Suchergebnisse

The paper analyzes the design of simplified small business tax regimes in Eastern Europe and Central Asia and the impact of such regimes on small business tax compliance. Although many approaches for tax simplification exist, a general trend in the region is to offer small businesses the option to be taxed based on their turnover instead of net income. The study finds that many of the regimes in place are overly simplistic and neither take into account fairness considerations nor do they facilitate business growth and migration into the standard tax regime. Although revenue generation is not a main objective of such regimes, low revenue performance and the risk of system abuse by larger businesses should be issues of concern. More attention should therefore be devoted to improving the design of simplified regimes and monitoring their application. This will require in particular a more profound analysis of the economic situation and the tax compliance challenges in the small business segment and increased efforts to improve the quality of bookkeeping.

This Country Partnership Framework (CPF) sets out the World Bank Group (WBG) program for Albania for the period FY15-19, aimed at supporting Albanias aspiration to achieve equitable growth and integration into the European Union. Albania emerged from the collapse of isolationist communism in the early 1990s as one of the poorest countries in Europe. The country then experienced rapid growth of nearly 6 percent per annum, rising into the ranks of middle income countries by 2008. The global and Eurozone crises in 2008 brought Albanias growth to a near stand-still by 2012, and the country is struggling to recover, particularly given its historic ties to Europes poorer performing economies. The CPF reflects selectivity based on the fundamental priorities of the System Country Diagnostic (SCD) that allows for ramping up support from the World Bank Group. The CPF selectively chooses only five of the twelve SCD priorities, and builds a program of support around this subset of priorities on the basis of additional selectivity filters. These five fundamental priorities include: 1) restoring fiscal sustainability and maintaining financial stability; 2) establishing a high quality business environment; 3) providing clean, efficient, equitable and financially sustainable energy; 4) formalizing and enhancing inclusiveness and sustainability of land markets; and 5) enhancing governance, transparency and accountability of government.

In July 2013, the World Bank Group launched its Strategy, outlining how it will partner more effectively with clients to help them achieve the ambitious goals of eradicating extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity through economic growth, inclusion, sustainability and resilience. In April 2014, the World Bank Group Corporate Scorecard was launched for the first time and the World Bank Scorecard revised to monitor the implementation of the strategy. The World Bank Group Scorecard provides view of the results and performance indicators of the three World Bank Group institutions: the World Bank (WB), the International Finance Corporation (IFC), and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA). This brochure presents the scorecards, updated with the latest data available in fiscal year 2015. The scorecards are structured in three tiers. A tier one and two presents indicators monitoring aspects of growth, inclusiveness, and sustainability and resilience. Tier three captures the progress in implementing the World Bank Group strategy and includes measures of both operational and organizational effectiveness.

This report offers five policy recommendations that could contribute to the attraction of manufacturing FDI in Africa. To further the benefits of FDI, especially in the manufacturing sector, policymakers in Africa should: First, manage FDI flows and FDI-related policies in a way that maximizes spillovers in host countries. Second, realize the emergence of FDI from newpartners, especially in manufacturing FDI, and establish platforms that help in the attraction ofnew FDI. Third, increase investment on key infrastructure to overcome constraints for manufacturing activities to develop, especially in power supply and transportation and logistics services. Fourth, take better advantage of the currently dominating market-seeking manufacturing FDI to improve the weak industry base in the shortterm. Market-seeking FDI has a sizeable positivecontribution to the host economy. Fifth, strengthen the linkages between domestic material input and foreign manufacturing investment.

This report summarizes the experiences of 19 companies from across the region. Each of the case studies highlights the key corporate governance changes made and the positive impacts that resulted, as reported by the company. The companies represent various countries, sectors, types, and sizes. All of the companies featured are former IFC Advisory Services clients. Some are IFC Investment clients as well. IFC conducted an in-depth corporate governance assessment for each of these companies using IFC's Corporate Governance Methodology. The assessments resulted in specific recommendations on ways to improve each company's governance framework and identified implementation plans. The assessments were conducted at various points over the past few years. The time taken to implement changes and realize benefits varied. However, all companies reported that governance changes are continuous and the corresponding benefits manifest themselves in different forms over time. This report provides examples of companies in various stages of change – from recent changes (e.g., Medgulf) to ongoing, longer-term changes (e.g., Bank Audi). This report also includes testimony from three MENA private equity firms (all IFC investment clients). Collectively, these firms have worked with 72 investee companies (past and present funds). Selected based on their association with IFC and their willingness to share their insight and experiences, these firms offer a valuable window into the importance of corporate governance from an investor's perspective. The material in this report is based on feedback gathered through individual interviews with each organization featured, resulting in well-considered responses. The achievements highlighted are all the more notable given that the interviews and information gathering process took place in in late 2009 (first edition) and 2013 (for current edition), when the region was still under the stress of the crisis.

