Tropical Cyclone (TC) Seroja impacted Timor-Leste with heavy torrential rains over a 24-hour period on April 4, 2021, with an average intensity of over 14 millimeters per hour and a peak intensity of over 70 millimeters per hour. The heavy precipitation and the country's natural topography led to flash floods, landslides, and liquefaction, causing significant damage. The disaster affected all 13 municipalities of Timor-Leste, caused at least 44 fatalities, damaged critical infrastructure such as roads, bridges, water supply infrastructure, schools, and health facilities, and impacted rural areas and agricultural assets. This report is part of the World Bank's response to the Government's request for support in assessing damages as well as longer-term implications for disaster risk management. It will serve as inputs to a more detailed Post-Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA) under development and could inform the methodology of future similar remote-based assessments. It is also a contribution to the policy dialogue with the Governmentand its partners about how to plan and invest more effectively to mitigate disasters in the future.
The economic rebound gained momentum in the third quarter of 2021 despite another COVID-19 wave. The Philippines has, so far, faced its worst infection wave in September when the 7-day daily average reached about 21,000 cases due to the Delta variant. In response, the authorities reimposed stringent mobility restrictions in Metro Manila and other key metropolitan areas. Nonetheless, compared with previous waves, domestic activity has been less sensitive to infections. Public containment measures constrained overall mobility less, while households and firms have learned to cope with infections and diminished mobility. As a result, the growth momentum was not severely hampered, and the third quarter growth surprised on the upside, exceeding market expectations. The economy expanded by 4.9 percent in the first three quarters of 2021, rebounding from a 10.1 percent contraction over the same period in 2020. Although partially driven by base effects, the growth expansion also reflected an increase in economic activity despite the implementation of several lockdowns. Growth was supported by the industry sector, driven by double-digit growth in manufacturing and robust public construction activity. The services sector posted a more moderate expansion as some key services were subdued by mobility restriction measures. The agriculture sector contracted as farm and livestock outputs were impacted by typhoons and ongoing outbreak of African Swine Fever. Meanwhile, domestic demand improved, supported by a resurgence in public construction spending. Private consumption picked up but still tempered by elevated inflation and unemployment, mobility restrictions, and low consumer confidence. Public consumption growth eased, in part due to the base effects from the swift disbursement of fiscal support a year ago. The global economic recovery strengthened exports, although services trade remained weak. The fiscal stance remains supportive of economic recovery, but the policy space is narrowing. Public spending accelerated from 23.6 percent of GDP in the first three quarters of 2020 to 24.6 percent of GDP in the same period in 2021, in line with the recovery in public investment and ongoing fiscal support. Infrastructure outlays increased from 3.5 percent of GDP to 4.7 percent of GDP in the first three quarters of 2021, a result of the government's push on investment spending as part of its recovery program. Meanwhile, public revenues fell from 16.8 percent of GDP in the first three quarters of 2020 to 16.3 percent of GDP over the same period in 2021. Tax revenues rebounded due to strong tax and customs collections, but non-tax revenue contracted following the significant dividend remittances to the Bureau of the Treasury (BTr) in the beginning of the pandemic. The fiscal deficit widened from 6.9 percent of GDP in Q1-Q3 2020 to 8.3 percent of GDP in Q1-Q3 2021. The wider fiscal deficit has resulted in higher financing needs, which have been met by increased public borrowing. Public debt increased from 54.6 percent of GDP at end-2020 to 63.1 percent of GDP at end-September 2021.
