Publication: Reforming Government Debt Markets in MENA
Loading...
Published
2011-03-01
ISSN
Date
2012-03-19
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
This paper examines the current stage of development of government securities markets in the non-GCC MENA region focusing in five countries that have government bond markets with a minimum size and greater potential for market development: Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco and Tunisia. The analysis focuses on the five key building blocks that normally sustain deep and liquid public debt markets: (i) money markets; (ii) primary market (issuance policy and placement mechanisms); (iii) secondary market organization; (iv) investor base; and (v) clearing and settlement infrastructure. The study shows that despite country differences, several common weaknesses in the key building blocks explain the underdevelopment of MENA bond markets. Most important among these are a symbiotic relationship between banks and Governments caused by lack of alternative investments that makes banks act as captive demand and dominate bond markets, opportunistic primary issuance practices, and excess liquidity in the financial system. These demand and supply characteristics have led to highly concentrated buy-and-hold portfolios by banks and State-owned institutions, poor price discovery and lack of liquidity in secondary markets. A set of actions to unlock market development in MENA is proposed involving measures in all key building blocks - from improvements in monetary policy implementation and liquidity management to enhancements in issuance practices, price transparency, and clearing & settlement infrastructure. Measures to improve the role of mutual funds and foster foreign investor presence are also of utmost importance to increase competition and investor diversification in these markets.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Garcia-Kilroy, Catiana; Silva, Anderson Caputo. 2011. Reforming Government Debt Markets in MENA. Policy Research working paper ; no. WPS 5611. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/3377 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Publication The Economic Value of Weather Forecasts: A Quantitative Systematic Literature Review(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-09-10)This study systematically reviews the literature that quantifies the economic benefits of weather observations and forecasts in four weather-dependent economic sectors: agriculture, energy, transport, and disaster-risk management. The review covers 175 peer-reviewed journal articles and 15 policy reports. Findings show that the literature is concentrated in high-income countries and most studies use theoretical models, followed by observational and then experimental research designs. Forecast horizons studied, meteorological variables and services, and monetization techniques vary markedly by sector. Estimated benefits even within specific subsectors span several orders of magnitude and broad uncertainty ranges. An econometric meta-analysis suggests that theoretical studies and studies in richer countries tend to report significantly larger values. Barriers that hinder value realization are identified on both the provider and user sides, with inadequate relevance, weak dissemination, and limited ability to act recurring across sectors. Policy reports rely heavily on back-of-the-envelope or recursive benefit-transfer estimates, rather than on the methods and results of the peer-reviewed literature, revealing a science-to-policy gap. These findings suggest substantial socioeconomic potential of hydrometeorological services around the world, but also knowledge gaps that require more valuation studies focusing on low- and middle-income countries, addressing provider- and user-side barriers and employing rigorous empirical valuation methods to complement and validate theoretical models.Publication Direct and Indirect Impacts of Transport Mobility on Access to Jobs: Evidence from South Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-11-12)Access to jobs is essential for economic growth. In Africa, unemployment rates are notably high. This paper reexamines the relationship between transport mobility and labor market outcomes, with a particular focus on the direct and indirect effects of transport connectivity. As predicted by theory, wages are influenced by the level of commuting deterrence. Generally, higher earnings are associated with longer commute times and/or higher commuting costs. Local accessibility is also important, especially for individuals with time constraints. Both direct and indirect impacts are found to be significant in South Africa, where job accessibility has been challenging since the end of apartheid. For the direct impact, the wage elasticity associated with commuting costs is significant. Returns on commute are particularly high for women. Local accessibility to socioeconomic facilities, such as shops and health services, is also found to have a significant impact, consistent with the concept of mobility of care. To enhance employment, therefore, it is crucial to connect people not only to job locations but also to various socioeconomic