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Publication
Discussion at the Center for Global Development
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-11-05)David Malpass, President of the World Bank, addressed the common challenge presented by slowing world growth. He remarked that governance issues are apparent around the world. On matters of debt, he emphasized dispute settlement, debt contract transparency, contract fairness, and facilitating better living standards. He noted that some countries’ debt payments are in arrears. -
Publication
Opening Remarks at the 2019 Annual Meetings Opening Press Conference
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-10-17)David Malpass, President of the World Bank Group, highlighted the urgent priorities for discussion with shareholders. Global growth is slowing. Investment is sluggish, manufacturing activity is soft, and trade is weakening. The challenges of climate change and fragility are making poor countries more vulnerable. This backdrop makes our goals of reducing extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity even harder. He suggested that with the right mix of policies and structural reforms, countries can unleash growth that's broadly shared across all segments of society. He spoke about how the Bank is helping countries build strong programs tailored to the unique circumstances of their economies. He highlighted the importance of education. He mentioned the proposed IDA replenishment, and reaffirmed commitment to projects on climate and on gender inclusion. In conclusion, he said that the well-designed structural reforms are needed to unlock growth and build the foundations for future prosperity. -
Publication
Middle East and North Africa Economic Update, October 2019: Reaching New Heights - Promoting Fair Competition in the Middle East and North Africa
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2019-10-09)Part I of this report discusses the short- and medium-term growth prospects for countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). The region is expected to grow at a subdued rate of 0.6 percent in 2019, rising to 2.6 percent in 2020 and 2.9 percent in 2021. The growth forecast for 2019 is revised down by 0.8 percentage points from the April 2019 projection. MENA’s economic outlook is subject to substantial downside risks—most notably, intensified global economic headwinds and rising geopolitical tensions. Part II argues that promoting fair competition is key for MENA countries to complete the transition from an administered to a market economy. Part II first examines current competition policies in MENA countries and to promote fair competition calls for strengthening competition law and enforcement agencies. It also calls for corporatizing state-owned enterprises, promoting the private sector and creating a level-playing field between them. Any moves to reform MENA economies would be aided by professional management of public assets, which could tap into a new source of national wealth. -
Publication
Driving Growth from the Ground Up
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-10-07)David Malpass, President of the World Bank Group, spoke about the urgency of growth in developing countries. He discussed innovations in digital financial services that provide secure systems to allow poor people to electronically receive remittances, foreign aid, and social safety-net payments as well as their earnings. He cautioned about the slow global growth, and it's paramount that countries carry out well-designed structural reforms to ignite domestic growth. He highlighted on the importance of a clear analysis and understanding of a country's laws and regulations and a path of reforms or catalytic investments that will expand the private sector. Finally, he concluded by saying that World Bank Group won’t give up on its main goal of reducing extreme poverty. -
Publication
Quality Unknown: The Invisible Water Crisis
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2019-08-20)Water quantity—too much in the case of floods, or too little in the case of droughts—grabs public attention and the media spotlight. Water quality—being predominantly invisible and hard to detect—goes largely unnoticed. Quality Unknown: The Invisible Water Crisis presents new evidence and new data that call urgent attention to the hidden dangers lying beneath water’s surface. It shows how poor water quality stalls economic progress, stymies human potential, and reduces food production. Quality Unknown examines the effects of water quality on economic growth and finds upstream pollution lowers growth in downstream regions. It reveals that some of the most ubiquitous contaminants in water, such as nitrates and salt, have impacts that are larger, deeper, and wider than has been acknowledged. And it traces the damage to crop yields and the stark implications for food security in affected regions. An important step toward tackling the world’s water quality challenge is recognizing its scale. The world needs reliable, accurate, and comprehensive information so that policy makers can have new insights, decision making can be evidence based, and citizens can call for action. The report calls for a paradigm shift that emphasizes safer, and often more cost-effective remedies that prevent pollution by combining smarter policies with newer technologies. A key message of Quality Unknown is that such solutions exist and change is possible. -
Publication
Middle East and North Africa Economic Update, April 2019: Reforms and External Imbalances - The Labor-Productivity Connection in the Middle East and North Africa
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2019-04)World Bank economists expect economic growth in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) to continue at a modest pace of about 1.5 to 3.5 percent during 2019-2021, with some laggards and a few emerging growth stars. In late 2018, The World Bank called on the leaders of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) to aim high. We called for a set of aspirational, but attainable, goals in the digital-economy space (Arezki and Belhaj 2018). If the economies of MENA achieve those goals, they will not only have leapfrogged many advanced economies in terms of coverage and quality of cellular and broadband services, they will register notable advancements in digital payments. This installment of the Middle East Economic Update series, published every six months by the MENA Office of the Chief Economist, makes a more subtle point about a slow moving emerging challenge for the region’s economies: reducing macroeconomic vulnerabilities in some economies is inextricably linked to an all-out effort to create an advanced digital economy (the so-called Digital Moonshot) and other structural reforms. The link, surprisingly, is aggregate labor productivity. -
