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419 items available

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Yemen Economic Monitor, Fall 2023: Peace on the Horizon?
(Washington, DC, 2023-11-08) World Bank
The Yemen Economic Monitor provides an update on key economic developments and policies over the past six months. It also presents findings from recent World Bank work on Yemen. The Monitor places these developments, policies, and findings in a longer-term and global context and assesses their implications for Yemen’s outlook. Its coverage ranges from the macro economy to financial markets to human welfare and development indicators. It is intended for a wide audience, including policy makers, development partners, business leaders, financial market participants, and the community of analysts and professionals engaged in Yemen.
MIGA Annual Report 2023
(Washington, DC, 2023-10-17) Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency
Celebrating thirty-five years since its founding, in FY23 MIGA issued a record 6.4 billion in new guarantees across forty projects. Through these projects, the Agency remained focused on encouraging private investors to help host governments manage and mitigate political risks. In FY23, as it did during the COVID-19 pandemic, MIGA demonstrated its agility to respond to crisis, employing multiple products during the year to assist the embattled people of Ukraine following Russia’s invasion. An institution of the World Bank Group, MIGA is committed to strong development impact and supporting projects that are economically, environmentally, and socially sustainable. MIGA helps investors mitigate the risks of restrictions on currency conversion and transfer, breach of contract by governments, expropriation, and war and civil disturbance. It also offers trade finance guarantees, as well as credit enhancement on obligations of sovereigns, sub-sovereigns, state-owned enterprises, and regional development banks.
The Long Road to Inclusive Institutions in Libya: A Sourcebook of Challenges and Needs
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-05-18) Irhiam, Hend R.; Schaeffer, Michael G.; Watanabe, Kanae
Facing a challenging transition process, Libya stands to profit from a reconstruction strategy and a vision that bring the country together. Investment decisions will have to be based on the analysis of alternative short-, medium-, and long-term interventions and the sequencing of related reforms, all while considering the realities on the ground. A stable Libya will carry substantive positive spill-over effects for neighboring countries and beyond. If sustainable peace and stability are to take hold, Libya’s partners must stay the course, sustain engagement, and support Libya’s efforts to rebuild equitably and inclusively. The Long Road to Inclusive Institutions in Libya: A Sourcebook of Challenges and Needs is a rich compilation of analytical work on Libya’s sector dynamics and reform choices. The content was developed in partnership with 60 contributors from nine institutions. The book’s 21 chapters address institutional transformation, reflect on the conflict’s impact on the economy, and outline the consequences of the conflict on people and services. The book demonstrates that even in challenging circumstances, one can contribute to the development of a near- and medium-term vision for a political, economic, and socially inclusive Libya while acknowledging the need to adapt as the circumstances evolve. Utilizing a number of analytical techniques (including phone surveys and nighttime data), the authors make a unique contribution to the discussion of Libya’s medium- to long-term challenges for readers in government, civil society, and academia.
Collapse and Recovery: How the COVID-19 Pandemic Eroded Human Capital and What to Do about It
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023) Schady, Norbert; Holla, Alaka; Sabarwal, Shwetlena; Silva, Joana; Yi Chang, Andres
Worldwide, the COVID-19 pandemic has been an enormous shock to mortality, economies, and daily life. But what has received insufficient attention is the impact of the pandemic on the accumulation of human capital—the health, education, and skills—of young people. How large was the setback, and how far are we still from a recovery? Collapse and Recovery estimates the impacts of the pandemic on the human capital of young children, school-age children, and youth and discusses the urgent actions needed to reverse the damage. It shows that there was a collapse of human capital and that, unless that collapse is remedied, it is a time bomb for countries. Specifically, the report documents alarming declines in cognitive and social-emotional development among young children, which could translate into a 25 percent reduction in their earnings as adults. It finds that 1 billion children in low- and middle-income countries missed at least one year of in-person schooling. And despite enormous efforts in remote learning, children did not learn during the unprecedentedly long school closures, which could reduce future lifetime earnings around the world by US$21 trillion. The report quantifies the dramatic drops in employment and skills among youth that resulted from the pandemic as well as the substantial increase in the number of youth neither employed nor enrolled in education or training. In all of these age groups, the impacts of the pandemic were consistently worse for children from poorer backgrounds. These losses call for immediate action. The good news is that evidence-based policies can recover these losses. Collapse and Recovery reviews governments’ responses to the pandemic, assessing why there was a collapse in human capital accumulation, what was missing in the policy architecture to protect human capital during the crisis, and how governments can better prepare to withstand future shocks. It offers concrete policy recommendations to recover losses in human capital—programs that will end up paying for themselves in the long term. To better prepare for future shocks such as climate change and wars, the report emphasizes the need for solutions that bring health, education, and social protection programs together in an integrated human development system. If countries fail to act, the losses in human capital documented in this report will become permanent and last for multiple generations. The time to act is now.
