The current downturn in commodity prices provides an opportunity for Indonesia to shift away from its dependence on commodity-driven growth towards higher value-added activities in manufacturing and services. However, Indonesia faces both global and structural challenges in making this...

This is a semi-annual report series on recent economic developments and economic policies in the Western Balkans (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, FYR Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia). The report looks at the economic performance and outlook for the Western Balkans region and specific...

This report stems from the work initiated in the Systematic Country Diagnostic (SCD) forUzbekistan in May 2016, which identified the quality of job creation as a central, cross-cuttingtheme. The SCD emphasized that "over the medium term, creating high-productivity, high-paying jobs for...

Morocco has steered significant resources towards large investments in economic sectors identified as strategic to growth, and for increased productivity and value addition. Despite Morocco's strikingly high investment rate, one of the highest in the world at an average of thirty-four percent of...

Jobs are among the most important economic and social concerns in Uzbekistan. This report takes stock of the job situation in Uzbekistan's broader agri-food sector and shows pathways for increasing sustainable employment. It lays out a roadmap for operationalization of the implicit job agenda of...

While the Philippines has achieved remarkable progress in raising the education level of its labor force, the standard proxy for educational attainment, years of formal schooling, is increasingly inadequate as a measure of workforce skills. About one-third of employer's report being unable to...

The Royal Government of Bhutan (RGoB) places great emphasis on the creation of a sufficient number of high-quality jobs to achieve full employment. This report aims to provide robust evidence to inform the RGoB's policy-making with regard to critical labor market challenges, underlying causes...

Almost half the population remain poor, but the proportion has increased in rural areas and decreased in urban areas. Poverty stands at 48.6 percent nationally and almost 70 percent in rural areas; 21.3 percent are extreme poor, rising to 32.2 percent in rural areas5. The poverty rate hasn't...

Following the release of new GDP estimates, nominal GDP for FY18/19 increased and the structure of the economy has changed. In October 2019, the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) released new GDP estimates, updating the base year for estimating economic activity to 2016/17 from 2009/10. As a...