The evaluation examines the development effectiveness of the World Bank Group’s support for trade facilitation and identifies lessons for future engagement.
... Exibir mais + The World Bank Group has played a leading role in trade facilitation reform over the past 12 years, having identified lowering trade costs as a crucial means to promote its development agenda. Among its contributions, the Bank Group has been a leading technical partner to the WTO during the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) process throughout the evaluation period. Main findings of the report include: (i) Over the evaluation period, the World Bank Group has demonstrated leadership in facilitating trade through its broad scope of work: (893 interventions of all types) in addition to Advisory and Analytic work, generally targeting countries with the greatest bottlenecks, results, in its contribution to a substantial reduction of international trade costs, and its creation of global public goods through thought leadership, convening power, and its trade facilitation indicators - which contributed to a positive dynamic in reforms. (ii) Most World Bank Group projects supporting trade facilitation reforms achieved their development objective, and all three institutions exceeded their corporate scorecard targets. The World Bank’s investment lending appears to be substantially more effective than its policy operations. At the trade facilitation intervention level, the overall success rate averaged 79 percent.
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The international development community acknowledges that the SDGs will not be achieved without greater participation from the private sector. Estimates for investment needs in developing countries alone range from $3.3 trillion to $4.5 trillion per year.
... Exibir mais + Up to 70 percent of the investment gap could come from the private sector, according to international estimates. Engaging the private sector as a financier, operator, service provider, or innovator in the pursuit of the SDGs requires efficiently functioning and competitive markets and effective governments. Such markets only emerge when there is a sufficiently conducive enabling environment that not only addresses market failures through policy reform but also improving underperforming markets through demonstration effects, enhancing competition, innovation, integration and enhancing skills through investments and advisory services. This evaluation was designed to shed light on several key aspects of the IFC’s creating markets agenda and experience on the ground. Those key aspects include the following: (i) Identification of market creating opportunities; (ii) Channels through which IFC contributes to market creation; (iii) Results from IFC’s market creating interventions; and (iv) Success factors driving the Bank Group’s market creation results.
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In recent years, the world has seen formidable manifestations of citizens’ engagement. By taking to the streets to condemn corruption scandals, by rallying on social media to address growing inequalities, or by participating in global consultations to develop the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), ordinary citizens are increasingly eager and able to make their voices heard.
... Exibir mais + At the same time, after several decades of progress, the space for citizens’ voices is shrinking globally as several governments raise legal barriers to constrain actions by civil society organizations (CSOs) and to muzzle the media. In this context, the World Bank Group’s commitment to citizen engagement can catalyze change. This is even more important because achieving the SDGs and the twin goals rests on the active involvement of citizens and local governments.
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This paper analyzes the spatial distribution of refugees over 1987-2017 and establishes several stylized facts about refugees today compared with past decades.
... Exibir mais + (i) Refugees today travel longer distances. (ii) Refugees today are less likely to seek protection in a neighboring country. (iii) Refugees today are less geographically concentrated. And (iv) refugees today are more likely to reside in a high-income OECD country. The findings bring new evidence to the debate on refugee burden-sharing.
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Documento de trabalho sobre pesquisa de políticas WPS9206 APR 07, 2020
The international development community acknowledges that the SDGs will not be achieved without greater participation from the private sector. Estimates for investment needs in developing countries alone range from $3.3 trillion to $4.5 trillion per year.
... Exibir mais + Up to 70 percent of the investment gap could come from the private sector, according to international estimates. Engaging the private sector as a financier, operator, service provider, or innovator in the pursuit of the SDGs requires efficiently functioning and competitive markets and effective governments. Such markets only emerge when there is a sufficiently conducive enabling environment that not only addresses market failures through policy reform but also improving underperforming markets through demonstration effects, enhancing competition, innovation, integration and enhancing skills through investments and advisory services. This evaluation was designed to shed light on several key aspects of the IFC’s creating markets agenda and experience on the ground. Those key aspects include the following: (i) Identification of market creating opportunities; (ii) Channels through which IFC contributes to market creation; (iii) Results from IFC’s market creating interventions; and (iv) Success factors driving the Bank Group’s market creation results.