The Egyptian economy continues to show resilience through the COVID-19 pandemic, due to the macroeconomic and energy sector reforms implemented in recent years, along with measures to ease monetary conditions, provide selected sectoral support and mobilize external financing. Real GDP growth and foreign income activities started recovering since Q4-FY2020/21. However, global COVID-related challenges and an uneven recovery across the world continue to restrain the rebound. Foreign reserves remain ample, but the widened current account deficit has increased financing requirements. Fiscal consolidation has helped bring down the budget deficit-to-GDP ratio. Yet, fiscal space remains constrained by the interest burden and below-potential revenue-mobilization. Egypt is expected to resume pre-pandemic growth in FY2021/22 as the COVID-situation gradually improves. Further advancement of structural reforms is critical to sustain the recovery, drive productivity growth and generate high-earning job opportunities. The Focus Chapter in this report is dedicated to the topic of government digitalization; a key priority of the country's national structural reform program. Egypt is currently at a relatively elevated level of government digitalization, according to international indices such as the United Nations E-Government Development Index, as well as the newly constructed World Bank GovTech Maturity Index. For the recent digitalization efforts to realize their potential and further enhance governance and public service delivery, continued reforms require focus on: (1) The roll-out of 'end-to-end' digital solutions (whereby digital transformation occurs in every step throughout a given governmental process), ensuring the integration and inter-connectedness (inter-operability) of related government systems, (2) Complementing digital transformation with a continued simplification and streamlining of government processes. (3) Strengthening the foundations of the "Digital Economy" in Egypt is crucial to effectively leverage technologies for a more efficient government, and for large-scale uptake by individuals and businesses. This will require (3-a) Continuous investments in digital infrastructure across the country to ensure uninterrupted availability of essential digital government services and universal access to high quality internet, (3-b) Promotion of digital skills, (3-c) Incentivizing use of digital financial services, and (3-d) Ensuring an overall conducive legal and regulatory framework for the digital transformation of the economy.
Women, Business and the Law 2021 is the seventh in a series of annual studies measuring the laws and regulations that affect women's economic opportunity in 190 economies. The project presents eight indicators structured around women's interactions with the law as they move through their lives and careers: Mobility, Workplace, Pay, Marriage, Parenthood, Entrepreneurship, Assets, and Pension. This year's report updates all indicators as of October 1, 2020 and builds evidence of the links between legal gender equality and women's economic inclusion. By examining the economic decisions women make throughout their working lives, as well as the pace of reform over the past 50 years, Women, Business and the Law 2021 makes an important contribution to research and policy discussions about the state of women's economic empowerment. Prepared during a global pandemic that threatens progress toward gender equality, findings on government responses to COVID-19 and pilot research related to childcare and women's access to justice.
The lockdown, social distancing, and increased costs associated with the COVID-19 pandemic have reduced output and employment, increased poverty, and depressed trade transactions; in the absence of a strong response by government, output will be lower over the next decade due to COVID-19. The pandemic-driven rise in the fiscal deficit is increasing public debt, thus exacerbating existing challenges to sustainability and increasing the urgency of shifting from large public investments to human capital development as the main driver of growth. The government's rapid response to the pandemic has succeeded in keeping the population share of new infections and of deaths well below that of most other countries. However, critical health services, particularly childhood immunization and nutrition services, have been disrupted, which is increasing stunting and preventable diseases. The combination of poorer nutrition, limited health services, learning losses from school closures, and the likelihood that some children (particularly adolescent girls and children from poor households) may never return to school will reduce incomes and productivity over the medium term. The government responded rapidly and effectively to the challenges posed by the pandemic, putting in place the Economic Recovery Plan (ERP) to support households and firms, quickly imposing constraints on mobility to limit the spread of the disease, ramping up social protection programs, and setting up remote learning. Key priorities going forward include: (i) improving the government's expenditure allocation, financial management and revenue mobilization; (ii) strengthening the resilience of the health system and preparing for administration of a vaccine; (iii) reducing learning losses (targeting the most vulnerable), improving skills and strengthening accountability in education; and (iv) expanding the flagship social safety net program, building adaptive systems to respond quickly to shocks, improving poverty targeting of safety net programs, and scaling up the use of digital payments.
Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C) is a development issue and a form of violence against women and girls that affects at least 200 million women in the world. FGM/C is a harmful practice proven to impact the physical and mental health of affected women and girls from the moment of the cutting, with prolonged and irreversible consequences during their entire lives. The Compendium on International and National Legal Frameworks on Female Genital Mutilation (the "Compendium") was prepared to contribute to this urgent and important development debate with the understanding that the knowledge of the law is an important empowerment tool to end FGM/C It provides a survey of the key international and regional instruments as well as domestic legislation as they relate to the prohibition of FGM/C.
