The Country Opinion Survey in Madagascar assists the World Bank Group (WBG) in gaining a better understanding of how stakeholders in Madagascar perceive the WBG. It provides the WBG with systematic feedback from national and local governments, multilateral and bilateral agencies, media, academia, the private sector, and civil society in Madagascar on: 1) their views regarding the general environment in Madagascar; 2) their overall attitudes toward the WBG in Madagascar; 3) overall impressions of the WBGs effectiveness and results, knowledge work and activities, and communication and information sharing in Madagascar; and 4) their perceptions of the WBGs future role in Madagascar.
Megacity Dhaka encounters various kinds of natural disasters quite frequently owing to its geographical location and a number of other physical and environmental conditions including low topography, land characteristics, multiplicity of rivers and the monsoon climate. Climate and disaster resilience is not the same in all parts of a city. Spatial variations in resilience patterns result from differences in the strengths and weaknesses of the city's economic, social, physical, institutional or natural aspects across its various parts. Traditional frameworks to assess adaptive capacity at the local level have focused largely on assets and capitals as indicators. While useful in understanding the capacity of a system to cope with disasters and adapt to changing environments, asset-oriented approaches overlook the processes and functions of a system (for example, governance system, community participation in decision-making, knowledge dissemination and management, structure of institutions and entitlements etc.) that are important aspects influencing the capacity of a human system to respond to climate change events.
The headwaters of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya in the western Tien Shan, Pamir and Hindu Kush mountains are a major source of stream flow into the Aral Sea Basin. The water security—affecting energy and food security—of this region and the consequent regional dynamics and politics are connected to these headwaters. Recent concerns related to climate change, glacier retreat and stream flow from these mountains have served to illustrate the very limited understanding that exists concerning the hydrologic regimes of the mountain headwaters of these major river systems as well as of the glaciers, that are a component of those regimes. A better understanding of these hydrologic processes is critical for assessing the amount and timing of water supply and hydropower available (both current and future) for the various countries in the Central Asia region that have headwaters originating in these mountains. Such an understanding is also critical in making estimates of runoff changes under a climate change future. This is the main objective of this study.
The post-2015 development agenda is being shaped as we speak. The role of identity and identification and its importance to development outcomes places it within the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) agenda—specifically as one of the proposed SDG targets (#16.9), but also as a key enabler of the efficacy of many other SDG targets. Although there is no one model for providing legal identity, this SDG would urge states to ensure that all have free or low-cost access to widely accepted, robust identity credentials. Regardless of the modalities to achieve it, the recognition of legal identity – together with its associated rights – is becoming a priority for governments around the world. Political will is central, and the SDGs – unwieldy as they may seem today – provide a useful reference point for accountability. But new approaches expand the horizon of what is possible, and should serve as a stimulus to development ambition. Seizing these opportunities requires strong leadership, a supportive legal framework, mobilization of financial and human resources, and – critically – the trust of each country's residents. Incentives, technology, foreign assistance and reforms will all be critical in achieving tangible results. Equally important is coordination at the global, regional and national levels, to ensure inclusive oversight and concerted global action. Support from donors and other development partners is widely diffused. It could focus more strategically on building core systems for registration and – equally important – ensuring that these extend into effective and inclusive systems to support development.
The Country Opinion Survey in Guinea-Bissau assists the World Bank Group (WBG) in gaining a better understanding of how stakeholders in Guinea-Bissau perceive the WBG. It provides the WBG with systematic feedback from national and local governments, multilateral/bilateral agencies, media, academia, the private sector, and civil society in Guinea-Bissau on 1) their views regarding the general environment in Guinea-Bissau; 2) their overall attitudes toward the WBG in Guinea-Bissau; 3) overall impressions of the WBG's effectiveness and results, knowledge work and activities, and communication and information sharing in Guinea-Bissau; and 4) their perceptions of the WBG's future role in Guinea-Bissau.
