Over the last two decades, Moldova has achieved major development results: with average annual growth of 4.6 percent since 2000, poverty has decreased dramatically, and the growth has also benefitted more citizens: Inequality, as measured by the Gini Index, has declined from 36.4 in 2000 to 26.3 in 2016.
... See More + Macroeconomic stability has been maintained despite the 2014 banking crisis, and monetary and the exchange rate policies have led to a declining inflation protecting the living standard of Moldova’s citizens. The country has benefitted from its unique assets, such as a strategic European location and growing global integration. The authorities’ focus on investment policy put the country on investors’ map: commitment demonstrated in investment promotion and the level of service and attention that was given to investors led to attracting manufacturing FDI. They on the other hand helped reorient exports towards more technology-intensive products and allowed for a stronger contribution of exports to growth and employment generation. Moldova has also significantly reformed its business environment, ranking today 47th of the 190 countries measured on ease of doing business. There was also effort to improve the quality of human capital. The education system reform led to improvement of student learning outcomes in Moldova, as measured by the Program for International Students Assessment (PISA), although there are still major gaps in learning outcomes that need to be addressed. The preprimary enrollment rates increased substantially, and labor force participation rate increased to historical highs, albeit at 43 percent still comparatively low.
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Working Paper 138625 JUL 01, 2019
Kahkonen,Satu Kristiina J.; Akhalkatsi,Anna; Andronova Vincelette,GallinaEnglishDisclosed
The development objective of Romania Health Program for Results project is to increase the coverage of primary health care for under-served populations and improve the efficiency of health spending by addressing underlying institutional challenges.
... See More + Based on the National Health Strategy (2014-2020), this program focuses on the following three areas where the Bank’s support and the Bank’s engagement is likely to make a significant impact: (i) improving population health initiatives (PHC) coverage for under served populations; (ii) re-balancing the hospital-centric system towards effective PHC; and (iii) improving fiscal efficiency by addressing critical cost drivers. Some of the negative impacts include: (i) increase in medical waste generation will cause environment pollution; (ii) air pollution; (iii) water pollution; (iv) climate change-induced natural disasters or epidemics of diseases exacerbated by climate change; (v) dust pollution; and (vi) noise pollution.
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Program-for-Results Environmental and Social Systems Assessment 137986 JUN 17, 2019
This current Country Economic Memorandum is intended to provide a comprehensive analysis of growthconstraints and recommendations. While it updates some aspects of these earlier studies, its main focus is on enterprise performance.
... See More + Insofar as enterprise performance occurs in a larger institutional context, this focus necessarily touches on several of the earlier themes, particularly the rule of law, business regulation, and education. The first chapter presents a diagnostic that highlights the problem of falling productivity in the enterprise sector and points to elements of market structure (particularly state ownership) that undermine productivity growth and curtail the growth of the private sector. This chapter also focuses on demand-side issues in export markets, and highlights policy lessons from sectors with high productivity that could drive future growth. A second chapter focuses on foreign firms, which are high productivity enterprises within Moldova, and looks at investment promotion and ways to improve the contribution of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) to the economy. Subsequent chapters extend the analysis to incentives shaping enterprise performance and opportunities for growth led by the private sector, particularly: competition and regulatory policies (Chapter 3); tax policy insofar as it affects incentives and tax buoyancy that underpin macroeconomic stability (Chapter 4); and finally, education as a crucial input into enterprise development (Chapter 5).
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Moldova, like many other countries in the region, is facing rapid economic and demographic transitions. Employers report that inadequate levels of workforce skills hamper their productivity.
... See More + Recognizing the importance of workforce development to improve the country’s socioeconomic prospects, the Government of Moldova approved the educational development strategies for 2013-2020. The main objectives are to improve the quality of education and training system and better match its outcome with the labor market needs. In particular, information on short-term training providers, including their characteristics, practices, and outcomes, are not available. Given this lack of information and the government’s strong interest in better understanding specifically the provision of short-term training providers, the World Bank launched the Training Assessment Project (TAP) to identify the landscape and characteristics of these institutions and assess the extent to which they follow practices that are conducive to improved service delivery. TAP collects data on the outcomes of training institutions as an indicator of their performance. To get an accurate picture of the characteristics, actions, values, and outcomes of training providers, TAP uses two types of data collection instruments - a questionnaire for training institutions and complementary focus group guides to gather qualitative data on the same topic matters from students, graduates, and employers. This report will present findings from the data collected on short-term training providers in Moldova in 2017-2018. The report intends to inform both short-term training providers and the state entities responsible for the governance of these institutions.
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This note provides an update of recent poverty and shared prosperity dynamics, and some of the underlying drivers, as well as introducing the new international poverty thresholds that are currently in use.
