The objective of the Inga 3 Basse Chute and Mid-Size Hydropower Development Technical Assistance Project for Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is to contribute to the sustainable development of Inga 3 Basse Chute (BC) and selected mid-size hydropower projects.
... Vea más + There are two components to the project, the first component being Inga 3 BC development support. This component will build on the feasibility study for the development of the Inga site and associated interconnections financed in 2010-13 by the African Development Bank (AfDB). It will finance complementary studies, transaction advice and procurement support, and institutional support and sector strengthening. The scope of activities that will be financed by the TA will be influenced by the fine tuning of the allocation of activities and responsibilities between the public and private sector regarding the design and construction management of the common infrastructures. Finally, the second component is the mid-size hydropower development support. The component aims to develop midsize hydropower projects (with capacity between 10- 100 MW) by selecting potential projects, performing prefeasibility studies, accompanying bidding processes, and evaluating the possibilities for carbon finance. The component will result in feasibility studies and bidding documents, and support to Government of DRC, or GoDRC to select private developers and award concessions for three mid-size hydropower projects.
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Documento de evaluación inicial de proyecto 77420 MAR 05, 2014
The objective of the Albertine Region Sustainable Development Project for Uganda is to improve regional and local access to infrastructure, markets, and skills development in the Albertine region.
... Vea más + The project has three components. The first component, regional access and connectivity aims to improve overall accessibility to the Albertine region, reduce travel times, and improve access to markets and services. It will finance the upgrading of an approximately 100 kilometer (km) stretch of road from Kyenjojo to Kabwoya which forms part of the 238 km Kyenjojo-Hoima-Masindi-Kigumba road connecting the districts of Kyenjojo, Kibaale, Hoima, Masindi, and Kiryandongo in Western Uganda. The second component, local access, planning, and development aims to increase rural accessibility to markets and services, prepare selected key urban centers for growth, and provide economic infrastructure targeted to key sectors in the region. It comprises of following three sub-components: (i) physical planning; (ii) local infrastructure; and (iii) technical assistance and oversight. The third component, skills access and upgrading is designed to upgrade business, technical and vocational education, and training (BTVET) quality in the oil and gas sector, make it more in line with private sector demands, and provide greater access to the BTVET system to people living in the Albertine region. This component will finance the upgrading of selected institutes which support the objectives of the skilling Uganda strategy, including Uganda Petroleum Institute in Kigumba (UPIK) and Uganda Technical College of Kichwamba (UTC) and a new third institute in Nwoya district, including, inter alia, physical infrastructure, goods, curricula development, and instructor training.
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Documento de evaluación inicial de proyecto PAD724 MAR 05, 2014
During the past 20 years, Morocco has implemented a wide range of macroeconomic, social, and labor market reforms that have delivered in terms of growth of gross domestic product and household welfare.
... Vea más + Yet, these positive developments are not reflected by the main labor market indicators, a phenomenon observed elsewhere in developed and developing economies alike and labeled as "jobless growth." For the first time for Morocco, this paper uses quarterly panel data to investigate the question of labor mobility in an effort to determine whether people have moved to better sectors and jobs. The results point to significant labor mobility between labor statuses with quite distinct features across population groups. All groups experience some form of labor market mobility every quarter and women are as mobile as men. However, the transitions that women experience are very different from the transitions than men experience and women's performance is worse than mens performance in almost all aspects of labor mobility.
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Documento de trabajo sobre investigaciones relativas a políticas WPS6795 MAR 01, 2014
What kinds of changes in foreign competition lead domestic industries to seek import protection? To address this question this paper uses detailed monthly U.S. import data to investigate changes in import composition during a 24-month window immediately preceding the filing of a petition for protection.
