This paper argues that governments and regulators, supported by financial institutions and multilateral development banks (MDBs), hold the key to mobilizing private finance at the scale needed to transform the way we build, produce, and consume in order to protect nature while fostering...

A competitive city is a city that successfully facilitates its firms and industries to create jobs, raise productivity, and increase the incomes of citizens over time. Worldwide, improving the competitiveness of cities is a pathway to eliminating extreme poverty and to promoting shared...

The Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC), which consists of Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, is one of the oldest regional groupings in Africa. The main objectives for achieving this are: (i) the creation of a...

Slavonia's economy is now amongst the poorest in the European Union (EU) and has been growing more slowly than comparable regions. Some Polish and Romanian counties were less advanced until 2013 but have now overtaken Slavonia. Achieving a turnaround is difficult: only 9 percent of lagging...

Latin America and the Caribbean suffered the largest death toll from Covid?19 across developing regions and the sharpest decline in economic activity. With fewer school days and lower employment rates, with higher public debt and more firms under stress, the effects could be long?lasting. The...

Agricultural transformation that involves the production of high-value food products and post-harvest processing is high on the policy agenda in many developing countries. A surge in the demand for high value and processed food products observed in Asia and Latin America is also happening in...

This report was commissioned by the World Bank Group's (WBG) financial inclusion support framework program, with financial support from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and with technical support from the East African Business Council...

Ghana has low levels of financial inclusion of individuals and access to finance for firms remains a major challenge; some of the key issues include low ownership and usage of accounts, dominance of cash, limited access points, limited electronic and mobile transactions, and high collateral,...

The Vietnamese economy has done well in 2019. In the context of increasing global uncertainty,Vietnam will most certainly be among the fastest growing economies in the world, with a GDP growth rate of approximately 6.8 percent. This rate is almost three times faster than the world average (2.6...