Recent policy measures have contributed to macroeconomic stability. However, with significant risks stemming from both domestic and external fronts, the balance of risks is tilted towards downside. To sustain growth, create more and better jobs and reduce poverty Sri Lanka needs to implement and...

Do women in Jordan want to work? How do men feel about working women in their family? To what extent do personal beliefs and societal expectations influence a woman's decision to work and why should this matter in development interventions? The Jordanian government and development partners have...

This report: (i) explains economic and legal implications of current job restrictions to women for Azerbaijan, (ii) provides compelling arguments to move away from a job-title centric form of restricting and protecting women to an exposure focused rationale, and provides other country examples...

Until recently, transport planning and design were regarded as gender neutral that is, they were assumed to benefit men and women equally. There is now increasing recognition that women experience mobility differently from men. This policy note, strives to improve our understanding of the...

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) economies have been a bright spot in an otherwise gloomy economic landscape. Average growthin the GCC surpassed 7 percent in 2022 led by Saudi Arabia, its biggest economy, which was globally the fastest growing large economy. This growth was not just a result...

Sri Lanka has an impressive track record of reducing poverty and sharing prosperity more broadly. A dynamic decade that spurred post-war growth and continued with a process of economic transformation led to a productivity boost and labor reallocation from agriculture to industry and services....

Identifying opportunities to increase agricultural productivity and incomes is an important priority for rural development. Progress toward poverty reduction continued in recent years, but the contribution of the agriculture sector was weak, mainly because productivity improvements were...

Sri Lanka has made strong progress in reducing poverty and sharing prosperity among the less well-off in recent years. The poverty rate using the World Bank's 3.20 Dollars poverty line (in 2011 purchasing power parity) declined from 16.2 percent in 2012/13 to 11 percent in 2016, a reduction that...

The World Bank has engaged with the government of Sri Lanka in an advisory services and analytics (ASA) work entitled priorities for sustainably managing Sri Lanka's marine fisheries, coastal aquaculture and the ecosystems that support them. The development objective of this ASA is to support...

Sri Lanka is a small island nation lying in the Indian Ocean and consists of a mountainous area in the south-central region and a surrounding coastal plain. The climate of Sri Lanka is wet and warm, ideal for forest growth. Over the last century, more than two-thirds of this forest cover, rich...