Suchergebnisse

As India continues to urbanize and move towards a less agricultural- and more industry-based economy, land demands will continue to grow. Its urban population is expected to increase by more than 200 million by 2030, requiring 4 to 8 million hectares of land for residential use alone. Demands for infrastructure and industry could add a similar amount, summing to total land demand of 5 to10 percent of the land area currently used for agriculture. If not handled well, such massive land use change may increase vulnerability and food insecurity, rent-seeking, environmental problems, social dislocation, inequality, and conflict. But it also provides an opportunity to address the underlying structural issues, propelling India into the league of middle-income countries and laying the ground for significantly advancing shared prosperity and reduced poverty. This synthesis report presents results from land governance self-assessments by six states: The fact that land is a state subject implies that actions to improve land governance need to be initiated at state level. To identify opportunities, six states implemented the Land Governance Assessment Framework (LGAF), a tool that allow comparing the status of their land governance against international good practice along a set of dimensions in a very participatory process. Results are summarized in state reports that were validated publicly and discussed with policy makers in each state. This national report complements these and draws out common areas.

The connections between transport infrastructure and economic development have been extensively analyzed in previous research, but little is known about the cost of infrastructure investments in poor countries. This paper examines drivers of unit costs of construction and maintenance of transport infrastructure in low and middle income countries and documents that: (i) there is a large dispersion in unit costs for comparable road work activities; (ii) after accounting for environmental drivers of costs, residual unit costs are significantly higher in conflict countries; (iii) there is evidence that costs are higher in countries with higher levels of corruption; (iv) these effects are robust to controlling for a country's public investment capacity and business environment. Our findings have implications for governments aiming to increase connectivity in poor countries.

Since 1991 the share of sub-national outlays in total government spending has increased, reflecting their active role in service delivery and greater autonomy in policy-making and implementation. As a result, sub-national economic policies have taken on an increasingly important role in ensuring macroeconomic stability. The rising share of sub-national finance, including sub-national Governments (SNGs) debt as a share of general public debt abundantly reflects this trend of greater devolution of spending responsibilities, revenue - raising authority and the capacity to incur debt. The growing importance of SNG finances and the recognition that the trend can pose dangers to macroeconomic stability have informed different institutional responses to the difficulties of decentralized decision-making, especially addressing the need to improve policy coordination across levels of government and contain sub-national borrowing. The purpose of this paper is to articulate some issues in SNG borrowing arising from the peculiarities of the Nigerian situation. To this end, the paper is divided into four parts. Part one gives introduction. Part two outlines the models of control of sub-national borrowing across the developing and emerging market countries. It also highlights Nigeria's efforts in this regard. Part three outlines the structure of fiscal federalism in Nigeria highlighting constitutional, legislative, and administrative provisions for the sector, revenue allocation, revenue - expenditure gap, while part four dwells on the leading issues and challenges in SNG borrowing in Nigeria.

Governance is a major challenge to Cameroons development. Weak governance affects most economic transactions and hampers delivery and quality of services. Based on Cameroon's development strategy (as expressed in the 2035 vision and the 2009 growth and employment strategy), the objective of the World Bank 2010-2014 Country Assistance Strategy (CAS) is to boost inclusive growth, through increased competitiveness and improved service delivery. Governance is a cross-cutting theme in the CAS and for World Bank operations. To support the governance agenda in Cameroon, the World Bank has mobilized funds through the multi-donor Governance Partnership Facility (GPF) for the Banking on Change Governance Program in Cameroon (hereafter the 'Governance Program'), which became active in March 2010. The objective of the GPF-funded Governance Program is to increase transparency, accountability, and participation related to key governance issues in selected sectors in Cameroon. This report describes output, lessons, and conclusions from the GDM component. GDM's main output, the Development Marketplace (DM), is described in detail and results and lessons learned are described for both the DM and the GDM as a whole. Other activities under the GDM include a large knowledge sharing event, support to a South-South exchange and seven DM finale debates. Sources for the report include written material (e.g. Catholic Relief Services' (CRS) evaluation report of GDM, summaries of financed activities, feature stories, GDM Finale event guide) and interviews with GDM participants and World Bank staff.

