We revisit the relevance of the World Bank’s Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA)against growth performance, with attention to possible biases arising from qualitative andquantitative changes in the CPIA methodology.
... See More + The CPIA, introduced in the late 1970s, had aseries of extensive revisions in the late 1980s and the early 1990s, placing more emphasis oninstitutional capacity and social policies. We reexamine a claim by previous studies that the CPIAis weakly relevant for economic performance, by running cross-country growth regressions with apanel dataset covering 146 countries between 1995 and 2015, a period over which the CPIA iscomparable. By addressing the possible biases arising from the methodological changes, we showthat the CPIA is a good predictor for future growth.
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This paper investigates the impact of World Bank development policy operations on the quality of economic policy during the period 1998-2015. A new theoretical framework distinguishes among three effects that have been conflated hitherto: (a) marginal impacts of additional policy actions within the current year; (b) length of the policy engagement with client countries, and (c) changes over time in the marginal impact of policy actions.
... See More + The analysis focuses on policy actions that are particularly relevant for the quality of economic management. Consistent with past research, robust panel estimations indicate that development policy financing has a positive effect on the quality of government economic policy. The econometric work suggests that the nature of the policy dialogue and quality of the engagement with government matter more than the sheer number of policy actions adopted. There is also tentative evidence that although the positive impact is sustained over time, the initial years of an engagement are the most productive for improvement in government economic policy. This may be linked to the fact that over time the reform program changes from 'first-generation' to more complex 'second-generation' policy actions.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8645 NOV 13, 2018
Effective fiscal policy depends on the amount of budget resources available to raise spending or lower taxes without jeopardizing fiscal sustainability.
... See More + This resource availability is often called fiscal space. Since the global financial crisis, fiscal space in emerging market and developingeconomies has narrowed. This makes these economies more vulnerable to sudden spikes in financing costs and limits their ability to counteract adverse shocks.
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The role of public financial management (PFM) as a contributory factor in improving service delivery and stimulating economic progress is getting greater attention in the sector-related literature.
... See More + A robust PFM can provide an enabling environment for improving service delivery and promoting economic growth. This report acknowledges that PFM and other factors influence the quality of service delivery. It also makes a case for how in the existing dispensation in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, enhanced budget management can contribute to infrastructure development and improved service delivery. Inherent deficiencies in budget utilization in KP imply that high-budget execution needs to be looked at in combination with the quality of budget formulation in order to make the budget contributions to service delivery more meaningful. The Government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (GoKP) has undertaken significant reform measures to improve PFM and to assess the impact of reform efforts, the GoKP commissioned PFM assessment using the upgraded PEFA Framework (2016). The results of the KP PEFA review(2017) highlighted gaps on the PFM continuum, necessitating scrutiny of the causes resulting in such gaps. The GoKP in formulating its second-generation of PFM reforms considered it an opportune time to diagnose the system and process deficiencies to ensure that the greater resources made available to KP by virtue of the NFC1 Award (2009) are prudently managed to improve the infrastructure and the quality of service delivery. In the last decade, GoKP has displayed strong ownership for reforms. The GoKP formulated a PFM reform strategy in 2010; based on this experience, GoKP is devising another and broader strategy to sustain the pace of reforms. The report presents a number of findings and recommendations for reform. The World Bank has been engaged with the GoKP and particularly since the establishment of the Multi Donor Trust Fund and during the design phase of the Governance and Policy Project(KP) aided the government in problem-articulation. During the course of the PEFA assessment, a government-wide Steering Committee was constituted to provide oversight to the PEFA assessment. The same forum was used to commence a dialogue with the government and engage them in finalizing the recommendations based on the appetite for reforms.
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Report 131372 OCT 24, 2018
Khan,Abid; Hyder,Rehan; El-Shorbagi,Akram Abd El-Aziz HusseinDisclosed
The development objectives of Second Phase of Rural Electrification Project is to support increased penetration of renewable energy and increased access to electricity services in the dispersed off-grid areas of Vanuatu.
... See More + This restructuring requires the following change: (i) the grant agreement will be amended to link the Sustainable Energy Financing Program (SEFP) to Vanuatu Rural Electrification Project (VREP) I and II by including a provision in the grant agreements that the failure by Vanuatu to perform its obligations under the project agreement between Vanuatu and the World Bank for the SEFP RSF will be an additional event of suspension under the VREP I and VREP II grant agreements.
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