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Poverty Traps in Argentina - Poverty and Equity Assessment
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-11-11) World Bank
Argentina faces persistently high poverty rates, which have shown an upward trend in recent years, despite increased resources aimed at mitigating poverty.
Equatorial Guinea Economic Update, 2nd Edition: Designing Fiscal Instruments for Sustainable Forestry
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-29) World Bank
This is the second edition of the Economic Update for Equatorial Guinea. This World Bank report presents recent economic developments in Equatorial Guinea, the medium-term economic outlook and risks as well as structural challenges (Chapter 1), followed by a detailed exploration of a specific topic (Chapter 2). This edition focuses on fiscal instruments for sustainable forestry, examining the current socio-economic context of forest policy in Equatorial Guinea. In particular, it discusses the role and current use of forest-related fiscal instruments, and proposes options and trade-offs in the design of forest related fiscal policy reforms to adequately capture resource rents, promote forest based value-addition and employment, mitigate deforestation and forest degradation. The objectives of the Equatorial Guinea Economic Update are to: (i) strengthen the analytical underpinnings of the policy dialogue; and (ii) contribute to an informed debate on policy options to enhance macroeconomic management and development outcomes.
Remarks by World Bank Group President Ajay Banga at the 2024 Annual Meetings Plenary
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-28) Banga, Ajay
In his speech at the 2024 Annual Meetings Plenary, World Bank Group President Ajay Banga highlighted the organization's achievements over its 80-year history and outlined its future direction. He emphasized the dual focus on reconstruction and development, reflecting on the World Bank's origins and its evolving role in addressing global challenges such as poverty, climate change, conflict, and pandemics. Banga discussed the need for the World Bank to be faster, simpler, and more impact-oriented. He noted improvements in project approval times, streamlined processes, and enhanced collaboration with other multilateral development banks. He also highlighted the importance of measurable outcomes and increased lending capacity to maximize the institution's impact.
Panama Systematic Country Diagnostic
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-22) World Bank
This Systematic Country Diagnostic (SCD) Update assesses the evolution of Panama’s development challenges and policy priorities since the publication of the SCD in 2015. During the last eight years, Panama has experienced three major changes in its economic and social landscape: (i) economic growth, though still high, has structurally slowed down, affecting job creation and employment quality; (ii) human capital formation has not improved substantially, and the country is struggling to address the significant deterioration in education and health indicators that occurred due to the COVID-19 pandemic; and (iii) the government has demonstrated an increasingly acute awareness of the country’s vulnerability to climate change. In addition, Panama’s income per capita had the highest level of convergence within the region, reflecting its strong economic performance over the last three decades. However, the country’s remarkable gains in per capita income have not been accompanied by a commensurate improvement in economic inclusion and institutional quality. In this context, the SCD Update begins by providing an overview of Panama’s recent growth dynamics and poverty trends, before analyzing the country’s development challenges and discussing key policy priorities for achieving sustainable, inclusive, and resilient growth.
Investment Framework for Nutrition 2024
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-09-23) Shekar, Meera; Shibata Okamura, Kyoko; Vilar-Compte, Mireya; Dell’Aira, Chiara; eds.
In 2017, the Investment Framework for Nutrition set the stage for transformative nutrition investments, culminating in strong donor and country commitments at the 2021 Tokyo Nutrition for Growth (N4G) Summit. Now—with only six years left until the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) end date of 2030—the world is facing polycrises, including food and nutrition insecurity; climate shocks; fiscal constraints; and rising rates of overweight, obesity, and noncommunicable diseases in low- and middle-income countries. Despite a 44 percent decline in child stunting between 1990 and 2022, global progress is insufficient, as increasing anemia rates among women of reproductive age as well as stagnating rates of child stunting, wasting, low birthweight, and rising obesity among children and adults persist. Nutrition is a marker of human capital, and both obesity and undernutrition are key contributors to the Human Capital Index. As we approach the 2025 Paris N4G, investing to address global nutrition challenges has become more critical than ever. Investment Framework for Nutrition 2024 broadens the focus of the 2017 Investment Framework for Nutrition to include low birthweight and obesity, and it adds policy considerations, operational guidance for country-level implementation, and gender and climate change perspectives. Financially, an additional $13 billion is needed annually to scale up a discrete set of evidence-based nutrition interventions to 90 percent coverage ($13 per pregnant woman and $17 per child under age five per annum), with the largest needs in South Asia (34 percent of total global needs) and Sub-Saharan Africa (26 percent of total needs). These investments need to be complemented with a strategically designed package of policies to influence consumer preferences by modifying the social and commercial determinants of health and dietary behaviors. The economic benefits of scaling up nutrition investments far outweigh the costs and offer substantial returns on investment. Innovative financing mechanisms—including responsible private sector engagement and climate funds, together with measures to enhance the efficiency of the existing financing—are vital to bridge the funding gap. A global effort is essential now to renew financial commitments, explore new funding avenues, and drive nutrition-positive investments—with the ultimate goal of enhancing health, human capital, economic growth, and sustainability.
Recipe for a Livable Planet: Achieving Net Zero Emissions in the Agrifood System
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-09-20) Sutton, William R.; Lotsch, Alexander; Prasann, Ashesh
The global agrifood system has been largely overlooked in the fight against climate change. Yet, greenhouse gas emissions from the agrifood system are so big that they alone could cause the world to miss the goal of keeping global average temperatures from rising above 1.5 centigrade compared to preindustrial levels. Greenhouse gas emissions from agrifood must be cut to net zero by 2050 to achieve this goal. Recipe for a Livable Planet: Achieving Net Zero Emissions in the Agrifood System offers the first comprehensive global strategic framework to mitigate the agrifood system’s contributions to climate change, detailing affordable and readily available measures that can cut nearly a third of the world’s planet heating emissions while ensuring global food security. These actions, which are urgently needed, offer three additional benefits: improving food supply reliability, strengthening the global food system’s resilience to climate change, and safeguarding vulnerable populations. This practical guide outlines global actions and specific steps that countries at all income levels can take starting now, focusing on six key areas: investments, incentives, information, innovation, institutions, and inclusion. Calling for collaboration among governments, businesses, citizens, and international organizations, it maps a pathway to making agrifood a significant contributor to addressing climate change and healing the planet.