Correspondent banking services are essential to enabling companies and individuals to transact internationally and make cross-border payments. Recently there have been indications that certain large international banks have started terminating or severely limiting their correspondent banking relationships with smaller local and regional banks from jurisdictions around the world. To find out whether this is indeed happening, the World Bank, with support from the Financial Stability Board (FSB) and the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI), surveyed banking authorities and banks worldwide to examine the extent of withdrawal from correspondent banking, its drivers, and its implications for financial exclusion/inclusion. In total, 110 banking authorities, 20 large banks, and 170 smaller local and regional banks participated in this exercise. This document includes finding of the survey, conclusions, and recommendations.

The Country Opinion Survey in Myanmar assists the World Bank Group (WBG) in gaining a better understanding of how stakeholders in Myanmar 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 Myanmar on 1) their views regarding the general environment in Myanmar; 2) their overall attitudes toward the WBG in Myanmar; 3) overall impressions of the WBG's effectiveness and results, knowledge work and activities, and communication and information sharing in Myanmar; and 4) their perceptions of the WBG's future role in Myanmar.

The Country Opinion Survey in Ghana assists the World Bank Group (WBG) in gaining a better understanding of how stakeholders in Ghana 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 Ghana on 1) their views regarding the general environment in Ghana; 2) their overall attitudes toward the WBG in Ghana; 3) overall impressions of the WBG's effectiveness and results, knowledge work and activities, and communication and information sharing in Ghana; and 4) their perceptions of the WBG's future role in Ghana.

Texto virtual con diagnósticos y propuestas prospectivas del territorio caldense, contenidas en un conjunto estructurado de 65 publicaciones del Profesor Gonzalo Duque-Escobar, cuyo fin es contribuir a la construcción de una visión del desarrollo de Caldas en la que se consideren los diferentes procesos sociales e históricos de este territorio, que explican su naturaleza y carácter biodiverso, pluricultural y mestizo, y cuya identidad obliga a entenderlo como un fragmento geográfico de la Ecorregión Cafetera de Colombia

The issue note discusses the rationale for, and presents the initial results of an innovative method of governance support conducted through the preparation and implementation of Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) in fragile states. The experiment was conducted in the context of an action and learning program on governance in fragile and conflict affected countries. The note first examines the political economic framework prevailing in fragile states, and particularly the neopatrimonial dynamics which structure political agents behavior, as they have been studied, notably, by Chabal and Daloz; Douglass North, John Wallis and Bary Weingast; and Margaret Levi. The note looks at the relatively brief history of PRSs and notes that they have been reviewed from a classical economics perspective: whether the PRSs' proposed policies 'got it right.' It argues that an institutionalize perspective, on the other hand, will rather look at the institutional processes from which the PRSP is developed, and concludes that PRS support will be more effective if it is focused on issues of methodology and process facilitation rather than analytics. The last chapter describes, in operational terms, the type of PRS support that has been provided through the experiment in the Cote d'Ivoire case: methodological support and process facilitation were provided for the preparation of the PRS policy matrices and the design of its monitoring and evaluation system. It concludes by proposing a set of results that can be monitored to assess the impact of this type of approach, not only for governance in the meaning of the capacity of a state to develop and implement policies, but also for governance in its broader, more traditional meaning.

Over the last few years the Standard Cost Model (SCM) has become the regulatory reform tool of choice in European Union (EU) and Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries for identifying and reducing regulatory compliance costs. SCM provides a relatively simple methodology to measure and communicate businesses' paperwork obligations arising from compliance with governments' regulations. More recently the SCM has also been adapted and applied in a number of developing countries, including Kenya, Zambia, Vietnam, Burkina Faso, and Rwanda. It is still too early days to conclude much on the SCM model's general applicability in developing countries. However as part of a broader reform package the SCM has proven capable of strengthening momentum by providing new insights into regulatory obligations, by quantifying the costs and time associated with information obligations both at aggregate and at a rule-specific level. It has hence proven useful both as a tool to target specific interventions and to monitor the impact of reform. This document provides a number of lessons from the first few years of using SCM in regulatory reforms, with a focus on business licensing, in developing countries. These lessons are not intended to provide a final account on how SCM is to be carried out in developing countries. Along with its dissemination across the globe, SCM has experienced a constant development. This document aims to point out a number of important issues that have been observed and tested during the initial measurements in World Bank client countries to prevent future practitioners from the need to re-invent the wheel.