Malawi has a large infrastructure gap, which is beyond what the government can afford. Over the period of two decades (1998-2017), the total public investment in Malawi averaged 4.18 percent of GDP per year while in the energy and water and sanitation sectors alone, a similar level of investment, about 4 percent of GDP annually, will be required to meet the growing infrastructure demand. At the same time, the fiscal space has been decreasing as evidenced by the growing public debt, total public debt increased from 28 percent of GDP in 2007 to 63 percent of GDP in 2019. In this context, Malawi needs to make well though-out choices in prioritizing its investment program, improve the efficiency of infrastructure planning and implementation, and crowd-in financing from both foreign and domestic private investors. The report argues that the preconditions for enabling the needed transformation exist. Improvements in the macro-economic environment in the past five years makes private investment more possible, although in the short-term, the COVID-19 pandemic will have a negative impact as risk aversion increases. The regulatory framework for public-private partnerships (PPPs) is in place and further evolving, and a large PPP in the energy sector (about $1 billion) is currently under development. Domestic long-term investors (pension funds and life insurance companies) have been rapidly accumulating long-term funds in the past few years (especially after regulatory reforms to introduce a mandatory pension system) and are looking for long-term investment opportunities. The report proposes that the Government of Malawi (GoM) undertakes reforms to improve the fiscal space and in turn increase infrastructure investments through its own resources and encourage the role of the private sector in the financing of infrastructure. More specifically, the GoM can (a) improve the efficiency of the public investment management framework and integrate it with the PPP framework, (b) improve the efficiency of infrastructure delivering state-owned enterprises, (c) advance the PPP program by allocating resources to develop the needed capacity, and (d) deepen the domestic long-term finance market by availing long-term liquidity facilities to catalyze bank lending to infrastructure, issuing regulations to expand the range of long-term finance instruments and vehicles, and introducing a program of transaction testing, piloting, and market sounding to systematically link supply and demand side of the infrastructure finance, among others.
The purpose of this report is to provide development practitioners and government officials with an understanding of the context and key design features of climate budget tagging initiatives. It is based on a review of 18 climate budgeting tagging methodologies as well as key informant interviews with practitioners during 2020. The review is structured into five sections. The first draws lessons from three precursors of climate expenditure tagging: poverty tagging, gender-budget tagging, and budgeting for international development goals. The second provides an overview of climate finance reporting methodologies and climate expenditure reviews supported by international organizations. The third reviews technical and institutional aspects of the climate budget tagging methodologies and practices of a number of national governments. The fourth explores links between climate budget tagging and the green bond frameworks used to mobilize climate finance. The final section discusses the benefits of and challenges in implementing a climate change tagging system and also presents lessons learned from experience in budget tagging in general and its application to climate change in particular. The report does not assess the effectiveness of climate budget tagging, as this would require a more thorough and long-term evaluation.