Defueling Conflict Environment and Natural Resource Management as a Pathway to Peace: Executive Summary
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-08-20) World Bank
Fragile and conflict-affected situations (FCS), environmental degradation, and natural disasters are on the rise and threaten to reverse development gains. In the past decade, violent civil conflicts have tripled and the number of people living in proximity to conflict has nearly doubled, with forced displacement at a record high. The World Bank Group (WBG) Strategy for Fragility, Conflict and Violence (FCV) 2020–2025 marks a shift in the World Bank’s work in fragile and conflict situations, as it adopts a more holistic approach to prevention. The Strategy seeks to enhance the World Bank Group’s effectiveness in supporting countries’ efforts to address the drivers and impacts of FCV and strengthen their resilience, especially for their most vulnerable and marginalized populations. The FCV Strategy explicitly recognizes the importance of climate change as a driver of FCV and as a threat multiplier, as well as the need to address the environmental impacts and drivers of FCV. Delivering on this shift toward preventing conflict underscores the importance of understanding the role the environment and natural resources can have. This report seeks to build a strong narrative on the need for the World Bank Group to engage and invest in environment, natural resource management, and climate change resilience in FCV-affected situations. It further aims at facilitating the integration of a conflict-sensitive lens into World Bank operations and programs addressing natural resource degradation and climate change. The report is divided in six sections: Section 1 sets the Background, Context, and Approach; Section 2 describes the risks associated with the interplay between natural resources, climate change, fragility, and conflict across the conflict cycle; Section 3 connects those causal chains to the delivery of the FCV Strategy across its four pillars; Section 4 showcases a suite of options to improve conflict-sensitive project design and implementation; and Section 5 presents an annotated questionnaire that serves as a complementary tool to the report.
Bioeconomy Paraguay: Innovation and Economic Diversification
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-08-12) World Bank
This report aims to inform the Government of Paraguay about the economic potential of an innovative bioeconomy to diversify exports and create better jobs. There are a number of innovative, biobased sectors with significant growth potential globally and in Paraguay, that could contribute to Paraguay’s economic diversification. However, to build on this potential, Paraguay would need to expand its innovation capabilities to enter sectors such as bioplastics, biopharmaceuticals, forestry and wood, ecotourism and other ecosystem services, such as carbon markets for export. A wide range of products can be produced from wood, and wood pulp can serve as an alternative input material for textiles. Besides wood itself, the forests or plantations in which it grows can also provide non-wood forestry products such as cosmetics, biopharmaceuticals, or food additives. Paraguay can also expand its bioplastics production to take advantage of a global market that is expected to grow between 35–45% through 2027. In part, this is because large buyers, such as car manufacturers, have committed to purchase bioplastics. Further market opportunities are also evident in ecotourism and carbon financing, both fast-growing service industries with potential to contribute to conservation of natural capital assets.
From Landlocked to Land of Opportunity: Paraguay Country Economic Memorandum
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-07-09) World Bank
Paraguay has been a beacon of macroeconomic stability, but like the rest of the region, its average growth has moderated since 2013, which has affected the pace of poverty reduction. To accelerate growth and poverty reduction, it is important to continue to increase resilience against external shocks, productivity, and the sustainability of growth. Improving the quality and efficiency of public institutions, market efficiency, innovation, education, and infrastructure will promote economic productivity. Diversifying exports away from unprocessed commodities will strengthen economic resilience but will be a lengthy process. Meanwhile, the continued commitment to stable macroeconomic and fiscal policies, a deepened financial sector, and risk mitigation policies will increase economic resilience. Paraguay does not have to choose between profitability and sustainability: both are possible and complementary. Greener growth will yield a stronger, more prosperous economy.
Argentina Country Economic Memorandum: A New Growth Horizon - Improve Fiscal Policy, Open Markets, and Invest in Human Capital
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-06-20) World Bank Group
Argentina’s production capabilities, characterized by its abundant natural capital assets and well-educated workforce, have the potential to drive sustained and inclusive economic growth. Argentina is home to diverse natural resources, including the world’s second-largest deposits of lithium, and the second-largest gas shale and fourth-largest shale oil reserves. Its fertile land makes it a major agricultural producer, ranking third in soybean production worldwide. Human capital is rooted in its historically high-quality education and health services, as well as notable achievements in knowledge-intensive sectors such as research and innovation. This report identifies three key constraints to sustaining growth in Argentina. First and foremost, macroeconomic volatility is largely responsible for poor growth outcomes: high policy uncertainty and fiscal procyclicality have contributed to a cycle of booms and crashes. Volatility is also driven by an increasing overreliance on primary commodities. Stubborn and high inflation in addition to abrupt changes in exchange rates reduce planning horizons for long-term investment and impede the development of capital markets. Second, restrictive trade policies, in place partly because of macroeconomic imbalances, prevent Argentina from leveraging its vast comparative advantages to reap the benefits of international trade. Third, while human capital is among Argentina’s greatest assets, its quality is gradually declining. Without corrective policies, the skills of the country’s workforce could fall rapidly behind those demanded by a dynamic, technology-driven, knowledge-intensive global economy.