This case study focuses on the attempts of the government of Bulgaria (GoB) to promote and implement reform of the business registration system to better suit the new economic framework that emerged in the country following the collapse of communist rule. The uniqueness of the Bulgarian case is that there were two distinct stages of business registration reforms, which marked two separate periods in the sociopolitical development of Bulgaria: the transformation from planned to market economy and the accession of the country to the European Union (EU). This collection of case studies describes experiences and draws lessons from varied business registration reform programs in economies in vastly different stages of development: Bulgaria, Estonia, Ireland, Madagascar, and Malaysia. The case studies were written based on a desk study of reforms in each country discussed. Then, more detailed information was gathered by field-based researchers. In some cases, detail on the business registration process that was in place prior to implementation of reforms was unavailable. As such, data on the number of businesses registered and the time required to completed registration before and after the reforms cannot be compared and contrasted. The partial success of the reform during the first year was a consequence of problems in four areas: lack of legislative will, insufficient financial support, inappropriate organizational structure of the new business registration agency, and weak human resource management. All of these problems delayed progress and had negative effects on the registration agency and the business community.

Seventy five years ago today – April 4, 1949 — foreign ministers of the United States, Canada, and 10 West European countries concluded the Treaty of Washington, creating what became the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The treaty committed U.S. (and Canadian) power and purpose to Western Europe to contain the Soviet Union. In the subsequent four decades, NATO was critical in ending the Cold War and Soviet suzerainty over Central and European Europe, and playing a role in the collapse of the Soviet Union.Today the alliance is faced with a new challenge, that of Vladimir Putin's Russia and its encroachment from the East. Many observers and even some Western governments say Putin's aggression in the 21st Century was inevitable: that he had always contrived to put the old Russian (Soviet) empire back together and to push Moscow's influence Westward, perhaps even beyond Ukraine.Not everyone would agree with that assessment, but the current challenge to the West is nevertheless palpable, beginning with the Russian seizure of Crimea in 2014. In February 2022, Putin rolled tanks as far as the outskirts of Kyiv and today is determined to keep the Russian-speaking Oblasts, including Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia, as well as Crimea. Leaders of many NATO countries are convinced that, if not stopped, Putin threatens the Baltic states, Poland, and NATO's newest allies, Finland and Sweden.Historians will contend it is useless to revisit events and pretend that what happened in 2014 and 2022 could have been deterred. But in this case, there were leaders just after the Cold War who did try to shape European security in a way that might have avoided the current confrontation with Russia. Perhaps Putin always had ambitions to swallow Ukraine and advance Russian influence farther West. But an equally plausible (I would argue more compelling) argument can be made that the West — and later Russia — ultimately forfeited the chance to develop "history" differently.Even before the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, the H. W. Bush and later the Clinton administrations had a critical insight: A defeated Russia should not be treated with the harshness meted out to Germany in 1919, with the Versailles Treaty's so-called War Guilt Clause that required Germany to accept total responsibility for causing the First World War. In Hitler's rise to power, the treaty proved to be highly useful propaganda for targeting the demoralized and resentful German people.Bush thus proclaimed the ambition of a "Europe whole and free" and at peace. As much as anything, that meant not stigmatizing Russia and, to the extent possible, enabling it to play a serious role in the new security architecture the West was putting into place instead of simply disbanding NATO and tempting fate. NATO thus gained Russia's membership in its flagship Partnership for Peace and Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council. It also welcomed Russian troops in the post-Bosnia War Implementation Force (IFOR) – the first such military cooperation since U.S. and Soviet forces met on the Elbe River in 1945. Because some Central European countries