Eswatini's economy has been characterized by persistent low growth, high fiscal deficits, and unprofitable state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Without significant reform, the country is unlikely to achieve its socioeconomic aspirations, and poverty and unemployment are likely to remain high. These...

This Guidance Paper provides a primer on distributed ledger technology (DLT) and highlights the junctures at which this new technology meaningfully impacts secured transactions frameworks. The aim is to identify legal and regulatory hotspots, laying the groundwork for their detailed and...

Unlike the Kyoto protocol's clean development mechanism (CDM), Article 6.2 of the Paris Agreement is designed to allow for international cooperation in carbon markets through decentralized governance. Under this article, bilateral or plurilateral cooperation between participating parties can be...

This is the eleventh edition of the Kenya Economic Update. The special focus of this update examines the structural factors underpinning the poor performance of the manufacturing sector. Drawing on recent firm-level data from the 2010 Industrial Census and the 2013 Enterprise Survey. It...

Russia's economy experienced two shocks in 2014. On top of the structural crisis that began in 2012, Russia had to deal with cyclical and idiosyncratic challenges to the economy. One of the new shocks illustrates Russia s integration into the world economy through its natural resource exports,...

First in a series, which aims to analyze the recent economic and financial situation in Côte d'Ivoire, this report analyzes the main macroeconomic developments and structural policies of the country from 2013 until mid-2014. It also reflects on the underlying factors of the strong economic...

A year after the onset of Ebola, the estimated GDP losses for the three countries through 2015 total US$2.2 billion (US$240 million for Liberia, US$535 million for Guinea and US$1.4 billion for Sierra Leone). This is the result of the severe impact of the epidemic which has been exacerbated by...

The Country Opinion Survey in Lesotho assists the World Bank Group (WBG) in gaining a better understanding of how stakeholders in Lesotho perceive the WBG. It provides the WBG with systematic feedback from national and local governments, multilateral and bilateral agencies, media, academia, the...

The Country Opinion Survey in Peru assists the World Bank Group (WBG) in gaining a better understanding of how stakeholders in Peru perceive the WBG. It provides the WBG with systematic feedback from national and local governments, multilateral/bilateral agencies, media, academia, the private...

The Country Opinion Survey in Papua New Guinea assists the World Bank Group (WBG) in gaining a better understanding of how stakeholders in Papua New Guinea perceive the WBG. It provides the WBG with systematic feedback from national and local governments, multilateral/bilateral agencies, media,...