... See More + The purpose of the update is to take advantage of the release of Household Budget Survey (HBS) data for the 2016 survey round. The previous poverty and shared prosperity update, release in 2017, updated poverty and shared prosperity trends up to 2015. The first section discusses the overall progress poverty reduction and shared prosperity up to 2016 – the latest available household budget survey data. Notably, the poverty dynamics are presented, for the first time, using PPP values based on the 2011 ICP exercise, and using the newly adopted Income Class poverty thresholds of $3.3/day and $5.5/day. For the purposes of this note, we focus on the $5.5/day threshold, but the section also presents a comparative analysis of poverty dynamics based on old and new thresholds. Because this is the first time when internationally-comparable poverty and shared prosperity statistics for Moldova are presented based on the ICP 2011 PPP conversion factors, and relying on newly defined income-group based thresholds, the introduction has a brief discussion of the reasons behind the change in the World Bank’s poverty methodology used for global poverty monitoring, and the implications of this change for poverty trends over time and for the absolute levels of poverty reported in Moldova. Section 2 discussed the major drivers of shared prosperity during the 2011-2016 period. Section 3 examines the profile of poor and vulnerable populations, their asset endowments, and changes in this profile in recent years.
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Romania lags behind other European Union (EU) countries in many health outcomes. The government of Romania plans to build three new regional hospitals in the North-West (NW), North-East (NE), and South-West (SW) regions.
... See More + These are envisaged to be tertiary referral hospitals providing highly complex care to their region. Five or six further regional hospitals may follow this first batch. Regional hospitals are not just bricks and mortar, but the apex of a complex regional health system. As flagship public hospitals, regional hospitals are planned to be the hub of each regional health system. Work to date, however, has focused on design and construction rather than how regional hospitals will interact and coordinate with other facilities. To highlight factors in the wider health system that are crucial to the role of regional hospitals, the World Bank undertook a comprehensive assessment of regional referral networks in Romania. This report drew on available hospital activity data, stakeholder interviews, and literature review to assess the extent to which these factors are in place using tracer conditions, such as total knee replacements and stroke. In conclusion, without as much attention to coordination of care within regional health networks as construction of regional hospitals, the hospitals will not be able to fulfil their promise as flagship providers of complex care.
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This publication is the executive summary of the “Romania Water Diagnostic Report,” prepared by the World Bank to support its water sector dialogue with the Government of Romania.
... See More + The full report aims to provide stakeholders, especially from the Romanian Government and the European Commission, with a comprehensive stock-taking of the situation in the Romanian water sector in 2017, 10 years after the country joined the EU. The report documents the current situation, discusses the main lessons learned from reforms in water resources management, water supply sanitation and irrigation, and identifies the key water challenges faced by Romania. While not pretending to cover all possible water-related issues (due inter alia to limited access to some information), it seeks to identify the key policy issues and indicate what steps the government could consider in the near future. The situation in the water sector in Romania is analyzed through the lens of water security, with a focus on compliance with EU water legislation and the inclusion of the poor. Water security is a broad concept that encompasses ensuring sustainable use of water resources, delivering affordable services to all, and mitigating water-related risks in a context of change—the goal being to build a water secure future for the people, the economy and the environment in a context of global changes. In the case of Romania, the over-arching concept of water security is closely linked to compliance and inclusion.
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Moldova’s reformers have long sought to strengthen the rule of law including the independence, efficiency, and integrity of its courts. A well-functioning justice sector is critical for good governance, reducing corruption, and efficient delivery of public services.
... See More + The Superior Council of Magistracy (SCM) is Moldova’s independent self-regulating body for the judiciary, overseeing judges’ appointments, transfers, and promotions. Moldova’s national development strategy, Moldova 2020, approved by law in 2012, identified justice reform as a strategic priority. Despite numerous new laws, justice, and anti-corruption reform implementation remains lackluster, with some reforms compromised or throttled from inside the system. Access to justice for vulnerable groups - especially for women and girls - remains a key concern. The court reorganization is expected to lead to promotions, transfers, and terminations, unavoidable in a restructuring of this scale and ambition. The court reorganization provides an opportunity to significantly improve sector efficiency: over time, the reorganization will change the distribution of judges, and court staff across Moldova, in line with fewer court locations and increased application of technology. Judges’ performance evaluation and management need to become more transparent, accountable, and rule-based. The justice sector reform strategy (JSRS) declared the promotion and implementation of zero tolerance for justice sector corruption as a key objective, but Moldova has a long way to go, as the 2017 surveys of court users show.
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Report 124516 JAN 01, 2018
Padilla,Susana M.; Solomatova,Aleksandra; Strah,Viorica Dumitri; Mukherjee,Amitabha; Rusu,Constantin; Melis,Eva Maria; Siva,RameshEnglishDisclosed