points of interest, such as markets and hospitals, in an integrated manner. This integration will enable individuals to spend more time working and commuting longer distances.Publication The Macroeconomic Implications of Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Options(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-29)Estimating the macroeconomic implications of climate change impacts and adaptation options is a topic of intense research. This paper presents a framework in the World Bank's macrostructural model to assess climate-related damages. This approach has been used in many Country Climate and Development Reports, a World Bank diagnostic that identifies priorities to ensure continued development in spite of climate change and climate policy objectives. The methodology captures a set of impact channels through which climate change affects the economy by (1) connecting a set of biophysical models to the macroeconomic model and (2) exploring a set of development and climate scenarios. The paper summarizes the results for five countries, highlighting the sources and magnitudes of their vulnerability --- with estimated gross domestic product losses in 2050 exceeding 10 percent of gross domestic product in some countries and scenarios, although only a small set of impact channels is included. The paper also presents estimates of the macroeconomic gains from sector-level adaptation interventions, considering their upfront costs and avoided climate impacts and finding significant net gross domestic product gains from adaptation opportunities identified in the Country Climate and Development Reports. Finally, the paper discusses the limits of current modeling approaches, and their complementarity with empirical approaches based on historical data series. The integrated modeling approach proposed in this paper can inform policymakers as they make proactive decisions on climate change adaptation and resilience.Publication From Policy to Practice: Lessons from the Implementation of the Refugee Work Rights Policy in Ethiopia(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-11-10)This paper examines the early implementation of Ethiopia’s refugee work rights policy, with a focus on the issuance of permits that enable refugees to engage in economic activities. Building on significant legal and institutional advances under the 2019 Refugee Proclamation and subsequent directives, the analysis explores how these reforms are being operationalized in practice. Using a mixed-methods approach, combining document review, administrative data analysis, and semi-structured interviews, the paper identifies both progress and remaining challenges. Permit issuance has increased since the adoption of detailed operational guidance in 2024, reflecting the Government of Ethiopia’s commitment to operationalizing its progressive legal framework and ensuring that refugees can exercise their right to work. However, take-up remains modest, with about 5.2 percent of the working-age population holding a permit. Preliminary evidence suggests that coordination gaps, limited subnational capacity, low awareness among refugees and employers, and disincentives to formalize in a largely informal labor market are contributing to the low take-up. The paper offers policy suggestions, grounded in the Ethiopian context and emerging evidence, to help translate legal commitments into improved labor market outcomes for refugees.Publication Monitoring Global Aid Flows: A Novel Approach Using Large Language Models(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-11-04)Effective monitoring of development aid is the foundation for assessing the alignment of flows with their intended development objectives. Existing reporting systems, such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Creditor Reporting System, provide standardized classification of aid activities but have limitations when it comes to capturing new areas like climate change, digitalization, and other cross-cutting themes. This paper proposes a bottom-up, unsupervised machine learning framework that leverages textual descriptions of aid projects to generate highly granular activity clusters. Using the 2021 Creditor Reporting System data set of nearly 400,000 records, the model produces 841 clusters, which are then grouped into 80 subsectors. These clusters reveal 36 emerging aid areas not tracked in the current Creditor Reporting System taxonomy, allow unpacking of “multi-sectoral” and “sector not specified” classifications, and enable estimation of flows to new themes, including World Bank Global Challenge Programs, International Development Association–20 Special Themes, and Cross-Cutting Issues. Validation against both Creditor Reporting System benchmarks and International Development Association commitment data demonstrates robustness. This approach illustrates how machine learning and the new advances in large language models can enhance the monitoring of global aid flows and inform future improvements in aid classification and reporting. It offers a useful tool that can support more responsive and evidence-based decision-making, helping to better align resources with evolving development priorities.