Despite having made tremendous progress in ensuring equal access to education and healthcare for its people, with school enrollment rates rising and children in most countries receiving the recommended preventative care, many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) remain at the bottom of the World Bank's Human Capital Index and the United Nations (UN) Human Development Index. The existing data also suggests that women are being overlooked in the drive to develop human capital, and only slightly over half of all primary school students continue schooling until lastgrade. Issues of access loom large; millions of children are not in school at all. This study aims to shine light on the extent to which the national level commitments to ensuring education and health for all are reflected in concrete transport, education, and health sector policies and targets at the country and city level and, in turn, whether the reality on the ground in some of the major urbanized areas in SSA is one of equal and adequate access. Focusing on ten large cities across SSA and applying not only spatial modeling tools but also policy and survey analysis and insights from interviews with human rights and development practitioners working in the region, the study provides new evidence on the degree to which health and education opportunities can be physically reached using the existing fixed route public transport systems. In doing so, it also identifieswho is being left behind – both across the urban space as well as across different dimensions of marginalization such as poverty, disability, gender, or their intersection. Because of the focus on public transport modes – mostly buses and minibuses – and walking, the results should therefore be interpreted as relevant for most, but not all, of the city populations, as accessibility by private cars or motorcycles is likely be higher although will certainly come up against congestion constraints if all or even most people were to rely on these modes. Recognizing that the use of health servicesand ability to meaningfully take advantage of education opportunities may be only partly driven by physical access barriers, the study also highlights the broader constraints faced by certain marginalized groups. Awareness of the role of transport connectivity and improved transport and land use planning coordination in facilitating access to essential services is noted in nearly all of the Government-level – both national and city-specific – policy documents and future strategies. At the same time, the differentiated education and healthcare access needs of the more vulnerable society groups – and targeted strategies on how to serve them – have received less attention, and the definition of sector-specific goals is not commonly informed by analysis of the existing spatial patterns of exclusion.
The Niger Urbanization Review aims to improve our understanding of urbanization and local governance in Niger by analyzing the current and potential contribution of urbanization to the country's long-term national development and the institutional and financial capacity of local governments to manage the urbanization process. Urgent attention is needed to manage Niger's rapid urban population growth. This review seeks to inform how urban areas can leverage the concentration of population to deliver services more efficiently and provide the enabling environment required to support the transformation of Niger's economy, creating more productive off-farm jobs as set out in the best-case scenario of the National Social and Economic Plan 2017- 2021.Urban centers can play a pivotal role in the delivery of essential services for their populations and associated hinterlands and in realizing the potential of their emerging role as foci for economic development. While Niger has embarked on reform efforts towards decentralization and devolution of power to the local level since the 1990s, progress made towards the implementation of these reforms has been limited. The review is divided into five chapters. Chapter first looks at the patterns of urbanization in Niger, and how they contrast with the experience in the rest of the world. Chapter second goes through opportunities and challenges brought on by urbanization, looking at living standards and the structure of the economy across settlement patterns. Chapter third examines rural-urban linkages before discussing different urbanization scenarios for the period 2015-2035. Chapter fourth looks at the existing institutional and fiscal framework and its impact on urban management in general and on capital investments in particular. Lastly, the fifth chapter provides an overview of policy implications and offers operational recommendations for a possible way forward.
Trade is widely recognized to be an engine of growth that creates jobs, reduces poverty, and increases economic opportunity. There is a global lack of data on how trade facilitation interventions impact traders by gender at the firm level. This lack of data may also reinforce the bias against women in trade policy making. To help fill the data gap with an aim to better inform future design and implementation of trade facilitation projects, the World Bank Group (WBG) has collected data through a survey on cross-border trade challenges faced by both women and men at the firm level in the Pacific Islands region. This note presents findings of the survey work in Papua New Guinea (PNG). The survey has highlighted several areas that could be addressed by the government of PNG to improve the trade facilitation environment in PNG. Specific emphasis in the recommendations has been made to address asymmetric gender barriers that occur in cross-border trade. This report presents the results of a survey undertaken in Papua New Guinea from February to March 2020 with the intention to identify specific challenges cross-border traders are facing related to trade facilitation at the firm level.
Small dams play an important role in the provision of many kinds of benefits, such as drinking and irrigation water supply, flood control, small/mini hydropower generation, fishing, and so on. They are particularly important in rural and agricultural areas. Agriculture remains an engine of rural growth and poverty reduction in developing countries. Agricultural water management (AWM) can change the lives of millions of people by improving yields, reducing risks linked to climate variability, and increasing income for farmers. The demand for water storage is increasing as farmers and rural communities are more frequently facing water shortages for their crops and livestock. This demand is in part driven by climate change and increasing variability and scarcity observed around the globe. This note provides some lessons on how to address the challenges of small dam management with participation of community groups and effective government support for them.
The Coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis has dealt a significant shock to Sri Lanka's economy and people. This note examines the expected impact on poverty and inequality amid widespread job and earnings losses. While poverty was relatively low in Sri Lanka prior to the pandemic, pre-existing vulnerabilities were high, partly owing to high levels of informality. Many workers do not have access to employment protection or other job-related social protection benefits, making them vulnerable during times of economic crisis. Livelihoods support programs and various relief measures implemented by the government over the course of the pandemic are expected to have mitigated the labor market shock. Inequality is expected to increase in the short run because of the unequal distribution of the shock. Moreover, reduced social mobility as a consequence of widening disparities in access to education for example could increase inequality in the long term. Policy measures could aim to strike a balance between those that support a resilient recovery and those that aim to include the most vulnerable in the recovery process. Achieving this balance will help reverse the impact of the pandemic and mitigate its consequences for inequality. Shifting toward a more adaptive social protection system would allow much needed support to be scaled up quickly and effectively in times of crisis.
COVID-19 (coronavirus) has taken a heavy toll on Turkey, as it has across much of the world. New estimatesof total COVID-19 cases indicate that the epidemic grew rapidly over November and into December, before a new round of restrictions were put in place to control the spread of the virus in late December. The expansion of COVID-19 in late 2020 followed a similar path to many European countries. Turkey's economic growth performance in 2020 was strong compared to other countries, but poverty spread, and unemployment became more prevalent. Turkey's GDP grew by 1.8 percent in 2020, which was the fastest amongst G20 countries in 2020 aside from China. This was on the back of one of the strongest economic rebounds in the second half of 2020, largely achieved in the third quarter, but with positive growth continuing into the fourth quarter. Despite measures to support jobs and households, labor market and poverty outcomesnevertheless deteriorated. Indicators of domestic demand showed some signs of economic growth cooling early in 2021, although supply side measures such as industrial output remainedrobust. Turkey responded to COVID-19 with a large economic stimulus program, focused on credit channels. In fiscal terms, Turkey's COVID-19 stimulus package amounted to nearly 12 percent of GDP when including tax deferrals and contingent liabilities. This is larger than the average for emerging market, G20 countries, and is similar in size to the stimulus packages of the United States, Australia and Canada. While the program utilized a broad range of fiscal tools, uniquely amongst G20 countries, Turkey's support was overwhelmingly provided through the banking sector, and was not realized as direct fiscal costs on the budget, but ascontingent liabilities to the government in future. Credit stimulus, loose monetary policy, andother regulatory measures to promote credit expansion drove a sharp increase in economicactivity in late 2020. In addition to government measures to recapitalize a partial credit guarantee fund and state banks, policy interest rates were maintained below inflation and a series of financial regulatory measures introduced that incentivized banks to increase lending activities. The combined effect of these policies was to generate one of the largest credit expansions that the world saw in 2020.
India is the second largest country in the world in terms of population and is rapidly catching up to the People's Republic of China. A rapidly increasing population, coupled with sustained economic growth and urbanization, has led to an uncontrolled increase in waste generation in the country. Even within cities, there is a variation in service provision with wealthier neighborhoods receiving more frequent municipal solid waste (MSW) collection services and street sweeping compared to poorer areas and slums that receive no services. The Government of India has created a number of laws and rules related to solid waste management (SWM) since the early 2000s, but the implementation of solid waste rules - in mountainous regions as well as the plains - remains a huge challenge. Chapter one gives introduction. Chapter two discusses the current landscape of the SWM sector in India. In chapter three, the report investigates the current situation regarding SWM in the mountain areas of India. Chapter four looks at the complexity of managing solid waste in mountain areas as well as the various challenges and opportunities that arise. Chapter five presents a framework or foundation on which solutions can be steadily built and presents recommendations and related implementable actions along a phased approach. In conclusion, chapter six briefly summarizes the role of the World Bank in the SWM sector and how it can provide support to clients to improve SWM services and practices in mountain areas in the South Asia region and elsewhere.
