Private Sector Development, Privatization, and Industrial Policy
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Publication
Creating Markets in Mali: Mobilizing the Private Sector for Economic Resilience and Recovery - Country Private Sector Diagnostic
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-04)Until the onset of the coronavirus disease 2019 (SARS-CoV2) COVID-19 pandemic and despite the deteriorating security situation, Mali’s economic growth averaged five percent since 2014, on par with its long-term potential. Mali’s fragile state status has also taken a toll on economic activity and social welfare by reducing access to markets, threatening food security, and degrading human capital indicators. With an increasing debt burden resulting in limited fiscal space to address persistent security risks and to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, the government of Mali is compelled to refocus the role of the state and unleash the potential of the private sector to boost productivity growth, to diversify the economy away from a narrow base, and to ensure inclusive economic and social welfare for all Malians. The growth model will be readdressed around energizing investment, creating resilient markets, and building back better for a more resilient recovery via (a) improving the business environment; (b) crowding-in private participation in the delivery of infrastructure and certain public services; (c) ensuring that remaining state-owned enterprises and private firms compete on equal terms - that is, upholding competitive neutrality principles; (d) expanding public-private partnerships in key sectors, through transparent and competitive procurement; and (e) leveraging digital solutions by further enhancing digital infrastructure that would, in turn, increase the uptake of digital financial services and digital platforms for key sectors of the economy, such as agriculture, and digitize government services (e-government). -
Publication
Creating Markets in Mozambique: A study conducted by the World Bank Group in partnership with SIDA - Country Private Sector Diagnostic
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-06)The Country Private Sector Diagnostic (CPSD) is a joint IFC-World Bank diagnostic that aims to make concrete recommendations for crowding-in private sector investment and financing in client countries. The CPSD analyzes the country context, including the state of the private sector, and identifies cross-cutting as well as sector-specific opportunities and constraints. The analysis presented in the Mozambique CPSD will feed into various upcoming World Bank Group (WBG) engagement reports for the country, including the IFC country strategy and the WBG Systematic Country Diagnostic (SCD). Similarly, it is expected that the CPSD will be of interest to the government, the private sector, and other development partners. Policy makers in Mozambique can take advantage of the CPSD to undertake reforms for improving the opportunities for private sector investment in priority economic sectors. The CPSD seeks to provide answers to the main development questions for private sector development in Mozambique, including which traded sectors, beyond extractives, have the most potential to drive growth and productive employment, and what reforms are needed to support this change. -
Publication
Creating Markets in Kenya: Unleashing Private Sector Dynamism to Achieve Full Potential
(International Finance Corporation, Washington, DC, 2019-07-31)Kenya has the opportunities and resources to stimulate sustainable economic growth and development, but its potential has been constrained by under-investment and low firm-level productivity. Altogether, its development has not been sufficiently sustainable or equitable to transform the lives of ordinary citizens. Poverty remains high, with thirty-six percent of Kenyans living under the national poverty line, whereas the richest ten percent of the population receive forty percent of the nation’s income. This country private sector diagnostic (CPSD) sheds light on how the private sector can more effectively contribute to advancing the country’s developmental goals. Applying a sectoral lens, it puts forward operational recommendations highlighting strategic entry points for diversification and growth and addresses key constraints to private sector engagement. It also seeks to inform World Bank and IFC strategies, paving the way for joint programming to create markets and unlock private sector potential. -
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Creating Markets in Ethiopia: Sustaining Progress Towards Industrialization
(International Finance Corporation, Washington, DC, 2019-03-20)Ethiopia has made impressive strides along its developmental path. Job creation is now the critical development challenge, raising the importance of the private sector agenda. After more than a decade of sustained public sector-led growth, the government is revising its growth strategy to allow for a much greater role for the private sector in driving growth and job creation. Broadening the base for job creation beyond light manufacturing toward a wider range of high productivity agricultural and services activities will help to overcome the uneven spatial distribution of manufacturing jobs across the country. Ethiopia has a number of advantages that it can leverage to attract the investment needed for job creation. These include rapidly improving transport and energy infrastructure, low labor costs, a large and growing domestic market, cheap power, an ideal climate, and preferential market access to the European Union, the United States, and other major markets. The purpose of the Ethiopia country private sector diagnostic (CPSD) is to support the transition to a private sector- driven growth model that advances the country’s development objectives and, in particular, delivers the necessary jobs. It identifies investment opportunities that can materialize in the short term, and the reforms that are needed to enable these opportunities to emerge. It also discusses how specific actions by the public sector, in collaboration with the private sector, in filling gaps in public investment, reforming business regulations and trade policy, addressing market failures, and enhancing the efficiency of key backbone services and sectors, while tackling gender inequalities, can fully unleash the potential of private sector investment. -
Publication
Sierra Leone Growth Pole Diagnostic : The Growth Poles Program
(Washington, DC, 2013-08)This First Phase Report on Sierra Leone growth poles is the result of a 9 months consultative process led by the Office of the President which specifically requested that the output of this diagnostic be in an engaging format. The fundamental concept of growth poles is that they exploit agglomeration economies and spillover effects to spread resulting prosperity from the core of the pole to the periphery. At the basis of this theory is the assumption that economic development is not uniform over a region. Rather, it concentrates around a geographic feature or economic hub. In particular, it frequently concentrates around a key industry, around which linked industries develop. A growth pole can be used to nurture direct and indirect linkages from the flagship industry to supporting sectors, which vastly expands the employment generation potential of new investments in said flagship industry. The expansion of this key industry implies the expansion of output, employment, related investments, as well as new technologies and new industrial sectors. -
