Private Sector Development, Privatization, and Industrial Policy

96 items available

Permanent URI for this collection

http://hdl.handle.net/10986/2162

Items in this collection

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5

Creating Markets In Honduras: Fostering Private Sector Development for a Resilient and Inclusive Economy - Country Private Sector Diagnostic

(Washington, DC, 2022-05) International Finance Corporation

Honduras has significant investment potential, with ample productive resources, a solid industrial base, a market-oriented reform agenda, a strategic location with access to many international markets, and a growing labor force. The country’s young and growing population is yielding a demographic dividend, which presents new opportunities for economic growth and diversification, especially in the service sectors such as business-process outsourcing (BPO) and in development of digital financial services (DFS). Honduras’s rich endowment of resources and improving business climate have attracted rising levels of private investment, and the country achieved the second highest tradeto-GDP ratio in the Latin America and the Caribbean region prior to COVID-19 crisis. However, large-scale investment and trade have yet to generate rapid economic growth and robust poverty reduction. The public and private sectors will both play vital roles in Honduras’s economic recovery. Ongoing targeted support will be necessary to address the health and humanitarian consequences of the pandemic, mitigate the resulting increase in poverty and inequality, and support the resumption of economic activity. This Country Private Sector Diagnostic (CPSD) is designed to help guide Honduras’s private sector development agenda in this challenging and rapidly evolving context.
Antitrust and Digital Platforms: An Analysis of Global Patterns and Approaches by Competition Authorities

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-09-27) World Bank

The pace at which markets are evolving, thanks to the accelerated adoption of digital technologies, poses important challenges to competition law and its enforcement. This work aims to support this process by building an understanding of the experiences of competition authorities in deciding on competition enforcement cases in the digital economy. This note analyzes the global digital antitrust database of the markets, competition, and technology unit (the MCT DAD or the database) and provides a summary of key patterns and trends in antitrust in the digital economy (and specifically in relation to digital platforms firms). This database aims to be a holistic source of information on abuse of dominance, anticompetitive agreements, and merger cases involving digital platforms, which have been finalized by antitrust authorities worldwide. It also identifies some risks to competition arising from various digital platform business models in different sectors and generates learnings for antitrust authorities globally on the approach to assessing such cases. The analysis contributes to the discussion and learning on competition assessments in the digital economy. The data also show how different sectors may be prone to different types of anticompetitive behavior, depending on the typical business models of digital platforms. Antitrust authorities in less developed countries should be encouraged to participate more actively in the debate on data protection and privacy as a dimension of competition. Finally, authorities should continue to strive to make their decisions public and provide clarity about the factors justifying their decisions.
Poland Structural Policies for Competitiveness: Position Paper for Regulatory Policy

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-08-01) World Bank Group

Regulatory policy is essential for economic growth and social welfare. Regulations are the rules set by the state to govern the daily life of citizens and businesses. Regulatory policy, the prerogative to establish these rules, is a key lever of state power. Poland has made progress in improving the quality of its regulatory processes, but important challenges remain. High quality regulations are essential for a sound legal framework based on certitude, legality, and transparency. The strategy for responsible development (SRD) recognizes the importance of regulation to stimulate economic activity in Poland. As the main policy document for economic transformation, the SRD identifies shortcomings in the current development model and makes proposals on how to address them. The strategy offers a good starting point to identify areas in which the World Bank could engage with the Government of Poland to further support the efforts to strengthen a sound regulatory environment for business. This position paper aims at: (i) assessing some of the current efforts made by the Government of Poland in terms of regulatory policy, particularly affecting business; and (ii) identifying areas of potential engagement between the World Bank and the Government of Poland.
Towards Privilege-Resistant Economic Policies in MENA: Shielding Policies from Privileges and Discretion

(Washington, DC, 2017-06) World Bank

Unemployment rates in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region are among the highest in the world, especially for young graduates. Policy recommendations to date in the field of governance for private sector policymaking have been too general and too removed from concrete, actionable policy outcomes. This report presents, for the first time to fill this policy and operational gap by answering the following question: what good governance features should be instilled in the design of economic policies and institutions to help shield them from capture, discretion, and arbitrary implementation? The report presents an innovative conceptual framework that encapsulates the governance features that can shield policies from capture, discretion, and arbitrary enforcement that limits competition. Based on this framework, a check-list of policy features in a wide range of policy areas relevant to private sector development policy is presented, notably in terms of: (i) the process of policy-making (ex-ante); (ii) the actual policies, regulations, and their implementation (for example, business regulations, procurement, financing, trade); and (iii) competition policy and other attributes like open-business and transparency measures that help identify, and prevent or deter anti-competitive market behavior and outcomes (ex-post). The report benchmarks eight countries along the framework and checklist of indicators, pointing, for each country, to policy gaps and poor governance features that make these countries prone to capture and discretion. The report offers a menu of operational and technical entry-points to engage the capture agenda in a concrete way, one that may be more politically tractable in some of the client countries.
The Effectiveness of Private Sector Development Interventions in Fragile and Conflict-Affected Situations: Evidence from Evaluations

(International Finance Corporation, Washington, D.C., 2016-11) Liu, Chaoying ; Harwit, Emily

This systematic review is an effort to fill the knowledge gap about the effectiveness of PrivateSector Development (PSD) interventions in Fragile and Conflict-Affected Situations (FCS). Theobjective of the review is to identify and extract evidence from published evaluations of PSDinterventions in FCS on what has or has not worked in terms of achieving development results,including contributions to peace and stability. The review identified 312 published evaluations of PSD interventions carried out between 2005 and 2014, of which 56 constituted the final data set for the review analysis. The review covered evaluations in 23 countries classified as FCS by the World Bank from 2005-14 and three other countries that experienced conflict. Annex 1 shows how each of the 23 countries were categorized according to the country’s conflict status from the FCS list. In summarizing the evidence, we defined ‘effectiveness’ as how external evaluators measuredthe degree of success in attaining the planned results and objectives of PSD projects in FCS.Project effectiveness was measured within four business lines: SME support, infrastructure,access to finance and investment climate reform. The evaluability, or the ability of evaluators to determine how well projects were implemented, was weak in some projects under review. For example, in 25 percent of the evaluated projects, outcomes were either poorly defined or not appropriate. In addition, the basis for determining success across individual projects was not always clear because projects sometimes defined outputs and outcomes differently, even when long and short-term results were achieved. This limited our ability to appropriately catalog the projects’ evidence in a consistent and clear manner.