The report presents both the opportunities of and the bottlenecks for furthering the digital agenda. It emphasizes that the first step is to get the basics right. This includes enabling access to and adoption of high-quality affordable broadband, initiating a paradigm shift in building digital...

This report examines the role of infrastructure in explaining why the region lags so far behind the rest of the country. More importantly, it looks at how improved infrastructure may help the region catch up. Infrastructure is examined here through its impact on social as well as economic...

The World Bank prepared three background studies as inputs for the development of the Cambodia Logistics Master Plan led by the Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC) in 2017-2018. These studies benefit from a close coordination and collaboration with Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA)...

The Mashreq countries must fully leverage digital infrastructure as well as their relative strengths in transforming their economies. The report lays out the strategic importance of digital infrastructure for countries in the region, takes stock of its status, and provides recommendations....

This report examines Ukraine's economic decline and development through the lens of technology upgrading. The technology upgrading framework assumes that economic growth is a function of technology capability, whereby upgrading occurs through technological, industrial, and organizational change....

The Kyrgyz economy has been, since its earliest days, the most liberal and open among Central Asian countries resulting in an atypical structural transformation with limited productivity growth. It was the first Central Asian country to become a WTO member in 1998 and its trade share in GDP is...

The Eastern Partnership (EaP) is a joint policy initiative, which aims to deepen and strengthen relations between the European Union (EU) and its six Eastern neighbours. One of its four priority areas is stronger connectivity which includes the extension of the Trans European Transport Network...

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) can sometimes be perceived as a means for delivering infrastructure for free. A more nuanced but still inexact view is that they are a mechanism to overcome fiscal constraints. Some argue, perhaps rightly, that often governments enter PPP contracts without...

Argentina has a fairly developed transport system, which in the case of cargo shows a performance in progressive decline, with remarkable differences between components, logistics chains, and regions. Water transport, a key sector for the country's connectivity with world markets, encounters...

Air transport plays an important role in fostering development, particularly in facilitating economic integration, generating trade, promoting tourism, and creating employment opportunities. It facilitates integration into the global economy and provides vital connectivity on a national,...