Private Sector Development, Privatization, and Industrial Policy

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  • Publication
    The African Regional Weather Enterprise: Current Private Sector Landscape
    (Washington, DC, 2023-10-25) World Bank
    This study focuses on the role of the private sector in the development and delivery of hydrological and meteorological (hydromet) and early warning services (EWS) in Sub-Saharan Africa within the current landscape of the Africa Regional Weather Enterprise (ARWE). The study begins with a global industry overview of 87 participating companies who either work in or have interest in the region’s hydromet market. It highlights the types of activities, end-user categories, research and development, and focuses on innovation and capacity building initiatives that underpin the key components of the following pages. The study analyzes how private sector actors operate within the framework of national, regional, and international hydromet projects. It makes an inventory of ongoing initiatives that focus on the current status of public-private engagements (PPE) and partnerships for development of the ARWE.This report concludes by drawing on lessons from the positive dynamics and gaps in partnerships and engagements between public and private actors. It supplies 16 recommendations to further improve the ARWE by emphasizing PPE, successfully completing African hydromet programs, and satisfying enduser needs. The recommendations are focused on protecting lives and property while supporting national economies for the prosperity of all.
  • Publication
    Creating Markets in Chile: A Stronger Private Sector for a More Productive and Inclusive Society - Country Private Sector Diagnostic
    (Washington, DC, 2022-06) International Finance Corporation
    Chile has long had a strong private sector that has enjoyed an accommodating and supportive policy environment. The imperative of building a green, knowledge-based, inclusive economy will inevitably continue to rely on the private sector playing a potent role as a partner in development. In an environment constrained by lower growth and productivity, Chileans are demanding access to better opportunities and improved services. The current constitutional process is an opportunity to set the stage for the private sector to be a stronger partner in building a more inclusive society and an innovative, productive, and greener economy. For this to happen, this country private sector diagnostic (CPSD) argues that three avenues will be essential: enhancing productivity, building a knowledge-based economy through more support to innovation, and upgrading skills for greater inclusion and innovation.
  • Publication
    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.
  • Publication
    Business Registration Reforms in China: A Case Study
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022) Wei, Wenting; Sanchez Ortega, Luis Aldo
    In the past, the business registration system in China was complicated and market access was highly restricted and regulated. The business registration process focused too much on administrative approvals for market entry and not enough on oversight of firm activities. Firms are not allowed to start operations before being registered and receiving a business license and the business license is the only document indicating a firm’s legal identity. Before the 2014 business reform initiative, firms were also legally required to obtain various registration certificates in addition to a business license. People’s Republic of China (PRC or China) has been making a great effort to simplify its business registration process, enhance its efficiency, and reduce its cost. China has reduced both the amount of time and the number of procedures required to start a business by more than two thirds within the past decade.In 2014, China launched a country-wide multi-year National Business System Reform Initiative to ease market access, making it easier to start a business by streamlining administrative procedures, while strengthening post-registration supervision by setting up the corporate social credit system. China has made remarkable progress to reform its business registration system over the past decade, cutting the number of procedures to register a business by more than two-thirds, and shortening time to register from 34 days in 2014 to 9 days in 2020.
  • Publication
    Creating Markets in Vietnam: Bolstering the Private Sector During COVID-19 and Beyond - Relief, Restructuring, and Resilient Recovery
    (World Bank, Washington, DC:, 2021-09) World Bank; International Finance Corporation
    The objective of the Vietnam Country Private Sector Diagnostic (CPSD) is to examine opportunities and challenges, both cross-sector and sector-specific, to strengthen private sector development and facilitate investments in Vietnam. The CPSD is closely aligned with the government’s strategic priorities (as outlined in Vietnam’s Socio- Economic Development Strategy [SEDS] 2021-2030 and the Vietnam 2035 report) and World Bank Group policy priorities and programs (WBG Vietnam Country Partnership Framework [CPF] FY18–FY22 and IFC’s Vietnam Country Strategy 2020–22). The CPSD relies on multiple data resources, including knowledge from the literature (including sectoral studies) and from World Bank Group staff, enterprise surveys, high frequency/ real-time data generated by private firms, and interviews and consultations with the private sector, Vietnamese authorities, and other external stakeholders.
  • Publication
    Creating Markets in Pakistan: Bolstering the Private Sector
    (International Finance Corporation, Washington, DC, 2021-05) International Finance Corporation; World Bank
    This Country Private Sector Diagnostic (CPSD) analyzes and synthesizes cross-cutting and sectoral impediments to private sector development in Pakistan. It also proposes a policy reform agenda that would be transformational for the growth and competitiveness of the private sector. It complements the World Bank’s Systematic Country Diagnostic (SCD, 2020) and aims to contribute to the national dialogue by focusing specifically on private sector issues. The Pakistan@100 body of work is the base and it draws on recent thematic World Bank reports and consultations with business leaders and public officials. Technical solutions to Pakistan’s institutional constraints and policy distortions are readily available, but the implementation of these solutions requires committed political leadership. This has proven hard to muster in Pakistan’s young and noisy democracy. Successive administrations have been humbled by vocal public opposition or internal resistance to change influenced by special interest groups. Maintaining political stability has been challenging with frequent transfers of power between civilian and military administrations. The devolution of powers to the provinces and local governments has resulted in an institutional footprint with sometimes overlapping or unclear mandates that give rise to uncertainty for businesses. The question is therefore what it would take for Pakistan’s policymakers—and its elites and informal decision makers—to step up to address the multitude of issues as Pakistan falls behind its peers. Or, in other words, what would enable the government to break the economy’s many sub-optimal equilibria.
  • Publication
    Private Participation in Public Transport in the FSU
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2000-04-01) Gwilliam, Kenneth M.
    This paper describes and analyses the growth of private sector participation in public transport supply in the countries in the Former Soviet Union in which the World Bank has had recent sector involvement. This includes Russia, Ukraine, Latvia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyz S.R. and Turkmenistan. While this does not covers only 7 out of the 15 independent states comprising the former, this sample of countries accounts for over 96 percent of the land area and 85 percent of the population of the FSU. It also includes a wide spectrum of countries in terms of size, reform philosophy and income levels. The region only contains two megacities with populations in excess of 5 million (Moscow and St. Petersburg) but has many cities in the range of 0.5 to 2.0 million. Privately owned buses already carry the majority of bus passengers in Russian secondary cities and in Kyrgyzstan, probably about half in Uzbekistan, and a growing proportion in all other countries except turkmenistanstan. In Kazakhstan, where some of the competing companies still have majority state ownership the process of privatization is likely to be taken to completion in the near future. That trend, which merely reflects the ownership structure trends world wide is unlikely to be reversed. Only in Latvia, Turkmenistan and Ukraine is there strong resistance to this trend. But that is not to say that the current situation is stable or sustainable. The threats to that sustainable development can be grouped either by country or by issues.