Reports on the Observance of Standards and Codes (ROSC) Accounting and Auditing (AA) assess accounting and auditing practices in participating countries. They form part of a World Bank and International Monetary Fund joint initiative to review the quality of implementation of twelve internationally recognized core standards relevant to economic stability and private and financial sector development (the ROSC Program). Since its inception in 2000, the ROSC AA program has concluded evaluations of the AA environment in more than one hundred countries around the world. ROSC AA reports have been produced for all countries of the Europe and Central Asia Region, except Russia. This report covers the accounting, audit, and financial reporting frameworks as a whole, paying particular attention to the financial sector, state owned enterprises, SMEs and audit regulation - key areas that are important in the current economic context of Georgia. With respect to SOEs, the report focuses on the existing requirements, standards enforcement, and use of financial reports and statutory audit findings by the Government in its decision making and monitoring of SOEs. This report also discusses SMEs existing financial reporting requirements, and the need to simplify the requirements for the small and micro businesses. Finally, the report reviews the audit oversight function and a quality assurance system soon to be employed by Georgia, and provides recommendations to raise the quality of audit services through the strengthening of audit oversight.

The government of Indonesia has set ambitious goals for development, envisioning high, inclusive and sustainable growth over the coming years. Indonesia has the resource endowments and the potential to attain these goals. To turn this potential into reality, the private sector needs to increase investment and productivity to become a growth-engine for quality jobs to meet the needs of a rapidly increasing labor force. This note argues that maintaining and deepening Indonesia s integration into the global marketplace will facilitate this process. Policies that encourage greater integration into the world economy are no substitute, however, for a broader development strategy that takes into account, on one hand, that public support may be needed to improve the general business climate and quality of human capital, particularly logistics services, and on the other, that there remains room for corrective action to compensate groups that may be negatively impacted in the process of integration into the world economy.

The term 'Middle Income Trap' has a lot of resonance for countries in the region, many of whom have either languished in middle-income status for extended periods of time, or are worried about growth slow-downs. However, while the concept has been successful at attracting the attention of policy-makers, it has also given rise to a plethora of different definitions, methods of measurement, and countries that it is taken to refer to. Beyond the validity of the concept itself, it is worth asking if this is an area where APEC can make a useful contribution, given its unique organizational characteristics.

Since the global economic and financial crisis of 2008, Serbia has struggled with a weak economy and a deteriorating fiscal position. Until 2008, fiscal deficits were moderate and public debt declined significantly. Since the start of the global economic and financial crisis in 2008, however, Serbia has struggled with the interlinked problems of minimal growth and unfavorable fiscal dynamics. As economic activity has stagnated, revenues have fallen and expenditures, particularly mandatory spending on pensions and wages, have remained high. At the same time, structural fiscal issues, such as continued state support to state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and tax administration inefficiencies, have been a drag on growth. As a result of these pressures, general government fiscal deficits averaged 5.6 percent of GDP a year between 2009 and 2014. Reflecting the high fiscal deficits and poor economic growth, Serbia's public debt has more than doubled, from 34 percent of GDP in 2008 to 71 percent at yearend-2014. The objective of this report is therefore two-fold: (i) policy options and recommendations (beyond those built into the current program) that would help solidify the ongoing fiscal consolidation program and help achieve public debt sustainability over the medium term; and (ii) given near-term fiscal constraints, identify opportunities for enhancing the efficiency, quality, and equity of current public spending on health, education, and social protection over the medium term

The main objectives of this report are to: (a) provide a synthesized analysis of financial reporting and auditing standards and practices across the countries in which the Institute of Chartered Accountants of the Caribbean (ICAC) is active and (b) provide a basis for recommendations to ICAC and respective national institutes for a regional strategy to enhance the accounting profession and the accounting and auditing practices in the public and private sectors. This report's focus on reforms and identification of areas and means to strengthen the accounting profession have at their root the conviction that systemic enhancements to the standards and practices of the profession can materially improve the lives of the region's populace, particularly its less prosperous citizens, through greater transparency, strengthened economic growth and its attendant employment and tax revenue prospects, and greater access to financing for and formalization of the region's dominant sector-micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs). The report finds that a constraint limiting both investment across the region, particularly to MSMEs that characterize the respective national economies, and the efficient use of public resources is the accounting and auditing practices and the financial reporting regimes that prevail in both the public and private sectors. This finding emerges from: (i) a review of Reports on the Observance of Standards and Codes for Accounting and Auditing (ROSC AA) conducted by the World Bank for Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Suriname, and the countries of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States, and (ii) Bank missions to those countries updating the ROSC findings as well as missions to countries that have not yet had ROSC AA reviews (during which the Bank team met the national accountancy body, regulators of entities that fall within the financial reporting chain, supreme audit institutions, central banks, and so forth so as to secure information that would typically be found in formal ROSC AA reports).