... Vea más + A decomposition methodology allows a comparison of imports from two groups of countries supplying the same product: those that are named in the petition and those that are not. The same decomposition can be applied to products quite similar to the imports in question, but not subject to a petition. The results suggest that industries typically seek protection when faced with a specific pattern of shocks. First, a persistent positive relative supply shock favors imports from named countries. Second, a negative demand shock hits imports from all sources just prior to domestic industries' petition for protection. The relative supply shock is a broad one; it applies both to named commodities and to the comparison product group. The import demand shock, by contrast, is narrow, hitting only named products. The latter shock is also large: import growth over the two-year window is 15 percentage points lower in named products than in reference products, with most of this gap arising in the final two quarters before the petition. The negative import demand shock appears to be a key event in the run-up to the filing of a petition. It has been missed by previous studies using more aggregated data.
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Documento de trabajo sobre investigaciones relativas a políticas WPS6796 MAR 01, 2014
Financial constraints are widespread in developing countries, where even short-term credit is limited. Finance held by firms as working capital is a substantial proportion of sales revenue, yet the role of working capital is largely neglected by existing models of financial constraints.
... Vea más + This paper presents a dynamic model of the firm that incorporates working capital by introducing a delay between factor payments and the receipt of revenue. In contrast with previous models, the working capital model predicts that firms under binding constraints will substitute between labor and capital in response to demand shocks, causing investment to be countercyclical. For firms near the margin of being constrained, constraints bind when positive production opportunities arise. Output growth is therefore constrained in response to positive shocks but not to negative shocks. Simulations suggest that models without working capital may understate the predicted effects of financial constraints on production efficiency, firm profit and growth over time. The predictions are tested with the Bangladesh Panel Survey data for manufacturing firms. Consistent with the theory, there is evidence that constraints bind when output price increases, that investment by constrained firms is countercyclical, and that output response to positive shocks is dampened for firms that are sometimes constrained. The results also are important for policy. In order to maximize growth, efforts to relieve credit constraints should be focused on periods when demand shocks are high.
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Documento de trabajo sobre investigaciones relativas a políticas WPS6797 MAR 01, 2014
This paper uses regression analysis to identify which country context, reform content, process, and project management variables predict the performance of public sector management projects, as measured by the Independent Evaluation Group's project outcome ratings.
... Vea más + The paper draws on data from a large sample of World Bank public sector management projects that were approved between 1990 and 2013. It contributes to an emerging literature that uses cross-country regressions to analyze public sector management reform patterns. The findings suggest that political context factors have a greater impact on the performance of public sector management projects than on other projects. Specifically, public sector management projects perform better in countries with democratic regimes than autocratic ones. They fare better in the presence of programmatic political parties and in more aid-dependent countries. Project managers' subjective risk assessments predict performance in public sector management operations better than objective risk indicators. These findings suggest that the performance of public sector management projects would benefit from a better alignment of project design with political context and from a more open dialogue about risk between task team leaders and management.
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Documento de trabajo sobre investigaciones relativas a políticas WPS6798 MAR 01, 2014
Industrial parks are as popular as they are controversial, in India and globally. At their best they align infrastructure provision and agglomeration economies to jolt industrial growth.
... Vea más + More often, they generate negative spill-overs, provide handouts, sit empty, or simply do not get built. This paper disaggregates how parks are built and how they fail. It contextualizes parks in India, followed by a thick case study of an innovative scheme that appears to buck the trend. This performance is then explained by the way in which the scheme's design and action fit India's political economy. The paper concludes by considering how the analysis and the lessons learned might inform the design and implementation of industrial park programs and other public interventions, in India and elsewhere.
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Documento de trabajo sobre investigaciones relativas a políticas WPS6799 MAR 01, 2014
The combination of an increasing trade imbalance, concerns about deindustrialization after several years of booming commodity prices, and rising imports of intermediate inputs and capital goods over the last decade has triggered new restrictive trade measures that have been gaining ground in Indonesia.
