Suchergebnisse

The rural population of Central Asia depends on agriculture for a significant proportion of household income. Yet production and productivity levels in the farm sector have fallen, and agriculture cannot continue to absorb excess labour without rural income levels falling still further. Small and medium enterprises have a key role to play in promoting equitable economic growth and reducing poverty in the rural areas of Central Asia. The small and medium enterprise (SME) sector is relatively dynamic, interacts favourably with the farm sector, and has the potential to absorb excess labour in the farm sector, and to provide rural households with key additional sources of income. This paper assesses the significance of SMEs in the rural economy, and then builds on that assessment to analyse the policy and regulatory environment for rural SMEs. Policy responses to the particular challenges offered for SME development by rural areas are outlined. Practical recommendations for effective rural SME promotion by central and local government and governmental agencies are presented, with relevant examples and case studies where appropriate to provide a real world context.

The Arab Spring in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has brought to the forefront key challenges: the need to create job opportunities, equal access, a level playing field, transparency and accountability, and a fair and competitive environment. Crony capitalism, the privileged access of certain elites to favorable legal and regulatory treatment, access to markets, and the coincidence of political and economic power, was a major concern contributing to the uprising. Many saw privilege and corruption as the source of unemployment and inequality, effectively raising barriers to entry and growth for the majority of entrepreneurs. At the same time, practices such as connected lending and preferential land allocations, contributed to poor performance of key institutions, underpinning the market economy. It is critical for the MENA countries to achieve the aspirations of their people and attain sustainable and inclusive development by expanding private-led employment and creating entrepreneurship opportunities. This report assesses the supply and demand of financial services to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the MENA region, as well as the regulatory, institutional and policy environment that determines the cost, risk, and scale of SME finance. Emerging and promising SME finance models for banks, investors, government and regulators are outlined. These could significantly improve the outreach, viability, risk management, and development impacts of SME finance in the MENA region. SMEs need access to longer term credit products and equity, in addition to working capital loans and trade finance. They also need payment and card services, deposit facilities, liquidity management, risk management tools and insurance. The principal role of the state is as an enabler and regulator, providing the financial infrastructure, and legal and policy frameworks that financial institutions need to be able to meet the range of SME financial needs profitably. All this will contribute to attaining a more sustainable and inclusive system that can play a more important role in economic growth, and the regions prosperity.

During the central planning era, rural development in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) was frequently associated with agricultural development. Recently, opinion has begun to move away from this position. Attention is now focusing on the role of the non-farm sector in the context of rural development because of this sector's potential for absorbing excess labor from agriculture, alleviating problems caused by urban-rural migration, contributing to income growth, and promoting a more equitable distribution of income. At the beginning of the transformation process in transition countries, economic policies focused mainly on macroeconomic problems, and the increasing income disparity between rural and urban regions was ignored. We now know that the increasing inter-regional divergence in the transition economies is one of the major transformation problems. This is one of the reasons why the World Bank, OECD, and the EU have formulated special rural development strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to improve our understanding of the role of the non-farm rural economy in assisting the rural reconstruction of the Balkans (specifically, Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, FYR Macedonia, Romania). The rural diversification, migration, employment, poverty and policy implications for this in terms of economic development and reconstruction as part of an integrated rural development strategy are crucial to both appropriate institutional and policy developments in the Balkans. We compare the Balkan States to China's Township and Village Enterprises (TVEs) because recent studies suggest that the rural non-farm economy (RNFE) may provide an important and dynamic contribution to economic growth, whether linked to the farm economy or not. While diversification into non-farm enterprise activities may provide important income smoothing and risk management strategies to rural households that are also involved in agriculture, enterprise activities located in rural towns and villages in China have eclipsed agricultural activities in terms of output and income. This paper examines the role that the RNFE may play in the development and reconstruction of the Balkan States, and seeks to identify factors from the successful Chinese TVE experience that are replicable to the Balkans. Recommendations are made concerning the policy and institutional environment that can best foster the growth of the RNFE, and the role of local government in supporting rural enterprise development.

We study how unconventional monetary policy announcements affected professional forecasters' predictions of bond rates, gross domestic product growth and inflation using data from the monthly survey by the Wall Street Journal. We find that unconventional monetary policy (UMP) announcements moved predicted bond rates in the direction the Fed intended. UMP announcements had differential impacts on forecasters' predictions; they also tended to move growth and inflation predictions in directions opposite those the Fed intended due to Fed information effects. A policy implication of our study is that the Fed should communicate economic projections to the public separately from monetary policy announcements to mitigate Fed information effects. (JEL E52, E58)

Nkwe Enterprise Finance, a financial service to fund microenterprises in the North West province, suspended its operations after just over two years of lending. (...) This article investigates the reasons for the suspension of Nkwe's activities and draws conclusions on the lessons that should be learnt for the future development of microenterprise funding in South Africa. (Dev South Afr/DÜI)