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The evaluation examines the development effectiveness of the World Bank Group’s support for trade facilitation and identifies lessons for future engagement.
... Exibir mais + The World Bank Group has played a leading role in trade facilitation reform over the past 12 years, having identified lowering trade costs as a crucial means to promote its development agenda. Among its contributions, the Bank Group has been a leading technical partner to the WTO during the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) process throughout the evaluation period. Main findings of the report include: (i) Over the evaluation period, the World Bank Group has demonstrated leadership in facilitating trade through its broad scope of work: (893 interventions of all types) in addition to Advisory and Analytic work, generally targeting countries with the greatest bottlenecks, results, in its contribution to a substantial reduction of international trade costs, and its creation of global public goods through thought leadership, convening power, and its trade facilitation indicators - which contributed to a positive dynamic in reforms. (ii) Most World Bank Group projects supporting trade facilitation reforms achieved their development objective, and all three institutions exceeded their corporate scorecard targets. The World Bank’s investment lending appears to be substantially more effective than its policy operations. At the trade facilitation intervention level, the overall success rate averaged 79 percent.
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The treatment of credit data during a crisis has potential impact on the integrity of the credit reporting system and ultimately the financial markets.
... Exibir mais + Inadequate and untimely data reduces the reliance placed by credit providers on the credit reporting system and can lead to credit rationing, increase in the cost of credit and exclusion of borrowers. A crisis such as the COVID 19 (Coronavirus) impacts on good performing borrowers' ability to meet their scheduled payments relegating them to the same level with existing non-performing borrowers. This brings to the fore the discussion on how missed or delayed payments associated with vis major should be treated in the credit reporting system, particularly on whether payment delays caused as a result of the vis major should be reported and if so, what weighting it should have on a borrower’s credit history and credit risk score.
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Low utilization of household credit in developing countries may be partially due to religious considerations. In a randomized marketing experiment in Jordan, this paper estimates the effect of sharia-compliant loan features on demand for credit.
... Exibir mais + To comply with Islamic law, the sharia-compliant product uses a bank fee rather than an interest payment structure, while keeping the rest of the product features very similar. Sharia-compliance increased the application rate for loans from 18 percent to 22 percent, an increase in demand that is equivalent to a 10 percent decrease in interest rates. This study also randomly varied the price of the sharia-compliant loan and finds that less religious individuals are twice as elastic with respect to price as the more religious. By comparing reasons for refusal across treatment groups, this paper estimates that survey measures that try to assess the importance of religious objections to conventional credit overestimate the importance of this type of objection by a third.
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Documento de trabalho sobre pesquisa de políticas WPS9200 APR 02, 2020
This paper studies the dynamics of credit supply when a negative shock impacts a substantial share of bank loans. The analysis exploits the 2014 collapse of energy prices, using the universe of Mexican commercial bank loans.
... Exibir mais + The findings show that, after the drop in energy prices, the credit default swap spreads (CDS) of firms in the energy sector soared, and banks that were more exposed to the energy sector increased even more their exposure ex post, by supplying loans to their larger debtors in the energy sector at lower interest rates. An increase of one standard deviation in ex-ante exposure to the energy sector increased loan volume to borrowers in the sector by 18 percent and reduced loan rates charged by 6 percent, even though borrower’s CDS spreads were widening. Highly exposed banks amplified this sector-specific shock to the rest of the economy by contracting lending to other sectors, with important real effects, as the borrowers could not switch credit suppliers. Finally, the energy price shock had a large negative impact on macro outcomes, especially in the capital-intensive secondary sector. Quantitatively, a one standard deviation increase in the exposure of a state's banks to the energy sector reduces its GDP by 1.8 percent.
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Documento de trabalho sobre pesquisa de políticas WPS9202 APR 02, 2020
These remarks were delivered by World Bank Group President David Malpass during Press Call on first operations for COVID-19 (Coronavirus)emergency health support on April 2, 2020.
