Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) reported over 30 million Coronavirus (COVID-19) cases and around 960,000 deaths as of May 2021. Official tracking data shows that Brazil, Colombia, and Argentina have the highest number of reported cases throughout LAC, which in turn is the region with among...

The World Bank Economic Update provides an overview of recent economic and social developments and policies in China. Economic activity in China remains resilient, with GDP growing by 6.9 percent in 2017 and 6.8 percent year on year (yoy) in the first quarter of 2018. Consumption continues to...

The Chinese insurance sector is experiencing rapid growth, posing particular challenges to effective supervision. The sector has been growing by over 20 percent a year and there are ambitious government targets for further development. Many individual, often newer, companies are growing at rates...

The China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) has maintained its momentum in regulation and supervision in the face of exceptional growth in scale and increasing complexity of the banking system. Equally, the CBRC has risen to the demands of the international regulatory reform agenda,...

This is an assessment of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Thailand (SEC) and, secondarily, of certain self-regulatory organizations (SRO) that participate in the regulation of the capital markets of Thailand. This assessment was conducted in February, 2019 as part of the Financial...

During Myanmar's decade of reforms, financial sector reforms were widely recognized to be a critical underpinning of Myanmar's democratization process, enabling the transition to a more egalitarian, accessible economy. Accordingly, the government developed a program of wide-ranging financial...

This report is based on a study of the costs of retail payments in Kosovo, using a methodology (A Practical Guide for Measuring Retail Payment Costs) developed by the World Bank's Payment System Development Group (PSDG), part of the Finance, Competitiveness, and Innovation Global Practice. The...