Since the global economic and financial crisis of 2008, Serbia has struggled with a weak economy and a deteriorating fiscal position. Until 2008, fiscal deficits were moderate and public debt declined significantly. Since the start of the global economic and financial crisis in 2008, however, Serbia has struggled with the interlinked problems of minimal growth and unfavorable fiscal dynamics. As economic activity has stagnated, revenues have fallen and expenditures, particularly mandatory spending on pensions and wages, have remained high. At the same time, structural fiscal issues, such as continued state support to state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and tax administration inefficiencies, have been a drag on growth. As a result of these pressures, general government fiscal deficits averaged 5.6 percent of GDP a year between 2009 and 2014. Reflecting the high fiscal deficits and poor economic growth, Serbia's public debt has more than doubled, from 34 percent of GDP in 2008 to 71 percent at yearend-2014. The objective of this report is therefore two-fold: (i) policy options and recommendations (beyond those built into the current program) that would help solidify the ongoing fiscal consolidation program and help achieve public debt sustainability over the medium term; and (ii) given near-term fiscal constraints, identify opportunities for enhancing the efficiency, quality, and equity of current public spending on health, education, and social protection over the medium term

This note forms part of a broader engagement between the World Bank and the Government of FYR Macedonia on how to foster more and better jobs and make sure that more marginalized groups, women, low earners, skilled and unskilled youth, for example - can participate and benefit from those jobs. It focuses on providing updated labor market diagnostics based on the labor force surveys between 2007 and 2011. The findings will be used as a basis for further policy analysis. The remainder of this note is organized as follows. Section two describes labor market developments since 2007 and the conditions prevailing in 2011. Subsequent sections address the remaining challenges and key policy options. The third section thus focuses on raising productivity – critical to national economic development and to ensure sustainable increases in earnings over time in Macedonia. The fourth section discusses the generational divide in terms of challenges in labor market opportunities for the younger versus older generations. The fifth section looks at workers that are particularly disadvantaged in the labor market with a particular focus on women. The sixth section concludes with the policy levers that may help Macedonia move forward on the jobs agenda.

The People's Republic of China (PRC) Poverty Reduction and Regional Cooperation Fund (the Fund) was established under the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in March 2005 with a $20 million contribution from the Government of PRC. The Fund was replenished in April 2012 with another $20 million, making PRC's total contribution to $40 million. The annual report which covers the period 2012-20131 is prepared by ADB's Office of Regional Economic Integration (OREI) in collaboration with ADB's Office of Cofinancing Operations (OCO). This report2 , aims to review the progress of the Fund operations during the period of 2012-2013, in compliance with the reporting requirement stipulated in the ADB Board Paper and the ADB-PRC Channel Financing Agreement. It also provides an update of the overall Fund operations from 2005 to 2013.

A new domestic political stalemate has developed while spillovers from the Syrian conflict further exacerbated. A mid-year lull in the security situation gave a temporary boost to consumer and investor sentiment. Lebanon's current account deficit remains elevated, albeit lower than during the pre-crisis period. Lebanon's fiscal position continues to deteriorate. Banque du Liban maintained an expansionary monetary stance to support the economy, while sustaining confidence in the Lebanese pound. Conservatism in financial regulations and private sector banking helped maintain a well-capitalized and resilient domestic banking sector, despite sluggish growth and downgrades by international rating agencies. The expanding political stalemate at home and regional spillovers pose significant downside risk to growth. The Lebanon 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 Lebanon. It places them in a longer-term and global context, and assesses the implications of these developments and other changes in policy on the outlook for Lebanon.

The People's Republic of China (PRC) Poverty Reduction and Regional Cooperation Fund (the Fund) was established under the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in March 2005 with a $20 million contribution from the Government of PRC. The Fund was replenished in April 2012 with another $20 million, making PRC's total contribution to $40 million. The annual report which covers the period 2012-20131 is prepared by ADB's Office of Regional Economic Integration (OREI) in collaboration with ADB's Office of Cofinancing Operations (OCO). This report2 , aims to review the progress of the Fund operations during the period of 2012-2013, in compliance with the reporting requirement stipulated in the ADB Board Paper and the ADB-PRC Channel Financing Agreement. It also provides an update of the overall Fund operations from 2005 to 2013.