Publication
Uncharted Waters: The New Economics of Water Scarcity and Variability
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-10-24)The 21st century will witness the collision of two powerful forces – burgeoning population growth, together with a changing climate. With population growth, water scarcity will proliferate to new areas across the globe. And with climate change, rainfall will become more fickle, with longer and deeper periods of droughts and deluges. This report presents new evidence to advance understanding on how rainfall shocks coupled with water scarcity, impacts farms, firms, and families. On farms, the largest consumers of water in the world, impacts are channeled from declining yields to changing landscapes. In cities, water extremes especially when combined with unreliable infrastructure can stall firm production, sales, and revenue. At the center of this are families, who feel the impacts of this uncertainty on their incomes, jobs, and long-term health and welfare. Although a rainfall shock may be fleeting, its consequences can become permanent and shape the destiny of those who experience it. Pursuing business as usual will lead many countries down a “parched path” where droughts shape destinies. Avoiding this misery in slow motion will call for fundamental changes to water policy around the globe. Building resilience to rainfall variability will require using different policy instruments to address the multifaceted nature of water. A key message of this report is that water has multiple economic attributes, each of which entail distinct policy responses. If water is not managed more prudently—from source, to tap, and back to source—the crises observed today will become the catastrophes of tomorrow. -
Publication
Mobilizing the Middle East and North Africa Diaspora for Economic Integration and Entrepreneurship
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-12)This paper advocates for the need to rally the MENA professional and skilled diaspora. It discusses the findings of a unique outreach exercise to the MENA diaspora and provides policy recommendations. First, the paper highlights the linkages between the diaspora and trade, investment, and knowledge transfer based on the literature and concrete examples. Second, it describes the outreach and the profile of the diaspora members surveyed. Third, it presents the main findings of the survey of the MENA diaspora in four areas: (i) overall engagement, (ii) appetite for investment, (iii) trade, and (iv) the role of institutions. The paper concludes with policy recommendations. -
Publication
An Exposition of the New Strategy, 'Promoting Peace and Stability in the Middle East and North Africa'
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-01)The Middle East and North Africa region is in turmoil. Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen are in civil war, causing untold damage to human lives and physical infrastructure. Fifteen million people have fled their homes, many to fragile or economically strapped countries such as Jordan, Lebanon, Djibouti and Tunisia, giving rise to the biggest refugee crisis since World War II. Palestinians are reeling from deadly attacks and blockades. With recruits from all over the world, radicalized terrorist groups and sectarian factions like Daesh are spreading violence around the globe, threatening some governments' ability to perform basic functions. Countries undergoing political transitions, such as Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco and Jordan, face periodic attacks and political unrest, leading them to address security concerns over inclusive growth. Even relatively peaceful oil exporters, such as Algeria, Iran and the GCC, are grappling with youth unemployment and poor-quality public services, the same problems that contributed to the Arab Spring, alongside low oil prices. Finally, the author will develop and monitor input indicators that are consistent with the theory of change associated with the new strategy. We will have indicators that show whether our interventions are helping to renew the social contract (the use of citizen engagement in projects is an example). Household surveys can tell us whether the welfare of refugees and host communities is improving. Preparedness indicators can be used to inform progress on the recovery and reconstruction pillar. And standard indicators such as the share of electricity production that is traded will be used for the regional integration pillar. -
Publication
Principles for Public Credit Guarantee Schemes for SMEs
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-12)Access to finance, particularly credit, is widely recognized as problematic for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), hampering their growth and development. To address this challenge, many governments around the world intervene in SME credit markets through credit guarantee schemes (CGSs). A CGS offers risk mitigation to lenders by taking a share of the lenders’ losses on SME loans in case of default. CGSs can contribute to expand access to finance for SMEs. Yet they may bring limited value added and prove costly if they are not designed and implemented well. There have been efforts in recent years to identify good practices for CGSs, but the international community still lacks a common set of principles or standards that can help governments establish, operate, and evaluate CGSs for SMEs. The Principles for Public Credit Guarantees for SMEs are filling this gap. The Principles provide a generally accepted set of good practices, which can serve as a global reference for the design, execution, and evaluation of public CGSs around the world. The Principles propose appropriate governance and risk management arrangements, as well as operational conduct rules for CGSs, which can lead to improved outreach and additionality along with financial sustainability. Developed through extensive consultations with stakeholders, the Principles draw from both the literature on good practices for CGSs and sound practices implemented by a number of successful CGSs around the world.