The arrival of a new government provides an opportunity to reinvigorate the reform agenda to deliver inclusive growth for the Somali people. Since the establishment of the Provisional Constitution in 2012, Somalia has made commendable progress on many fronts. Macroeconomic stability has been...

Croatia has made significant economic progress since independence, but the global financial crisis has exposed weaknesses in its economy and growth model. While growth has resumed in 2015, income convergence has been thrown back by the crisis and by the prolonged recession that followed and is...

The international community is currently planning for a potential political settlement in Afghanistan. Negotiations may bring opportunities for significant reductions in violence. Government and development partners are considering how to support, consolidate, and sustain any reduction in...

Limited competition hinders the optimal use of telecommunication services in the Dominican Republic, which lags peer countries in mobile subscriptions and internet penetration. Despite recent reforms designed to enhance competition, the telecommunications sector remains dominated by a small...

The aim of this note is twofold: (1) summarize emerging challenges and opportunities for the water sector in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries; and (2) suggest ways to respond to these challenges where the World Bank's Water Global Practice can provide support. Following a description...

A large number of studies in recent years have attempted to analyze and quantify the myriad of restrictions holding back economic development in the West Bank and Gaza, but the full picture remains blurred. The main value proposition of this study is to assess and quantify the overall prospects...

This study seeks to understand the structure and workings of the labyrinth to propose a concrete escape. It attempts to answer the following questions. (1) Why is it that Chad could not translate the discovery of oil into structural development, economic diversification and sustainable growth?...

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...

Over the last two decades, Moldova has achieved major development results: with average annual growth of 4.6 percent since 2000, poverty has decreased dramatically, and the growth has also benefitted more citizens: Inequality, as measured by the Gini Index, has declined from 36.4 in 2000 to 26.3...