With the COVID-19 pandemic, the development context for the world is fundamentally challenged in many ways. The pandemic has taken a drastic human toll, and its global-scale economic and social impacts affected rural development work focused on the most poor and vulnerable populations. It has...

All countries across South Asia, faced with the rising risks of COVID-19 infection rates, implemented severe economic lockdowns in early 2020 with varying frequencies and time periods. While the exact nature and duration of these lockdowns varied across countries in the South Asia Region (SAR),...

City local governments have been facing multiple challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic to secure adequate financial resources for response and recovery. This report assesses the impact of the pandemic on local governments' financial situations through cross-country analysis and comparison....

The COVID-19 pandemic affected people's livelihoods in many ways, particularly in developing countries. This paper examines the degree to which recovering mobility levels impacted labor market outcomes in Kenya over the course of the pandemic, starting from May 2020 until June 2021. It uses an...

The COVID-19 pandemic is posing an existential threat to the air transport sector globally, including in Africa. Due to sustained and significant loss of revenue coupled with the presence of several fixed and quasi-fixed inputs in this sector, the survival of carriers is questionable in the...

Russia saw strong growth in 2021, with momentum weakening late in the year. Growth will slow as Russia battles COVID-19 and elevated inflation. Globally, environmental sustainability is becoming central to the economic agenda. The challenge for Russia is to fundamentally transform its economic...

This report is part of a larger series of stocktaking and analytical products on plastic pollution in South Asia. It supports the Bank's commitment to work with countries of South Asia to pursue and scale-up policies and programs that help them move toward a circular plastic economy and, in...

In June 2020, the Uganda Bureau of Statistics, with the support from the World Bank, has launched the High-Frequency Phone Survey on COVID-19 to track the impacts of the pandemic on a monthly basis for a period of 12 months. The survey aimed to recontact the entire sample of households that had...

To monitor the social and economic effects on households during the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Bank is conducting High-Frequency Phone Surveys of Households in Vietnam. These monitoring data help generate insights on household well-being amidst this dynamic period and highlight the effects on...