remained wary of a potentially revanchist Russia, NATO invited Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary to be full members in 1997. The Russians were not pleased, but they turned a blind eye to NATO membership for the first two of these new allies because of Moscow's concern that at some point Germany might again pose a threat. It was thus useful to Russia to have Poland and the Czech Republic "surround" Germany with NATO and U.S. power, just as Moscow had agreed that united Germany could be a full NATO ally. Along with that first enlargement of NATO, the alliance negotiated a NATO-Russia Founding Act, with a remarkable set of common principles, self-proclaimed limits on NATO military activities in Central Europe, and a long list of cooperative projects. At the same time, lest there be any concern that Ukraine, sited between NATO and Russia, would fall under Russia's sway, NATO concluded a Charter with Ukraine, which complemented a 1994 three-power non-aggression pledge to Ukraine (U.S., UK, and Russia) — which Russia broke in 2014 and 2022 — in exchange for Kyiv relinquishing its Soviet nuclear weapons left over from the Cold War.Then, new officials came to power in Washington who lacked historical perspective: they decided that Russia was of no account. Notably, the U.S. abrogated the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty — a symbol more than substance of Moscow's desire still to be seen as a great power. Then the U.S. deployed anti-ballistic missiles in Central Europe, in violation of the NATO-Russia Founding Act. For its part, Russia also took negative steps, quitting the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty and violating the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty,. which led the U.S. to leave it.Most damaging to the chances for building shared security and avoiding a new confrontation, in 2008 President George W. Bush pressured NATO to declare that Ukraine and Georgia "will become members of NATO." This was clearly beyond what any major country could accept (for the U.S.: think Cuba) and violated the 1997 tacit understandings on Ukraine's position between East and West. Both NATO and the United States have repeated that pledge regularly ever since — ironically so, since it is virtually inconceivable that the alliance could get the required consensus of its 33 members in order for Ukraine to join. This geopolitical folly does not justify any of Putin's actions. But, along with further NATO enlargements and a 2014 U.S.-led government coup in Kyiv, it has helped Putin make the case at home that NATO is seeking to surround Russia.Today, NATO has made it clear that it must help Ukraine counter Russian aggression, while, following President Joe Biden's lead, not putting member troops on the ground that could lead to miscalculations or escalation. Yes, the U.S. Congress must finally appropriate a new tranche of vitally-needed arms for Ukraine to defend itself, though it now appears that, even with more aid, Ukraine will not be able to make significant advances against Russian forces. Beyond the critical importance of aiding Ukraine and showing Putin that there are limits to his military ambitions, at stake is the precious commodity of U.S. credibility, focusing on the security of all NATO allies and especially those that could become further targets of Russian aggression. This is today's most fundamental charge on U.S. foreign and security policy: it must not be funked.At the same time, it has become too easy and popular to proclaim a new cold war with Russia. That would mean high risks and costs, political and psychological rigidities, and constant fears of miscalculation and possible escalation from one war (Ukraine) to broader conflict on the Continent. One has to remember that from the time when the U.S.-Soviet confrontation stabilized strategically — about 1963 — it would be more than a quarter century before the Cold War ended.Moreover, it has become too easy to ignore an incontrovertible geopolitical reality: that Russia cannot be wished away. At some point, it will again become a great power, though unlikely to be a superpower as was the Soviet Union. The West, beginning with the United States, will have to deal with this fact, in our own self-interest. That argues for caution, especially at this summer's NATO summit, to keep from crossing the Rubicon to permanent confrontation with Russia. NATO must not close off all avenues of non-military engagement, including navigating a pathway to a negotiated settlement to end the Russia-Ukraine war. It cannot abandon its strategic stabilization and arms control efforts, and should not promote a new division of Europe between friends and permanent foe. Support for Ukraine in its valiant defense, yes; thwarting alternatives to a new cold war, no.