Publication: Building a Better Future Together: Dominican Republic Policy Notes
Loading...
Published
2016-10
ISSN
Date
2017-02-13
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
In preparing these policy notes, the World Bank intends to provide the incoming administration with some considerations and recommendations on key development policy issues. The focus of these policy notes is on the challenges that need to be overcome and the policy options that can be pursued to keep the Dominican Republic on a path of sustainable and inclusive growth. The sectors and thematic areas covered in the policy notes include: (i) recent trends in poverty and shared prosperity; (ii) the quality and coverage of public spending on the social sectors (education, health, and social protection); (iii) an assessment of the factors that can affect the quality and efficiency of infrastructure services in the sectors of water and sanitation, and electricity; and (iv) the factors that can affect the sustainability of growth from an economic, social, and environmental and climate resilience points of view. Each policy note describes succinctly the current country context, what the existing main challenges are in each sector, and what the focus of policy should be to secure sustainable and inclusive growth.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“World Bank Group. 2016. Building a Better Future Together: Dominican Republic Policy Notes. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/26045 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication The World Bank Annual Report 2012(Washington, DC, 2012-10-05)The 2012 annual report of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Development Association (IDA) contains messages from both outgoing President Robert B. Zoellick and incoming President Dr. Jim Yong Kim. The Board of Directors statement highlights the Bank's achievements in 2012. The report showcases the Corporate Scorecard, presented in four tiers, providing information on the Bank's overall performance and results. Tier I provides the global development context. Tier II includes aggregate data collected through the standardized sector indicators. Tier III shows the overall success of Bank activities in achieving their development goals, as well as the Bank's operations effectiveness. Tier IV presents the Bank's organizational effectiveness and modernization. The report also discusses the financial commitments and resources, an operational summary, and World Bank lending by theme and sector for 2007-2012. Additional information on activities and outcomes is available in the annexes.Publication World Bank Corporate Scorecard, April 2012(Washington, DC, 2012-04)The corporate scorecard is designed to provide a snapshot of the Bank's overall performance, including its business modernization, in the context of development results. It facilitates strategic dialogue between management and the Board on progress made and areas that need attention. With the results measurement system, which was adopted for the 13th replenishment of the International Development Association (IDA13) in 2002, the Bank became the first multilateral development institution to use a framework with quantitative indicators to monitor results and performance. The corporate scorecard expands this approach to the entire World Bank covering both the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and IDA. The corporate scorecard uses an integrated results and performance framework, which is organized in a four-tier structure that groups indicators along the results chain. Tier one is development context. Tier two is development results supported by the Bank. Whether the Bank is managing its operations and services effectively is shown in tier three. Tier four focuses on whether the Bank is managing skills, capacity, resources, and processes efficiently; and is business modernization on track?Publication World Bank Corporate Scorecard April 2013 : Integrated Results and Performance Framework(Washington, DC, 2013-04)The corporate scorecard provides information on the Bank's overall performance and the results achieved by its clients, against the backdrop of progress on global development objectives. The corporate scorecard facilitates strategic dialogue between management and the Board on progress made and areas that need attention. The corporate scorecard uses an integrated results and performance framework, which is organized in a four-tier structure that groups indicators along the results chain. Tier one indicators show the long-term development outcomes that countries are achieving, and provide the context and direction for the Bank's work. These high-level outcomes cannot be attributed directly to the Bank, because countries and their development partners all contribute to these achievements over the long term through a combination of multi-sector interventions, actions, and policy decisions. These indicators are also affected by external factors such as global crises. Tier two highlights development results that countries have achieved with Bank support. Tier three indicators provide information on the effectiveness of the Bank s operations and services. Tier four focuses on organizational effectiveness and modernization, and assesses how well the Bank is functioning and adapting to better support countries in achieving results.Publication Future Armenia(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-11)Since its independence in 1991 and until prior to the global financial crisis (GFC) in 2008-09, Armenia was considered an important success story among the transition economies. Indeed, over several years, the country displayed a record of sustained macroeconomic achievements, reflected in high growth, economic stability, low inflation, and modest deficits and external debt, as well as falling poverty rates and shrinking income disparities. This Systematic Country Diagnostic (SCD) identifies four challenges for Armenia to reinvigorate inclusive growth and resilience. First, with far less supportive external circumstances, reigniting economic growth calls for asearch for new drivers and the rebalancing of growth toward the tradable sectors. Against this backdrop, the country’s low export performance and limited global multi-connectivity caused by high trade and transport facilitation costs are the first challenges to be addressed. Second, insufficient private sector productivity stands in the way of both higher growth and job creation. Firms, as the productive engines of the economy, appear constrained in their ability to lift productivity reforms, limited competition, and the need to deepen further financial development. Third, poverty reduction and shared prosperity, that is, the transmission of aggregate growth to individual wellbeing and poverty reduction, also seems constrained by labor market challenges: labor resources are shrinking, labor-force participation is low, and the country has one of the lowest employment and highest unemployment rates in the Europe and Central Asia (ECA) region, whileworkers’ productivity