Notwithstanding slower global growth and lingering impacts of recent catastrophic floods, private sector activity, outside the oil sector, has been supported by a relative return to peace, and higher government spending. Nevertheless, the economy is estimated to have contracted by 0.4 percent in...

While armed clashed have declined, Libya continues to face fragmentation and fragility. The country's fragility is having far-reaching economic and social impact. Social conditions and public service delivery have been affected. Similar to numerous conflict-affected countries, the World Bank...

A large literature has documented that fiscal policy is procyclical in emerging markets and developing economies and acyclical/countercyclical in advanced economies. This paper analyzes fiscal procyclicality in commodity-exporting countries. It first shows that the degree of fiscal...

L'économie marocaine se redresse. Suite àun ralentissement marqué en 2022, dû à diverschocs climatiques et sur les matières premières survenus de manière concomitante, la croissance économique a repris son élan, atteignant 2,9% au cours du premier semestre 2023 principalement grâce...

The economy continued its moderate expansion, driven by private consumption and improving goods exports. However, the tourism recovery decelerated. Inflation remained significantly below peers; raw food prices fell and energy subsidies contained pressure on living costs. The planned fiscal...

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, global learning levels were unacceptably low. In 2019, learning poverty, the share of children unable to read and understand a simple text by age 10, had reached 57 percent in low- and middle-income countries (World Bank and others 2022b). This constituted a global...

Despite persistent macroeconomic instability, economic growth continued to recover in 2023, underpinned largely by a steady improvement in the service sector. GDP growth is forecast at 3.7 percent in 2023, slightly down from the projection in May 2023, primarily reflecting higher-than-expected...

The twin shocks of the pandemic and weak global trade has particularly impacted Thailand due to the country's position as a trade and tourism hub. Thailand's tourism arrivals reached only 75 percent of pre-pandemic levels in September despite the ongoing growth in global services trade. Visitor...

The Iran Economic Monitor (IEM) provides an update on key economic developments and policies. It examines these economic developments and policies in a longer-term and global context and assesses their implications for the outlook for thecountry. The IEM's coverage ranges from the macroeconomy...

The World Bank's teams have been resorting to the use of a mix of standard tools and innovative geospatial and remote-based data sources (e.g., nighttime lights, shipping-position data, traffic congestion data, aviation statistics, mobile phone location data, remote sensing vegetation indices,...