Publication
Zambia - More Jobs and Prosperity in Zambia : What Would it Take? Based on the Jobs and Prosperity : Building Zambia’s Competitiveness Program
(World Bank, 2011-06-01)While Zambia's economy performs well, in macroeconomic terms, low levels of productivity plague industry, and this constrains growth, diversification and prosperity. In recent years, economic growth has averaged 5-6 percent a year, business reforms are being implemented, and investment levels are at an all time high. However, according to the World Economic Forum's global competitiveness index 2010-2011, Zambia is not a competitive place in which to do business (ranking 115th out of 139 countries). Not surprisingly, business productivity tends to be low, and few Zambian industries are internationally competitive. Formal employment is shrinking and rural poverty is increasing. In summary, there is an urgent need to increase productivity, growth and employment. These questions continue to preoccupy policy makers, businesses and civil society especially in light of government's strategy to embrace private sector-led growth and facilitate competitiveness and diversification. The Jobs and Prosperity: Building Zambia's Competitiveness (JPC) Program is an effort to answer these questions and, at the same time, to achieve some concrete results that improve industry productivity and competitiveness. The Zambian government, with support from donors, has, for a long time, been trying to raise prosperity by encouraging more productive businesses, more competitive and diverse industries, and greater employment. Yet these efforts have not generated the results sought. The goal of the JPC Program is to achieve some meaningful progress towards improving industry productivity and competitiveness. The Program focuses on four industries so as to build traction and keep the scope of work manageable. The industries were selected by a group of Zambian stakeholders. The Program facilitated a process through which Zambian stakeholders identified some narrowly defined target results that, if achieved, could help these industries become more productive and then supports initiatives to achieve these results. -
Publication
Africa Region Tourism Strategy : Transformation through Tourism - Harnessing Tourism for Growth and Improved Livelihoods
(Washington, DC, 2011)This paper presents the strategy vision for Africa of promoting tourism. The strategy relies on four pillars: policy reforms, capacity building, private sector linkages, and product competitiveness. Working closely with client countries, implementation of the Africa Region Tourism Strategy, will focus interventions in these four areas in order to address the persistent constraints to the growth of tourism in Africa. Combined, these interventions will enable high-demand tourism products to compete in the global marketplace. The approach is region-wide; it engages staff across the Bank's Africa Region. Implementation will be led by Africa Region s Finance and Private Sector Development Department (AFTFP). The World Bank Group support to the Africa tourism sector is currently 120 million US dollars. It could reach 500 US dollars million by 2015, generating as many as 300,000 direct formal jobs. The report examines the social, environmental, and economic risks associated with poorly managed tourism, and offers recommendations based on years of experience with tourism projects.This review has provided a snapshot of what Bank has been doing to support tourism development, and its alignment with national strategies in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The findings from this review are anticipated to facilitate future dialogue and negotiations among tourism stakeholders to increase support for tourism development in the region. -
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Kenya's Tourism : Polishing the Jewel
(Washington, Dc, 2010)Kenya's tourism product lines and its source markets function in a cross-sectoral context, which leads to cross-cutting public and private sector issues. Tourism has played a major role in Kenya's development despite economic jolts from time-to-time by internal and external shocks. In 2006 and 2007 the economy grew rapidly and tourism, after a jolt in early 2008, rebounded thanks to market conditions and some solid marketing. The global recession, of course, has since intervened, and Kenya will have to continue with bold and committed actions if it is to regain its iconic position in world tourism. Value chain analysis of safari, coastal, and business and conference tourism highlights constraints and opportunities. Current tourism enterprises are hampered by significant taxation and regulation. Peaks and valleys in tourism flows have exacerbated already limited access to capital necessary for the sector to be competitive. The key to sustainability lies in Kenya's ability to provide a mix of tourism products -safari, coastal, cultural/heritage and business and conference - while protecting the very assets these products celebrate. -
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The Cost of Doing Business in Africa : Evidence from the World Bank’s Investment Climate Data
(Washington, DC, 2005-11)This paper looks at firm-level evidence on the African business environment from surveys undertaken for Investment Climate Assessments by the World Bank in 2000-2004. These surveys confirm a pattern of generally low "factory-floor" productivity, and show that this is partly due to business environment-related losses. The surveys also show the importance of high indirect costs in further depressing the "net" productivity of African firms relative to those in other regions. Reforms are moving forward but more slowly than is needed to accelerate growth; this raises the possibility that countries settle into a low-level political equilibrium sustained partly by structural and ethnic cleavages. -
Publication
Kenya : Growth and Competitiveness
(Washington, DC, 2005-01)The conclusions of the recently-conducted Kenya Investment Climate Assessment (ICA), based on a survey of 368 firms, have a bearing on the country's growth agenda. The results have a bearing on the key issue of labor productivity and its implications on firm performance, revealing that capital-intensity in Kenya was relatively high, compared to the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and also to firms in China and India, but also relatively less productive. Labor productivity in Kenya had not improved materially over the past decade or so, so that unit labor costs compared very unfavorably with those prevailing in Asian countries like India, China, Indonesia or Thailand. Major constraints to doing business cited by firms in the survey related to infrastructure, tax administration and corruption. On infrastructure, power supply was seen as the most problematic, on account of the high number of outages, compounded by high losses in transmission and distribution. 64 percent of firms reported damage to equipment on account of power outages or fluctuations valued at nearly $15,000 per firm per year. To cope with these outages 70 percent of firms had acquired generators, further adding to the cost of doing business. Road and rail services were reported by most firms as being of very poor quality, and nearly a quarter of firms reported having to spend their own resources to improve the quality of roads in surrounding areas. On corruption, three quarters of firms surveyed reported this as a problem, though only about half reported having to spend resources in terms of unofficial payments.