Firm informality is pervasive throughout the developing world, Bangladesh being no exception. The informal status of many firms substantially reduces the tax basis and therefore impacts the provision of public goods. The literature on encouraging formalization has predominantly focused on reducing the direct costs of formalization and has found negligible impacts of such policies. This paper focuses on a stick intervention, which to the best of the knowledge of the authors is the first one in a developing country setting that deals with the most direct and dominant form of informality, i.e. registration with the tax authority with a direct link to the countrys potential revenue base and thus public goods provision. The paper implements an experiment in which firms are visited by tax representatives who deliver an official letter from the Bangladesh National Tax Authority stating that the firm is not registered and the consequential punishment if the firm fails to register. The paper finds that the intervention increases the rate of registration among treated firms, while firms located in the same market but not treated do not seem to respond significantly. The paper also finds that only larger revenue firms at baseline respond to the threat and register. These findings have at least two important policy implications: i. the enforcement angle, which could be an important tool to encourage formalization; and ii. targeting of government resources for formalization to the high-end informal firms. The effects are generally small in levels and this leaves open the question of why many firms still do not register.
This paper analyzes the socioeconomic, fiscal, and governance impact of gold mining in Mali. The analysis finds that, at the national level, mining plays an important role by contributing to export earnings and overall government fiscal revenue. In 2013, the mining sector represented 7 percent of gross domestic product, contributed 1.5 percent to growth in total gross domestic product, and accounted for 65 percent of total export earnings and 25 percent of total government budget revenues. At the local level, despite higher population growth, there is some evidence that outcomes (poverty and infrastructure services) are marginally better in mining communes compared with non-mining communes. Local governments receive fiscal windfalls that are spent significantly on education capital expenditures and current expenditures (salaries and non-salaries). Non-salary current expenditures are 10 times higher in mining areas. Analysis of the political economy of public service provision at the local level suggests that technical or absorptive capacities may be the bottleneck to increasing the local benefit of mining instead of corruption or accountability.
China has defied the declining trend in domestic content in exports in many countries. This paper studies China's rising domestic content in exports using firm- and customs transaction-level data. The approach embraces firm heterogeneity and hence reduces aggregation bias. The study finds that the substitution of domestic for imported materials by individual processing exporters caused China's domestic content in exports to increase from 65 to 70 percent in 2000–2007. Such substitution was induced by the country's trade and investment liberalization, which deepened its engagement in global value chains and led to a greater variety of domestic materials becoming available at lower prices.
Excise taxes on alcohol and tobacco have long been a dependable and significant revenue source in many countries. More recently, considerable attention has been paid to the way in which such taxes may also be used to attain public health objectives by reducing the consumption of products with adverse health and social impacts. Some have gone further and argued that explicitly earmarking excise taxes on alcohol and tobacco to finance public health expenditures—marrying sin and virtue as it were—will make increasing such taxes more politically acceptable and provide the funding needed to increase such expenditures, especially for the poor. The basic idea—tax "bads" and do "good" with the proceeds—is simple and appealing. But designing and implementing good "sin" taxes is a surprisingly complex task. Earmarking revenues from such taxes for health expenditures may also sound good and be a useful selling point for new taxes. However, such earmarking raises difficult issues with respect to budgetary rigidity and political accountability. This note explores these and other issues that lurk beneath the surface of the attractive concept of using increased sin excises on alcohol and tobacco to finance "virtuous" social spending on public health.
This economy profile for Doing Business 2016 presents the 11 Doing Business indicators for Congo, Democratic Republic of. To allow for useful comparison, the profile also provides data for other selected economies (comparator economies) for each indicator. Doing Business 2016 is the 13th edition in a series of annual reports measuring the regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it. Economies are ranked on their ease of doing business; for 2015 Congo, Democratic Republic of ranks 184. A high ease of doing business ranking means the regulatory environment is more conducive to the starting and operation of a local firm. Doing Business presents quantitative indicators on business regulations and the protection of property rights that can be compared across 189 economies from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe and over time. Doing Business sheds light on how easy or difficult it is for a local entrepreneur to open and run a small to medium-size business when complying with relevant regulations. It measures and tracks changes in regulations affecting 11 areas in the life cycle of a business: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting minority investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts, resolving insolvency and labor market regulation. The data in this report are current as of June 1, 2015 (except for the paying taxes indicators, which cover the period from January to December 2014).
