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July 2016

It’s not About Handouts, It’s About Partnership and Trust

Daniella Van Leggelo-Padilla's picture
Pape Ndiaye, founder of Yeesal, Cherif Ndiaye, founder of Ecoles au Senegal, Daniella van Leggelo-Padilla, Thierno Niang and Mamadou Ndoye, co-founders of Rev’evolution.
From left to right: Pape Ndiaye, founder of Yeesal, Cherif Ndiaye, founder of Ecoles au Senegal, Daniella van Leggelo-Padilla, Thierno Niang and Mamadou Ndoye, co-founders of Rev’evolution.

 
“The mentality of youth in Senegal is changing. These days, young Senegalese aren’t waiting for job opportunities to fall from the sky. They are actively working towards creating them for themselves, and for other youth.” These words, spoken by 30 year old Thierno Niang, a social entrepreneur and co-founder of Rev’evolution, a youth run, self-funded start up incubator, struck a chord with me. Thierno and I were discussing his role as a panel moderator for the Youth Forum on Employment, Training, and Inclusion: A Knowledge-Sharing Event for Sub-Saharan Africa, the first ever youth event of its kind organized by the World Bank office in Senegal.

Banking consolidation in the GCC requires attention to competition

Pietro Calice's picture
Also available in: Arabic | French
National Bank of Abu Dhabi - Ijanderson977 (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
National Bank of Abu Dhabi, UAE. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Gulf banking markets may have entered an important phase of consolidation, with the potential to dramatically reshape both the role and the intermediation capacity of the industry. A few days ago, two large banks in the UAE, National Bank of Abu Dhabi and First Gulf Bank, agreed on a tie-up to create a national champion and regional powerhouse with $170 billion in total assets. In Oman, Bank Sohar and Bank Dhofar are in advanced merger talks. Bank mergers are expected to take place in Bahrain and Qatar as well.

The protracted downward trend in oil prices is threatening economic growth and fiscal sustainability in the region. This is having an impact on the banking systems. Banks are increasingly facing pressure on liquidity in the face of both private and public deposit outflows. This coupled with a low interest rate environment in the context of pegged currencies is eroding margins. Capital buffers are strong yet asset quality may deteriorate if oil prices remain low for a prolonged period and economic growth decelerates further. Therefore, in a context largely characterized by fragmented markets, consolidation may help achieve efficiency gains and ultimately preserve financial stability.

However, it is important that banking consolidation in the Gulf does not come at the detriment of competition. International experience shows that healthy bank competition generally promotes access to finance and improves the efficiency of financial intermediation, without necessarily eroding the stability of the banking system. Bank competition in the region is traditionally weak largely due to strict entry requirements, restrictions to bank activities, relatively weak credit information systems, and lack of competition from foreign banks and nonbank financial institutions. While increased market concentration does not necessarily imply greater market power, there is a risk that the current and prospective wave of industry consolidation may have long-lasting negative effects on competition if left unchecked.

Media (R)evolutions: Citizens are eager to interact with their cities but need greater access to digital platforms

Roxanne Bauer's picture

New developments and curiosities from a changing global media landscape: People, Spaces, Deliberation brings trends and events to your attention that illustrate that tomorrow's media environment will look very different from today's, and will have little resemblance to yesterday's.

Digital technologies have been lauded for their ability to set aside social and geographic boundaries, allowing people to communicate with others from different backgrounds in different parts of the world.  They are also known for their capacity to collect and track data on end users that can be used in the aggregate to inform decision-making. This level of engagement and data analysis led some to wonder if digital technologies would democratize communication and service delivery between governments and their citizens. Civic leaders, the argument followed, who embrace new technologies could benefit from deeper community engagement and increased stakeholder awareness on government initiatives and would be equipped with a steady flow of constituent feedback and a transparent track record.  Communities would be rewarded with insights into the functioning of new systems and the demand for city services as well as means to report inconsistencies or problems.
 
While the dream of proper two-way communication and digital feedback loops has not been realized by most cities, citizens would appreciate direct, real-time interaction with their local governments. While less than one-third of citizens (32%) are currently providing feedback to their local authorities, over one-half say they would like to do so. A large number of citizens (51%) want wider access to digital platforms to enable them to communicate with government or expansion of free wifi in public spaces (50%), perhaps signaling that basics, like access to the Internet and digital literacy skills, may have the greatest impact on citizens’ ability to interact. Many citizens— in both developed and developing countries— still lack broadband access at home and have limited data to use on smartphones. This means that as governments attempt to interact on digital platforms and share information online, they also need to be mindful of the digital divide within communities.
 

 

New dataset explores how citizens engage with governments on new regulations

Melissa Johns's picture

More than a billion people live in countries in which the government does not consult openly on new business regulations (see Figure 1). There, officials don’t engage chambers of commerce, civic groups or the broader public on draft regulations. They don’t test out whether a draft regulation is a good idea, whether it targets the right problem or whether it is feasible to comply with. Moreover, more than half of the world's countries do not conduct formal assessments of the possible effects that a new regulation might have – socially, environmentally, or on compliance costs to businesses.