... Exibir mais + He started by expressing his deepest condolences to people around the world who are suffering with COVID-19 or who have lost a friend or loved one to the pandemic. He mentioned about how the countries have been taking important steps to slow or stop the spread of the virus and to provide treatment to their people. He spoke about the World Bank Group taking broad, fast action to support those efforts with health response operations already underway in over sixty-five countries. He highlighted on World Bank teams who have also been proactive in working worldwide to redeploy resources from existing projects to fight COVID-19, through restructuring, reallocation, triggering emergency components of existing projects, and activation of Catastrophe Deferred Drawdown Options (Cat-DDOs). He spoke about the expectation of a major global recession due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and how the World Bank Group intends to respond forcefully and massively with support programs, especially for IDA countries, involving significant increase in provision of their highly concessional financing and grants. He concluded by emphasizing how imperative it is that the Bank act quickly and decisively to reduce the pandemic’s spread and strengthen countries’ ability to respond, and Bank's actions at the World Bank Group are vital contributions to these efforts.
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On March 31, 2020, International Development Association (IDA) Board of Governors adopted resolution number two hundred and forty-four. It was resolved that general increase in subscriptions of the Association shall be authorized on the following terms and conditions: authorization of subscriptions and contributions; agreement to pay; payment; mode of payment; currency of denomination and payment; effective date; advance contributions; authority to use subscription and contributions; HPC and arrears clearance contributions; authorization of grants, guarantees, equity investments and risks intermediation, administration of IDA18 funders under the nineteenth replenishment; and allocation of voting rights under nineteenth replenishment.
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Relatório da Diretoria Executiva 147251 MAR 31, 2020
While human mobility has important benefits for economic growth, it can generate negative externalities. This paper studies the effect of mobility on the spread of disease in a low-incidence setting when people do not internalize their risks to others.
... Exibir mais + Using malaria as a case study and 15 billion mobile phone records across nine million SIM cards, this paper causally quantifies the relationship between travel and the spread of disease. The estimates indicate that an infected traveler contributes to 1.7 additional cases reported in the health facility at the traveler's destination. This paper develops a simulation-based policy tool that uses mobile phone data to inform strategic targeting of travelers based on their origins and destinations. The simulations suggest that targeting informed by mobile phone data could reduce the caseload by 50 percent more than current strategies that rely only on previous incidence.
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Documento de trabalho sobre pesquisa de políticas WPS9198 MAR 30, 2020
Experience from previous global and food crises provides some guidance for appropriate trade responses during the crisis and those that are likely to undermine effective national and global responses.
... Exibir mais + However, the speed, scale and nature of this crisis are unprecedented which requires thinking outside of the normal box by analysts and exceptionally brave steps from policy-makers. There are however, some positive measures that governments can take to ameliorate the impact of the current crisis.
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Maintaining trade flows as much as possible during the COVID-19 pandemic will be crucial in providing access to essential food and medical items and in limiting negative impacts on jobs and poverty.
... Exibir mais + Some countries are closing border crossings and implementing protectionist measures such as restricting exports of critical medical supplies. Although these measures may in the short-term provide some immediate reduction in the spread of the disease, in the medium term they may undermine health protection, as countries lose access to essential products to fight the pandemic. Instead, governments should refrain from introducing new barriers to trade and consider removing import tariffs and other taxes at the border on critical medical equipment and products, including food, to support the health response. Trade facilitation measures can contribute to the response to the crisis by expediting the movement, release, and clearance of goods, including goods in transit. The World Bank Group provides guidance and technical assistance to developing and least developed countries to implement best practices to facilitate the free flow of goods. This note provides initial guidance on measures: to support business continuity and protection of front-line officers, and to facilitate safe cross-border trade, which includes (i) handling of relief/emergency consignments, (ii) enhanced use of risk management, safe processing of risk passengers and (iii) increased internal and external border agency collaboration.
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