurmountable, based on the country’s competitive ranking on relevant global and European indicators. Finally, the report proposes a number of policy recommendations for enhancing business angel awareness and investments, including data collection and mapping of early stage market activities (short-term), creation of Czech National Angel Association (medium-term), and implementation of incentivization measures such as co-investment funds and tax incentives (long-term).
  • Publication
    Reducing Tobacco Use Through Taxation in the Russian Federation: A Modelled Assessment of Two Policy Options
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-10-01) World Bank Group
    This report presents results of the modelling exercise in terms of excise tax increases for the period 2018–2021, including average excise tax and revenue mobilization options; it also compares the tobacco excise tax already included in the country's current tax code with that necessary to achieve proposed EU minimum rates by 2021 (Minimum EU excise tax rates scenario).
  • Publication
    Improving Public Sector Performance: Through Innovation and Inter-Agency Coordination
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-10) World Bank Group
    This report is an inaugural issue in a new series that aims to offer a fresh look at how developing countries are overcoming persistent problems in public sector management. Significant improvements in public sector performance are being evidenced across the developing world today, as government officials and political leaders find new and innovative ways to tackle long-standing challenges. Part I of this report demonstrates that public sector performance is being pursued diligently and successfully across a variety of country contexts, including in low-income environments. Through surveying its governance specialists from around the globe, the World Bank has assembled a collection of 15 cases that showcase how lessons from global experience are being adapted and applied in practice. The report also explores common success drivers that appear in each of the cases. Part II focuses on a special, cross-cutting topic that is critical to public sector performance -- policy and inter-agency coordination. As the responsibilities of government have grown in volume and complexity, policy and program coordination has become ever more challenging, and the stakes have never been higher. Enhancing coordination will depend not only on the adopted formal institutional mechanisms, but also on their interplay with the broader institutional environment and with other processes that influence coordination.
  • Publication
    Advancing Action on the Implementation of Tobacco Tax Harmonization in the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States Countries
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-06) World Bank Group
    This study analyses the tax systems of five OECS countries (Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines). Taxes on tobacco, and therefore cigarette prices, vary widely across the five countries, and smuggling and tax evasion are genuine risks. The study assesses two possible harmonization scenarios, to estimate the possible impact of tobacco tax policy measures on tobacco use, and at the same time to expand the fiscal capacity of OECS governments through the mobilization of domestic resources. The simulations are modelled using the harmonization policies adopted at the OECS treaty of Basseterre. Comparisons are also made with other customs unions to identify regional best practices.