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Financial Sector Assessment Program - Albania : Public Debt Management(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-02)Government debt continues to expand, reaching over all 872 billion, approximately 62 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), as of end-September 2013. Domestic debt grew sharply in the first half of 2013, emanating largely from poor tax revenue performance, together with the accumulation of a large stock of unpaid bills and arrears. External debt creditors comprise multilaterals, bilateral creditors, and private creditors. The concentrated nature of the investor base and the high domestic debt stock limit the choices available to debt management, particularly with regards to extending the maturity of the domestic debt. Public debt management in Albania follows an organized process but will benefit from a number of technical changes. The domestic borrowing plan has been revised frequently due to unexpected flows in the treasury account. In an environment of volatile treasury balances, cash flows safety nets or minimum cash buffers should be implemented. A number of initiatives are recommended to improve the transmission of price signals in the primary market - overall this will provide incentives for secondary market development. To support the development of the secondary market the General Directorate of public debt management should modify its issuance program and focus on key maturities on the yield curve. It is suggested that the issuance program takes a small step in this direction by limiting the number of tenors and focusing on for example, two, five, seven, and ten-year treasury bonds as well as increasing the frequency of 5 and 7-year maturities from quarterly to bi-monthly. This will provide more frequent price discovery in the primary market that will support portfolio valuation.Publication Thailand Financial Sector Assessment Program(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-04)The debt market in Thailand has made important strides since the financial crisis of 1997. The Thai government has made significant progress in building an orderly yield curve and is beginning to establish some benchmarks. However, more needs to be done if the government is to achieve its objective of enhancing liquidity in the market. In particular, liquidity in the secondary market would be enhanced by reducing the frequency of auctions, while increasing the size of each individual offering. Such a change will require primary dealers to change their mode of operation from effectively a broking operation to the provision of greater underwriting and market making services; consequently a review of the primary dealer system is warranted. Nevertheless, prospects for development of the government securities market will be constrained overall by the likely limited financing need going forward, unless the authorities can secure some additional flexibility to restructure the existing portfolio or otherwise establish more meaningful benchmarks. The corporate debt market suffers from too few issuers of corporate debt and too little diversity of debt offerings. This reflects, in part the limited corporate need for long-term financing, the ready availability of alternative financing by commercial banks at competitive rates, and regulatory policies that emphasize investor protection by imposing substantial limitations on the ability of institutional investors to purchase anything but investment grade debt, which effectively precludes issuance of below investment grade debt.Publication Securities Lending and Related Standing Facilities(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-05)Thesis aim of this draft background note is to provide public debt managers with an overview of the matters that need to be considered by debt management offices planning to provide a securities lending facility to their primary dealers.Publication Debt Management Performance Assessment : Sierra Leone(Washington, DC, 2009-12)The results of this assessment show that seven (7) indicators warranted an overall score of C or better, demonstrating compliance with the minimum requirement; these referred to the debt management strategy; evaluation of debt management operation; coordination with fiscal policy; domestic borrowing; external borrowing; debt records and debt reporting, and debt administration and data security. A total of eight (8) indicators did not meet the minimum requirement at the time of the mission. These correspond to legal framework; managerial structure; audit, coordination with monetary policy; loan guarantees and on-lending; cash-flow forecasting and balance management; segregation of duties, staff capacity and business continuity and debt reporting. The mission notes that Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, or MOFED is currently implementing reforms in the areas of public debt management and domestic debt market development, including i) designing a new comprehensive public debt law; ii) implementing the reorganization of the debt management unit in MOFED; iii) formulating and implementing a procedures manual for debt management functions in MOFED; iv) implementing connectivity between two major data bases, namely CSDRMS and the integrated financial management system of the government. As a consequence, the mission expects several of these indicators to improve with reform implementation.Publication Sovereign Debt Management in Crisis in Europe and Central Asia(Washington, DC, 2013-05)The global financial crisis of 2008-2009 required most sovereign debt managers to adapt to rapidly changing market circumstances, by changing the mix of borrowing instruments and adopting techniques that minimize the impact of severe market dislocations and increased risk aversion. These actions, allied to prudent macroeconomic and debt management policies implemented by government in the years preceding the crises, were critical in helping countries meet their financing needs without undue strain on the financial markets. This toolkit draws on the approaches taken by a range of countries and provides sovereign debt policy makers with a rich set of potential actions to address crisis periods. A practical illustration on the use of some of these actions is conducted by analyzing the measures taken by Romania, Serbia and Turkey as a response to the recent crises. Authors draw lessons from these experiences and examine what other measures included in the toolkit could have been used to boost the crisis response impact in these economies, respecting country-specific contexts.
