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Publication
Bringing Finance to Pakistan's Poor : Access to Finance for Small Enterprises and the Underserved
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2009-11-13)Access to financing is now widely acknowledged as a path to meaningful economic inclusion and reduction in poverty. Policy efforts to increase access to finance in Pakistan have taken time to bear fruit, but now access is indeed expanding quickly in certain financial sectors (microfinance, remittances), albeit from a very low base. Nevertheless, policy measures cannot single-handedly increase financial access; financial institutions' willingness to expand access in Pakistan has been stinted by slow technologic advances, weak legal foundations, and unsuitable financial processes and products. Poor socioeconomic conditions, gender bias, and low levels of basic education and financial literacy remain barriers, but perhaps the single strongest driver of low demand for financial access has been income. The primary purpose of this study is to measure and describe the state of financial service provision to underserved segments of the market in Pakistan, particularly those with low incomes and small enterprises, and to identify ways to improve investment and create inclusive markets that meet the needs of underserved people and enterprises. -
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Preventing Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing : A Practical Guide for Bank Supervisors
(World Bank, 2009-03-01)This book is specifically designed for bank supervisors, some of whom may be looking for ways to devise a program of anti-money laundering/combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) supervision. Others may have encountered difficulties in elements of their systems of supervision and are looking for alternatives. Supervisors may also come to recognize even more efficient ways to carry out AML/CFT supervision. The objective of this book is therefore to provide a "how to" reference for practitioners of financial regulation and supervision. The authors have attempted to conceive a practical guide, with the purpose of resolving strategic and operational supervisory issues. They cover the entire spectrum of supervision, ranging from supervision objectives to the design and carrying out of onsite and offsite inspection programs, and from cooperation with other domestic and international AML/CFT authorities to sanctions and enforcement. The international community recognizes that under-regulated or unsupervised entities have the potential to undermine confidence in financial markets and hamper economic recovery. Better transparency, enhanced oversight, and stronger cross border cooperation among regulators and supervisors in all areas of risks, including money laundering and terrorist financing, are necessary to ensure that financial institutions always remain sound, sustainable, and vigilant. This task is even greater during difficult times. -
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Banking the Poor : Measuring Banking Access in 54 Economies
(Washington, DC, 2009)Banking the Poor presents new data collected from two sources: central banks, and leading commercial banks in each surveyed country. It explores associations between countries' banking policies and practices, and their levels of financial access measured in terms of the numbers of bank accounts per thousand adults. It builds on the previous work of measuring financial access through information obtained from regulators, banks, and household surveys. It explores associations between countries' banking policies and practices, and their levels of financial access, measured in terms of the numbers of bank accounts per thousand adults. The extent to which people are banked depends primarily on how wealthy they are. Even in the poorest countries, rich urban customers get access to good banking. Although there are a range of financial services used by the poorest, these are usually provided outside the formal banking system. Banks are used by those above this threshold, usually by salaried employees who have the steady income. Naturally banks are more likely to seek out users with a steady, predicatable income. Expanding credit for enterprises leads to the creation of a salaried class that wants to bank: this is the primary way to increase bank access. While bank clients make up the largest part of those using financial services in most countries, incorporating other formal financial institutions would yield a more comprehensive picture of the population that enjoys access to modern financial services. -
Publication
New Industries from New Places : The Emergence of the Software and Hardware Industries in China and India
(Washington, DC: World Bank and Stanford University Press, 2009)China and India have grown rapidly in importance in the global economy over the past two decades the same period in which hardware and software have become important tradable products in the global economy. China has reached global scale in the hardware industry but not in software; India has achieved the reverse. These recent developments offer new insights into the ways in which new industries can take root and flourish within the broader context of developing economies. This progress has attracted widespread comment, most of it anecdotal or based on partial explanations of industrial growth. This study seeks to provide a fuller explanation based on an empirical analysis of the macro and micro underpinnings of these contrasting growth stories. In doing so, the study sheds a broader light on the economic development paths that China and India have taken since 1990, and also on the process by which developing economies can enter and succeed in new markets. -
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The Political Economy of the World Bank : The Early Years
(Stanford: Stanford University Press and the World Bank, 2009)This book covers the early years of the International Bank of Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), commonly known as the World Bank when it first confronted the issue of development as a fundamental part of its mission. The book is mainly concerned with how the Bank interpreted its mission and, more specifically, how its mission was born: what events shaped it, what cultural and ideological background influenced it and what was the historical context in which it arose. So this book is a contribution to the study of the prehistory of development, understood in its social and economic context. In this respect, the study of the early years of the World Bank offers excellent context for observation for three reasons. First, during its history there is a clear separation between the growth phase and the phase of social objectives. Second, in the first years of activity already the Bank could hear murmurs of opposition. Finally, there was a sudden change in the mandate of the institution changed from supporting the reconstruction of Europe after the war, to help developing countries. The transition from one phase to another was a formative one and redefined the institution. The upshot of the foregoing was to set a fertile ground for exploring the signs of conflict between the different approaches to development. The first chapter deals with the historiography that underlies the writing. It refers to a wide literature using periods of transition or crisis in the history of the institution to understand its dynamics and mechanisms. Reducing its support for European reconstruction, the Bank focused on the development of countries. The internal tensions that arose and led to a complete break between the Bank and the director of the mission (the economist Lauchlin Currie) are very useful for understanding better the evolution of the institution. The third chapter explores the tensions between Currie and the Bank and particularly, between Currie and the economist Albert Hirschman, who the Bank replaced as envoy to Colombia. The final chapter focuses again on the International Bank and particularly in lending mechanisms for developing countries. -
