At the request of the Government of Egypt (GOE), the objective of this brief note is to provide concise recommendations on next steps for the National Housing Program (NHP). These recommendations and policy analysis are an elaboration of the framework for housing policy reform in urban areas in...

This document builds upon several recent studies and reports carried out in the 2006-2007 period. The first note, entitled analysis of housing supply mechanisms (World Bank), analyzes the situation of housing supply in urban areas in Egypt, including the study of existing formal and informal...

Bulgaria's housing sector provides a window into the broader issues of the country's social, and economic transformation. This process has been difficult, and, as was the case in many transition countries, one of the main problem areas has been the housing sector. While the government has played...

A new amendment to the Law on Credit Unions (CU) dated November 5, 2009, will pass CU supervision to the Polish Financial Services Authority (PFSA), the body that regulates other financial institutions in Poland. Currently, CUs (also known as SKOKs by their Polish acronym) are regulated under...

The objective of this report is to present an assessment of the current legal, regulatory, and supervisory framework in Albania for microfinance, as well as an assessment of institutions rendering microfinance services (MFIs), including the Savings and Credit Associations (SCAs) and credit...

The reform of the Rural Credit Unions (RCUs) currently faces a number of major inter-related challenges. These must be resolved if China is to create a 'modern rural financial system'. The key issues facing policy-makers are: Consolidating independent shareholder ownership in order to realize...

"Massive privatizations of housing in Europe and Central Asia transition countries have significantly reduced rental tenure choice, threatening to impede residential mobility. Policymakers are intensifying their search for adequate policy responses aimed at broadening tenure choice for more...

"Most countries do not use one single type of housing subsidy but combine many of them. Le Blanc provides operational criteria that allow evaluation of systems of housing subsidies, both at the individual program level and at the aggregate (country) level. He examines the public finance...