... Vea más + The Indonesian government is concerned about the impacts that an increased reliance on imported inputs may have on domestic jobs and value added. In addition to use of imported intermediates by firms involved in global production networks, firms use these intermediates for various reasons, including value, variety, and quality. Drawing on the findings of recent research, this note examines the characteristics of firms that rely on imported intermediates, and the role of these foreign intermediates on product quality upgrading and product diversification in Indonesia during 1998-2009. After a careful examination of sector, and firm-level data from Indonesian manufacturing, analysis uncovered three important findings: first, that users of imported inputs in Indonesia are exceptional performers. These firms grow faster in terms of output, value added and employment; they are more productive; and they pay higher wages. Second, both the use and the availability of imported inputs have contributed to improved product quality in Indonesian manufacturing. Third, firms' product diversification processes have been boosted by lower tariffs on inputs and by increased usage of imported versions. In light of these results, this note argues that facilitating imports of intermediate inputs is crucial to the performance of the most dynamic firms and that these intermediate imports diversify the Indonesian manufacturing sector while helping firms climb up the value chain.
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"The Impact of Microcredit on the Poor in Bangladesh: Revisiting the Evidence," by David Roodman and Jonathan Morduch (2014) (henceforth RM) is the most recent of a sequence of papers and web postings that seeks to refute the findings of the Pitt and Khandker (1998; henceforth PK) article "The Impact of Group-Based Credit on Poor Households in Bangladesh: Does the Gender of Participants Matter?"
... Vea más + that microcredit for women had significant, favorable effects on household consumption and other outcomes. In this version of RM, the authors have backed off many of their prior claims and methods after earlier replies noted their faults (see Pitt (1999), Pitt (2011a), Pitt (2011b), and Pitt and Khandker (2012)). Nonetheless, important claims against PK remain in this new version of RM and are addressed below. Readers should refer to Pitt and Khandker (2012) for a discussion of other issues with RM, including a discussion of the bimodal likelihood.
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Documento de trabajo sobre investigaciones relativas a políticas WPS6801 MAR 01, 2014
Improving agricultural productivity and promoting exports are top priorities for the Government of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar. Given the centrality of rice to the rejuvenation of agriculture in Myanmar, the rice sector is of critical importance, especially rice exports.
... Vea más + The government announced ambitious targets of 2 million metric tons (tons)2 of rice exports by 2014/15 and 4 million tons by 2019/20. Recent actual performance is falling short of these targets, but the opening of Myanmar's economy has already helped significantly increase rice exports. The rest of the report is organized as follows. Chapter two provides information on recent rice export developments in Myanmar. Chapter three presents the evolving export opportunities as well as challenges that must be overcome to capitalize on them. Chapter four describes the main constraints at various segments of the value chain and offers possible remedies. Chapter five discusses how rice policy should evolve to support modernization of the rice value chain. Chapter six offers conclusions and policy recommendations. Seven annexes provide further, more detailed information.
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Otro estudios sobre agricultura 85804 FEB 28, 2014
The objectives of the Third Shared Growth Grant (SGG-3) Project for Niger are to: (i) improve the business environment for investment and trade; (ii) increase agricultural productivity; and (iii) improve public financial management.
... Vea más + The proposed SGG-3 supports key reforms in three policy areas. The first policy area aims to establish a competitive and diversified economy to support accelerated and inclusive growth. Reforms under the second policy area continue the reinforce food security and promote sustainable agricultural growth that begun during earlier operations. The third policy area continues the series support to enhance the efficacy of public spending. The proposed SGG-3 completes this program by supporting (i) institutional reforms, including the adoption of a new investment code and measures aimed at strengthening the electricity sector; (ii) reforms that simplify international trade procedures; (iii) expanded labor-market reforms; and (iv) measures to improve transparency in the oil sector.
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As part of the change management initiatives, the SMT endorsed on July 22nd the proposal of a new Country Partnership Framework (CPF) to define the World Bank Group (WBG) country engagement.
... Vea más + The goal is to build on the current country-driven model, but to strengthen this with a more systematic, evidence-based and selective approach to goal setting and prioritization. Under the new approach, WBG country engagements will continue to draw upon the national development strategies of the country. They will also draw upon a Systematic Country Diagnostic (SCD), which will be prepared by WBG staff in close consultation with national authorities and other stakeholders. The SCD is intended to become a reference point for client consultations on priorities for WBG country engagement. It is intended to help the country, the WBG and other development partners establish a dialogue to focus their efforts around goals and activities that have high impact and are aligned with the global goals of ending absolute poverty and boosting shared prosperity in a sustainable manner.
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