has fallen. Learning outcomes seem to lag demand, both in terms of the level and type of skills that are sought by the market. Declining labor resources are compounded by low women participation in the labor market. Fourth, key vulnerabilities at the macroeconomic, environmental, and microeconomic levels are faced by Armenia in its quest for poverty reduction and shared prosperity. Armenia’s aging population will have a significant impact on health spending and on the pension system, and could, if not addressed, have major implications in terms of fiscal sustainability and poverty.Publication Managing Resources to Build Back and Create a Better Future for Nias : Nias Public Expenditure Analysis(Washington, DC, 2007-07)Already one of the poorest regions in Indonesia, the island of Nias was badly affected by the twin disasters of the 26 December 2004 tsunami and a devastating earthquake that struck three months later, on 28 March 2005. Now, more than two years after the disasters and despite the significant progress that has undoubtedly been made, some troubling trends are starting to emerge, of which this report takes stock. In particular, funds are not being disbursed at the desired pace as the reconstruction effort faces enormous implementation challenges. The allocation of significant resources for reconstruction, as well as the decentralization process, entails both opportunities and challenges for the development of Nias. This report assists in making use of those opportunities and overcoming the challenges by informing the planning and budgeting process of the two district governments in Nias, and analyzing constraints in public financial management in both districts, as well as identifying key gaps in the reconstruction process.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.Publication Organization of Eastern Caribbean States : Towards a New Agenda for Growth(Washington, DC, 2005-04)The Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) is at an economic crossroads. A secular slowdown in growth, a radical transformation of the external environment, high debt and fiscal imbalances, and persistent unemployment and poverty have combined to create an imperative for redefining the OECS strategy for growth and economic development. The crucial elements of such a strategy are: (1) the formulation of a long-term vision that positions the OECS Economic Union in the global economy; (2) reorientation o f the basic development model toward greater openness, competition and a more level playing field in the sub-regional economy, and (3) the creation of new capacity in the labor force and the private sector to take advantage of emerging opportunities in the global market place, and in the public sector to coordinate and support the process o f deeper regional (and global) integration. The current challenge facing the sub-region is how to reinvigorate and sustain growth alongside the following imperatives --reducing high unemployment and poverty rates, restoring fiscal and debt sustainability, and securing a more sustainable external position in an increasingly competitive global environment.Publication Sierra Leone Early Childhood Development : SABER Country Report 2013(Washington, DC, 2013)This report presents an analysis of the Early Childhood Development (ECD) programs and policies which affect young children in Sierra Leone. This report is part of a series of reports prepared by the World Bank using the SABER-ECD framework. The country report includes analysis of early learning, health, nutrition and social and child protection policies and interventions in Sierra Leone, along with regional and international comparisons. The SABER-ECD initiative is designed to enable ECD policy makers and development partners to identify opportunities for further development of effective ECD systems. The SABER-ECD classification system does not rank countries according to any overall scoring; rather, it is intended to share information on how different ECD systems address the same policy challenges. This country report presents a framework to compare Sierra Leone s ECD system with other countries in the region and internationally. Each of the nine policy levers are examined in detail and some policy options are identified to strengthen ECD are offered.Publication Taxes, Spending, and Equity: International Patterns and Lessons for Developing Countries(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-11-17)Taxes and public spending underpin the basic administration of government and finance the human capital and infrastructure investments needed for economic growth. They can also have a significant and immediate impact on poverty and inequality. The question of how public finance can support longer-term growth objectives while promoting equity has become even more important in recent years, given the high fiscal deficits and debt levels most countries emerged with in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. These included the increasing cost of debt and the need to restart environmentally sustainable growth while helping households address the learning losses and other social scars caused by the pandemic. This paper examines the global evidence on which households pay which taxes and who benefits from what spending, and critically, the net effect on different households across the income distribution. The aim is to identify the patterns and lessons that emerge for designing progressive fiscal policies. A global dataset of 96 countries is assembled, spanning all regions of the world and all national income levels, grounded in the Commitment to Equity (CEQ) approach to fiscal incidence.Publication What Has Been the Impact of COVID-19 on Debt? Turning a Wave into a Tsunami(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-11)This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the impact of COVID-19 on debt, puts recent debt developments and prospects in historical context, and analyzes new policy challenges associated with debt resolution. The paper reports three main results. First, even before the pandemic, a rapid buildup of debt in emerging market and developing economies—dubbed the “fourth wave” of debt—had been underway. Because of the sharp increase in debt during the pandemic-induced global recession of 2020, the fourth wave of debt has turned into a tsunami and become even more dangerous. Second, five years after past global recessions, global government debt continued to increase. In light of this historical record, and given large financing gaps and significant investment needs in many countries, debt levels will likely continue to rise in the near future. Third, debt resolution has become more complicated because of a highly fragmented creditor base, a lack of transparency in debt reporting, and a legacy stock of government debt without collective action clauses. National policy makers and the global community need to act rapidly and forcefully ensure that the fourth wave does not end with a string of debt crises in emerging market and developing economies as earlier debt waves did.