Uganda's economy underwent significant structural change in the 2000s whereby the share of non-tradable services in aggregate employment rose by about 7 percentage points at the expense of the production of tradable goods. The process also involved a 12-percentage-point shift in employment away from small and medium enterprises and larger firms in manufacturing and commercial agriculture mainly to microenterprises in retail trade. In addition, the sectoral reallocation of labor on these two dimensions coincided with significant growth in aggregate labor productivity. However, in and of itself, the same reallocation could only have held back, rather than aid, the observed productivity gains. This was because labor was more productive throughout the period in the tradable goods sector than in the non-tradable sector. Moreover, the effect on aggregate labor productivity of the reallocation of employment between the two sectors could only have been reinforced by the impacts on the same of the rise in the employment share of microenterprises. The effect was also strengthened by a parallel employment shift across the age distribution of enterprises that raised sharply the employment share of established firms at the expense of younger ones and startups. Not only was labor consistently less productive in microenterprises than in small and medium enterprises and larger enterprises across all industries throughout the period, it was also typically less productive in more established firms than in younger ones.
Policy attitude towards trade integration and foreign direct investment (FDI) is often a controversial yet popular subject. This note presents evidences from recent policy researches that arguing that engaging in an open trade and investment regime have brought productivity gains which is key factor for sustaining increase in income per-capita. Evidence from Indonesia also suggests that foreign owned plants have become increasingly important, generating a significant share of exports and overall output, as well as more productive and more export intensive than domestic plants, and to spend more on RD and training. FDI also have positive impact on firms in the same sector, through competition and demonstration effects, and in upstream sectors, as suppliers to foreign-owned plants improve the quality of their own products to meet their clients more exacting needs. Evidence also suggests a positive impact from import competition in improving allocative efficiency across manufacturing plants which is a key element in driving productivity in manufacturing sector.
In 2011, the World Bank Group commenced a multiyear program designed to support countries in systematically examining and strengthening the performance of their education system. Part of the World Bank's new Education Section Strategy, this evidence-based initiative, called SABER (Systems Approach for Better Education Results), is building a toolkit of diagnostics for examining education system and their component policy domains against global standards and best practices of countries around the world. The objectives of this report are to examine the system according to key policy areas, identify successes and challenges in the system, and provide recommendations to support the advancement of EMIS in Solomon Islands. Recommendations and activities aim to improve overall EMIS functionality in a sustainable and effective manner to ensure better access and use of information for decision making, planning, and student learning. This profile summarizes key points are as follows: Institutionalization of EMIS as the core management information system of the government will require strong policies and a dedicated EMIS budget. The policy should include clearly outlined mandatory practices to be adopted by various education stakeholders at each level of the education system. Efforts should be made to improve the local capacity of EMIS staff by investing in their professional development activities. EAs should be involved in the process of data collection, processing, and dissemination. The type of data collected and indicators produced by EMIS must be reviewed and further developed to include student level data. Integration of other education databases into EMIS will result in more effective utilization of education data for decision making. EMIS needs to be supported by regular internal and external audits to improve the accuracy of data collected and utilized indecision making. The quality of feedback reports sent to schools should be enriched with more relevant micro level information on school performance. Clearly articulated data utilization and dissemination strategies need to be developed, including processes to ensure the timely production of an annual statistics handbook, as well as additional utilization and dissemination opportunities such as pamphlets and web-based portals.
The Country Opinion Survey in Mozambique assists the World Bank Group (WBG) in gaining a better understanding of how stakeholders in Mozambique perceive the WBG. It provides the WBG with systematic feedback from national and local governments, multilateral/bilateral agencies, media, academia, the private sector, and civil society in Mozambique on 1) their views regarding the general environment in Mozambique; 2) their overall attitudes toward the WBG in Mozambique; 3) overall impressions of the WBG's effectiveness and results, knowledge work and activities, and communication and information sharing in Mozambique; and 4) their perceptions of the WBG's future role in Mozambique.
The Country Opinion Survey in Russia assists the World Bank Group (WBG) in gaining a better understanding of how stakeholders in Russia perceive the WBG. It provides the WBG with systematic feedback from national and local governments, multilateral/bilateral agencies, media, academia, the private sector, and civil society in Russia on: 1) their views regarding the general environment in Russia; 2) their overall attitudes toward the WBG in Russia; 3) overall impressions of the WBG's effectiveness and results, knowledge work and activities, and communication and information sharing in Russia; and 4) their perceptions of the WBG's future role in Russia.