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 Business Ready 2024(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-03)Business Ready (B-READY) is a new World Bank Group corporate flagship report that evaluates the business and investment climate worldwide. It replaces and improves upon the Doing Business project. B-READY provides a comprehensive data set and description of the factors that strengthen the private sector, not only by advancing the interests of individual firms but also by elevating the interests of workers, consumers, potential new enterprises, and the natural environment. This 2024 report introduces a new analytical framework that benchmarks economies based on three pillars: Regulatory Framework, Public Services, and Operational Efficiency. The analysis centers on 10 topics essential for private sector development that correspond to various stages of the life cycle of a firm. The report also offers insights into three cross-cutting themes that are relevant for modern economies: digital adoption, environmental sustainability, and gender. B-READY draws on a robust data collection process that includes specially tailored expert questionnaires and firm-level surveys. The 2024 report, which covers 50 economies, serves as the first in a series that will expand in geographical coverage and refine its methodology over time, supporting reform advocacy, policy guidance, and further analysis and research.Publication Global Economic Prospects, June 2025(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-06-10)The global economy is facing another substantial headwind, emanating largely from an increase in trade tensions and heightened global policy uncertainty. For emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs), the ability to boost job creation and reduce extreme poverty has declined. Key downside risks include a further escalation of trade barriers and continued policy uncertainty. These challenges are exacerbated by subdued foreign direct investment into EMDEs. Global cooperation is needed to restore a more stable international trade environment and scale up support for vulnerable countries grappling with conflict, debt burdens, and climate change. Domestic policy action is also critical to contain inflation risks and strengthen fiscal resilience. To accelerate job creation and long-term growth, structural reforms must focus on raising institutional quality, attracting private investment, and strengthening human capital and labor markets. Countries in fragile and conflict situations face daunting development challenges that will require tailored domestic policy reforms and well-coordinated multilateral support.Publication The Global Findex Database 2025: Connectivity and Financial Inclusion in the Digital Economy(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-07-16)The Global Findex 2025 reveals how mobile technology is equipping more adults around the world to own and use financial accounts to save formally, access credit, make and receive digital payments, and pursue opportunities. Including the inaugural Global Findex Digital Connectivity Tracker, this fifth edition of Global Findex presents new insights on the interactions among mobile phone ownership, internet use, and financial inclusion. The Global Findex is the world’s most comprehensive database on digital and financial inclusion. It is also the only global source of comparable demand-side data, allowing cross-country analysis of how adults access and use mobile phones, the internet, and financial accounts to reach digital information and resources, save, borrow, make payments, and manage their financial health. Data for the Global Findex 2025 were collected from nationally representative surveys of about 145,000 adults in 141 economies. The latest edition follows the 2011, 2014, 2017, and 2021 editions and includes new series measuring mobile phone ownership and internet use, digital safety, and frequency of transactions using financial services. The Global Findex 2025 is an indispensable resource for policy makers in the fields of digital connectivity and financial inclusion, as well as for practitioners, researchers, and development professionals.Publication G5 Sahel Region Country Climate and Development Report(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-07-01)The five countries of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger (the G5) in the Sahel region of Africa are among the least developed countries in the world. The now regular and growing climate shocks are causing large losses in outputs, reducing human capital accumulation, and leading to potentially devastating ecological and economic tipping points in the region. This World Bank country climate development report (CCDR) has examined the most critical actions and policy changes needed to accelerate the region's economic recovery, sustainable and inclusive development, and adaptation to the impacts of climate change. This report has three main messages. First, the opportunities for a resilient and lower-carbon development of the G5 countries are significant. They can reverse environmental degradation and maximize the benefits of climate action for the poor. Second, rapid, resilient, and inclusive growth is both the best form of adaptation to climate change and the best strategy for meeting development goals in an effective, sustainable, and productive manner. Third, the costs of inaction are far greater than the costs of action. Early and targeted action on policies and programs presented in this report can move the G5 Sahel countries towards a greener, more resilient, prosperous, and inclusive future.