World Bank Country Studies

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Country Studies are published with approval of the subject government to communicate the results of the Bank's work on the economic and related conditions of member countries to governments and to the development community. This series as been superseded by the World Bank Studies series.

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  • Publication
    Public Expenditure Management and Financial Accountability in Niger
    (Washington, DC, 2005) World Bank
    This study shows how difficult it is for Niger to significantly change its expenditure composition in a short time span. A narrow and volatile domestic resource base, heavy dependence on aid, and a large share of pre-determined expenditures such as external debt payments are important factors behind this lack of flexibility. There are ways, though, to create space in the budget for increasing public spending on priority sectors. The study identifies a number of measures in this regard, such as increasing domestic revenues, more realistic and conservative budgeting, strengthening cash management, controlling the wage bill, prudent borrowing and attracting higher external financing for recurrent costs in priority sectors. The study also shows that enhancing the efficiency and transparency of public spending is as important as increasing spending for PRS priority sectors. It thoroughly assesses public management systems in Niger and presents an action plan, jointly elaborated by the Government and its main external partners, to address the main challenges in this area. This action plan contains a priority set of measures to improve budget preparation, execution as well as internal and external oversight.
  • Publication
    Zambia : Public Expenditure Management and Financial Accountability Review
    (Washington, DC, 2004-10-12) World Bank
    Zambia's economy is not growing fast. Poverty is on the rise. The quality of economic governance is on the decline. And public resources are not well spent. The badly needed first steps to reverse all this are to start getting the budgetary allocations right and to make sure those allocations go where they re intended. That requires making the public aware of the government s budgetary decisions and holding the government accountable for better performance. Budgets, now not credible, have to become credible. Spending rules, where they exist, must be strengthened and enforced. Where rules are missing, they must be created and once again enforced to remove today s pernicious discretion. Addressing the longstanding challenges that Zambia faces in public expenditure management will require strong political will. For Zambia to assure that public accountability is enduring and not dependent on the government of the day, it must strengthen budget processes and institutions that can provide public oversight and promote basic checks and balances. This report provides an analysis of how Zambia can strengthen budgetary processes and institutions for accountability and effective service delivery to its citizens.
  • Publication
    Education in Rwanda : Rebalancing Resources to Accelerate Post-Conflict Development and Poverty Reduction
    (Washington, DC, 2004) World Bank
    Rwanda's recent history was marred by genocide in 1994, in which at least ten percent of the population lost their lives. Rebuilding the stock of human capital is an important part of the rehabilitation process, where the government has made efforts to broaden access to education, and enhance the quality of services. On the international stage, the education sector has also come into the limelight, specifically under the 2000 United Nations Millennium Declaration, and, the foregoing context presents clear challenges for education managers. The purpose of this report is to provide a factual basis for discussion. Noteworthy are the efforts to reduce grade repetition in primary education; and similarly, reforms in higher education finance have been launched to reduce the cost of government-sponsored overseas studies. The report is addressed to Rwanda's policymakers in the education sector, as well as to education practitioners, and should also be of interest to policymakers in other parts of the government, particularly those charged with managing the country's development strategy, and aligning public spending accordingly. The breadth of its coverage is limited to key economic aspects that are particularly relevant in the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) context: cost, finance, service delivery, and education outcomes. Most impressive is the rapid pace of enrollment increase in the aftermath of the genocide. As the system has expanded, it has done so in ways that has moved it toward a good balance between the public, and private sectors, which also compares favorably with that of other low-income countries in Africa, in terms of the socioeconomic disparities in educational access. Challenges ahead focus on managing student flow and graduate output, mobilizing and making effective use of resources for education, ensuring that public resources for education reach the front lines, balancing the accessibility of schools against considerations of scale economies, managing classroom conditions and processes to enhance student learning, and minimizing the barriers to education for orphans and other vulnerable groups. Nevertheless, the task ahead remains daunting as the recovery phase gives way to implementing the sector ' s long-term development. Concerns about efficiency, equity, and fiscal sustainability will be inevitably relevant, as the country seeks to advance educational progress in a resource-constrained environment.
  • Publication
    Tanzania at the Turn of the Century : Background Papers and Statistics
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2002-02) Government of the United Republic of Tanzania; World Bank
    This report is the successor to the Country Economic Memorandum for Tanzania prepared in 1996 (World Bank 1996). The 1996 memorandum focused on the challenge of reforms and paid particular attention to the impact of reforms on growth, incomes, and welfare in Tanzania. The present report draws out lessons from Tanzania's development experience of the past four decades, with emphasis on the period since the last report, and assesses the imperatives for higher sustained growth and better livelihood for its citizens in the future. The background papers presented in this Country Study review and assess Tanzania's actual growth and poverty reduction performance against its large natural potential and against countries at a comparable stage of development, analyze the main reasons behind the performance record, and then draw out the strategic and institutional imperatives for exploiting the country's vast potential for sustained growth and reduction of poverty in the long and medium term. The analysis focuses on development of the private sector and its increased role in scaling up overall growth and modernization of the Tanzanian economy. One chapter focuses on the Zanzibar economy and its development, even though Zanzibar is part of the union, because the policy and institutional framework for the island are distinct enough to merit separate attention. Also presented are the statistical appendices.
  • Publication
    Education and Training in Madagascar : Toward a Policy Agenda for Economic Growth and Poverty Reduction
    (Washington, DC, 2002) World Bank
    The prospects for educational development are excellent in Madagascar, in light of the increasingly favorable, policy environment for the sector. Public spending for education, relative to the gross domestic product declined in the 90s, coinciding with a five-fold rise in the country's interest payment for external debt. As the debt service burden began to ease in the late 90s, public spending on education began to recover, and can be expected to grow. A key challenge however, is to transform the sector's public spending into educational outcomes that would make significant contributions to poverty reduction. The report identifies challenges at all levels of formal education, where a medium term goal is to achieve universal access to basic education, and of reasonable quality, while closely linking expansion of other levels, and types of education and training, to labor market demand. In primary education, challenges remain to raise educational enrollment rates and reduce grade repetition; including the rationalization of teacher allocation, and provision of learning materials. At the secondary level, policy issues should expand enrollment at a moderate pace, focusing on quality improvements. As for vocational and technical education, the provision of training should be rationalized, to reduce costs, aligning training to labor demand; similarly, for higher education.
  • Publication
    Tanzania at the Turn of the Century : From Reforms to Sustained Growth and Poverty Reduction
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2001-04) Government of the United Republic of Tanzania; World Bank
    The study builds on lessons from Tanzania's development experience of the past four decades, with emphasis on the period following the 1996 Country Economic Memorandum, which focused on the challenge of reforms, in particular the impact of reforms on growth, incomes, and welfare in the country. The study assesses Tanzania's current development status against the country's ambition, since independence, to rid the nation of three archenemies: poverty, ignorance, and disease. Structural transformation has been extremely limited, with agriculture still dominating the economy, a non-diversified economy that hampers flexibility to withstand shock occurrences. Nonetheless, the country intensified macroeconomic policy reforms, significantly stabilizing the economy, with falling inflation levels, climbing foreign exchange reserves, and an overall fiscal balance. But the main factors identified behind the slow development progress, are primarily inadequate capital accumulation, and productivity growth; poor support for the transformation of agriculture; disrupted progress in building human capital; and, delayed demographic transition. However, the steady progress in reorienting its economy to a market-based operation, is creating space for exploiting the large potential of private sector initiative. It is emphasized that growth will only be sustainable, if firmly rooted in exploiting the domestic resource base, international competitiveness, and an aggressive pursuit of new export opportunities.