A New State of Mind: Greater Transparency and Accountability in the Middle East and North Africa
(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2022-10-05) Belhaj, Ferid; Gatti, Roberta; Lederman, Daniel; Sergenti, Ernest John; Lotfi, Rana; Mousa, Mennatallah Emam; Assem, Hoda
The MENA region is facing important vulnerabilities, which the current crises—first the pandemic, then the war in Ukraine—have exacerbated. Prices of food and energy are higher, hurting the most vulnerable, and rising interest rates from the global tightening of monetary policy are making debt service more burdensome. Part I explores some of the resulting vulnerabilities for MENA. MENA countries are facing diverging paths for future growth. Oil Exporters have seen windfall increases in state revenues from the rise in hydrocarbon prices, while oil importers face heightened stress and risk—from higher import bills, especially for food and energy, and the depreciation of local currencies in some countries. Part II of this report argues that poor governance, and, in particular, the lack of government transparency and accountability, is at the root of the region’s development failings—including low growth, exclusion of the most disadvantaged and women, and overuse of such precious natural resources as land and water.
Guiding Questions for Choosing the Right Tools to Measure Early Childhood Outcomes: Why, What, Who, and How
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-02-18) Pushparatnam, Adelle; Seiden, Jonathan Michael; Luna Bazaldua, Diego Armando
A growing understanding of the importance of children’s earliest years has led to an increasing desire to measure early childhood development (ECD) outcomes. There are now nearly 150 tools for measuring ECD outcomes internationally, which can make it challenging to choose an appropriate measurement tool for a given measurement effort. This document guides the user through the why, who, what, and how questions that must be considered prior to selecting tools for measuring ECD outcomes. Users should document their responses at each step to collate the information needed to identify and select an appropriate ECD measurement tool.
World Development Report 2022: Finance for an Equitable Recovery
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-02-15) World Bank
World Development Report 2022: Finance for an Equitable Recovery examines the central role of finance in the economic recovery from COVID-19. Based on an in-depth look at the consequences of the crisis most likely to affect low- and middle-income economies, it advocates a set of policies and measures to mitigate the interconnected economic risks stemming from the pandemic—risks that may become more acute as stimulus measures are withdrawn at both the domestic and global levels. Those policies include the efficient and transparent management of nonperforming loans to mitigate threats to financial stability, insolvency reforms to allow for the orderly reduction of unsustainable debts, innovations in risk management and lending models to ensure continued access to credit for households and businesses, and improvements in sovereign debt management to preserve the ability of governments to support an equitable recovery.
Unlocking Sustainable Private Sector Growth in the Middle East and North Africa: Evidence from the Enterprise Survey
(Luxembourg City: European Investment Bank; London: European Bank for Reconstruction and Development; Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022) World Bank; European Bank for Reconstruction and Development; European Investment Bank
Economic growth in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has been weak since the global financial crisis of 2007-09 and the Arab Spring of the early 2010s. Achieving higher and sustainable growth is particularly important in view of other economic challenges facing the region: public debt in MENA countries has increased considerably over the last decade, accompanied by declining investment. This report seeks to understand what lies beneath that relatively slow growth, with a particular focus on the reasons for stagnating productivity and inadequate accumulation of human capital and physical capital in the region’s private sector. To this end, the report summarizes the main findings from nine background papers based on enterprise survey data. It also draws conclusions for policy, not only for promoting stronger firm performance, but also for addressing the challenge of climate change by pursuing sustainable growth.
The World Bank Annual Report 2022: Helping Countries Adapt to a Changing World
(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2022) World Bank
The Annual Report is prepared by the Executive Directors of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Development Association (IDA)--collectively known as the World Bank--in accordance with the by-laws of the two institutions. The President of the IBRD and IDA and the Chairman of the Board of Executive Directors submit the Report, together with the accompanying administrative budgets and audited financial statements, to the Board of Governors.
Distributional Impacts of COVID-19 in the Middle East and North Africa Region
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2021-11-22) Hoogeveen, Johannes G.; Lopez-Acevedo, Gladys; Hoogeveen, Johannes G.; Lopez-Acevedo, Gladys
COVID-19 is one of multiple crises to have hit the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region in the decade following the Arab Spring. War, oil price declines, economic slowdowns and now a pandemic are tearing at the social fabric of a region characterized by high rates of unemployment, high levels of informality and low annual economic growth. The economic costs of the pandemic are estimated at about $227 billion, and fiscal support packages across MENA are averaging 2.7 percent of GDP, putting pressure on already weak fiscal balances and making a quick recovery challenging. Pre-pandemic MENA was the only region in the world experiencing increases in poverty and declines in life satisfaction. This Report investigates how COVID-19 changed the welfare of individuals and households in the region. It does so by relying on phone surveys implemented across the region and complements these with micro-simulation exercises to assess the impact of COVID-19 on jobs, income, poverty and inequality. The two approaches perform a complementary task by corroborating each other’s results, thereby making the findings more robust and richer. This Report’s results show that in the short run, poverty rates in MENA will increase significantly, and that inequality will widen. A group of “new poor” is likely to emerge that may have difficulty to recover from the economic consequences of the pandemic. The Report adds value by analyzing newly gathered primary data, along with projections based on newly modelled micro-macro simulations and by identifying key issues that policy makers should focus on to enable a quick, inclusive and sustained economic recovery.