Publication
Designing and Implementing Health Care Provider Payment Systems : How-To Manuals
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2009)This volume grows out of an initiative in the World Bank on resource allocation and purchasing ('RAP'), which started in 2000, and continues to publish articles and books related to strategic purchasing. The initiative emerged from such questions in developing economies as: why do individuals need help in purchasing health services from providers? Is the 'middleman' really necessary? Can people not just buy health services in the same way they would go to the local market to buy bread, milk, or fruit, especially since, throughout most of history that is what most people did? When sick, they contacted local healers directly. Public policy historically was limited largely to protecting the sick against charlatans and was enforced through ethical codes such as the Hippocratic Oath. There was no expensive technology, and most serious conditions led to death. Loss of employment and burial costs were the most expensive parts of illness. With industrialization and the scientific revolution, all this changed. As understanding about the causes, prevention, and treatment of illness expanded, interventions become more complex and expensive. Health care was no longer the exclusive domain of traditional healers. Partly because of the complexities involved, the World Bank's new health, nutrition, and population strategy has noted that 'countries increasingly not only want to know what to do (with health systems) but also how to do it, particularly how to design and manage the transition from current to reformed systems.' This volume is a step in that direction, to help countries design, manage, and implement reforms related to strategic purchasing with an emphasis on changing their provider payment systems. -
Publication
Social Protection and Labor at the World Bank, 2000-08
(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2009)In autumn 2000, the World Bank's board approved the first ever strategy for the new social protection and labor sector, and in January 2001, the sector published the strategy. The subtitle, from safety net to springboard, indicated the World Bank's move toward a broader understanding of poverty reduction and the relationship of risk to poverty. Because risks and access to appropriate risk management instruments matter for poverty reduction and development, the strategy proposed a new conceptual framework - social risk management that will review and reform existing interventions and propose new ones to better assist the vulnerable in addressing the many risks to which they are exposed. After seven years of implementation, it was time to review the strategy and work of the areas of selected core competence: labor market, social insurance (in particular pensions), social safety nets, social funds, disability and development, and risk and vulnerability analysis. The strategic position, its development, and the results by the sector since the launch of its strategy were reviewed and presented to the World Bank's committee on development effectiveness at the end of 2007. The review included a stocktaking of the analytical work and lending operations in each of the six core competence areas. The result of this review and the six stocktaking papers are presented in this publication. They reveal the progress that the World Bank has made in understanding the importance of social risk management for poverty reduction and the critical contribution it makes to equitable and sustainable growth. -
Publication
Intensifying the Fight Against Malaria : The World Bank's Booster Program for Malaria Control in Africa
(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2009)This document describes the purpose and context of the Booster Program, its first three years of operation and the proposed design of phase two of the program. Phase two seeks to build on the successes of and lessons learned from phase one and to enable the World Bank to play its expected role in scaling up and sustaining malaria control interventions to reach the new ambitious but achievable global goal set by the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) Partnership, of eliminating malaria as a major public health problem in Africa by 2015. The Bank has subscribed fully to this agenda, as illustrated by statements made by senior management in several public forums. -
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Catastrophe Risk Financing in Developing Countries : Principles for Public Intervention
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2009)Public intervention in catastrophe insurance markets, supported by the donor community and the World Bank, should be country specific. Low-income countries, where the domestic non-life insurance market is undeveloped, should focus in the short term on the development of sovereign catastrophe insurance solutions and the promotion of public goods related to risk market infrastructure. These countries are usually not mature enough for the promotion of catastrophe insurance pools for private homeowners. Middle-income countries, where the domestic non-life insurance market is more developed, should help the private insurance industry offer market-based catastrophe insurance solutions to homeowners and to small and medium enterprises, including the agricultural sector. This book offers a framework, with lessons drawn from recent experience, guiding principles for public intervention and potential roles for donors and International Financial Institutions (IFIs). These lessons are expected to be used in developing affordable, effective and sustainable country-specific catastrophe insurance programs. -
Publication
Innovative Financing for Development
(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2009)In the run-up to the 'follow-up international conference on financing for development' to be held in Doha from November 28 to December 2, 2008, it seems particularly timely to collect in one book writings on the various market-based innovative methods of raising development finance. Although developing countries are well advised to use caution in incurring large foreign debt obligations, especially of short duration, there is little doubt that poor countries can benefit from cross-border capital whether channeled through the public or private sectors. The papers in this book focus on various recent innovations in international finance that allow developing countries to tap global capital markets in times of low risk appetite, thereby reducing their vulnerability to booms and busts in capital flows. Debt issues backed by future hard currency receivables and diaspora bonds fall into the category of mechanisms that are best described as foul-weather friends. By linking the rate on interest to a country's ability to pay, Gross Domestic Product (GDP)-indexed bonds reduce the cyclical vulnerabilities of developing countries. Furthermore, these innovative mechanisms perm lower-cost and longer-term borrowings in international capital markets. Not only do the papers included in this book describe the innovative financing mechanisms; they also quantify the mechanisms' potential size and then identify the constraints on their use. Finally, the papers recommend concrete measures that the World Bank and other regional development banks can implement to alleviate these constraints. Economists have analyzed the feasibility and potential of using various tax-based sources of development finance in the context of meeting the millennium development goals. This has given rise to a new discipline of global public finance. This book complements those efforts by focusing on market based mechanisms for raising development finance.