Source: Global Indicators of Regulatory Governance dataset


We’re not talking here about top-secret national-defense regulations or emergency-response measures. We’re talking about plain-vanilla, basic, run-your-small-business types of regulations that thousands of constituents will need to follow.       
 
A new dataset, Global Indicators of Regulatory Governance, explores how governments interact with the public when shaping regulations that affect their business communities. Concerned stakeholders could be professional associations, civic groups or foreign investors.

The project charts how interested groups learn about new regulations that are being considered, and the extent to which they are able to engage with officials on the content. It also measures whether or not governments assess the possible impact of new regulations in their country (including economic, social and environmental considerations) and whether those calculations form part of the public consultation. Finally, the project assesses two additional components of a predictable regulatory environment: the ability of stakeholders to challenge regulations in the case of an adverse decision, and the ability of people to gain access to the laws and regulations that are currently in force in a single place that is frequently updated. 

Start talking, and let’s get to work: Dialogue and climate action in industries

Anja Robakowski's picture



Bangkok, Thailand — November 25, 2011: A flooded factory in the Nava Nakorn Industrial Estate at Pathumthani.
Photo @ photonewman


“No one can tackle climate change alone.” Those words, by Abdelouahed Fikrat, General Secretary of the Moroccan Ministry of Environment, aptly summarized the challenge that we face today in dealing with climate change. He made that declaration at the recent Dialogue for Climate Action event in Vienna, organized by The World Bank Group and the Government of Austria on May 24 and 25.

The Vienna event marked the launch of six Principles on Dialogue for Climate Action — a set of tenets aimed at guiding businesses and governments as they embark on productive conversations on how to cooperate effectively to fight climate change.
 
The World Bank Group and 12 international partners got together to collaboratively formulate the six principles: Inclusion, Urgency, Awareness, Efficiency, Transparency and Accountability.

In endorsing the principles and signing on to the Community of Practice (CoP) for Dialogue for Climate Action, Fikrat said, “The principles of dialogue launched at this event hold potential to contribute significantly to the COP 22 agenda and offer a tool to policymakers for engaging the private sector. We need to build on the current momentum to speed up the implementation of concrete actions.”
 
The tone for the event was set by Dimitris Tsitsiragos, Vice President of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), who stressed in his keynote address that “stopping the catastrophic impact of climate change requires urgent, comprehensive and ongoing public-private dialogue”.
 
Dialogue for Climate Action in Practice

So what does this mean in practice? How do we avoid pursuing a dialogue that is devoid of action? There is significant pressure on all actors to avoid “post-Paris blues” and stagnation. There is also a need to avoid actions in a vacuum, where everyone is doing something but without cohesion and coordination.

The six principles for climate action are based on the premise that all actors, working together, will create greater results. Bangladesh PaCT (Partnership for Cleaner Textiles), a project managed by the World Bank Group, makes a strong case for that approach. The project, which was launched in 2013, aims to introduce cleaner, more environment-friendly production methods in the textile sector, and dialogue is a key pillar of its project design. 

Obstacles to development: what data are available on fragility, conflict and violence?

Edie Purdie's picture

This is part of a series of blogs focused on the Sustainable Development Goals and data from the 2016 Edition of World Development Indicators.

Over half a million people were killed by intentional homicide in 2012, while in 2014 there were more than one hundred thousand battle-related deaths. Episodes of such violence and unrest can reverse development efforts and rapidly dismantle achievements built over a long time, along social, political economy, and physical dimensions.

Latin America and the Caribbean: seizing a trillion dollar opportunity in climate investments

Christian Grossmann's picture
Alessandra Bazan Testino / IFC
Green-bond supported wind farm in Penonome, Panama. Photo credit: Alessandra Bazan Testino / IFC 


First published by Capital Finance International.

Soon the world will celebrate the one-year anniversary of the historic climate agreement signed in Paris in December 2015. The agreement will be implemented through country-led greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction commitments known as their intended Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), which to date have been submitted by 189 countries covering 95 percent of global GHG emissions. 
 
Apart from signaling concrete commitments, these reduction targets also offer a clear signpost of the investment direction countries need to follow as the global economy steers towards a low-carbon, climate-resilient pathway. Estimates point to between $57 trillion and $93 trillion in new low-carbon, climate resilient infrastructure investment by 2030.[1] How developing countries evaluate and respond to their infrastructure needs will greatly determine their ability to meet GHG reduction commitments.

Mythbusters: Using data to disprove PPP fallacies

Schuyler House's picture
Photo Credit: NATS Press Office

Editor’s Note: The World Bank Group is committed to helping governments make informed decisions about improving access to and quality of infrastructure services, including using Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) as a delivery option when appropriate. One of the PPP Blog’s main goals is to enhance the understanding of PPPs while eliminating misconceptions about them, ultimately enabling better decision making throughout every stage of the PPP cycle. To that end, the new “Mythbusters” series, authored by PPP professionals, addresses and clarifies widely-held misunderstandings.

In the PPP universe, both advocates and detractors use anecdotes to prove their points about PPPs and infrastructure. PPP successes and debacles are recycled endlessly to argue for one side or the other. But we can move past the myths, in part with the help of the World Bank’s Private Participation in Infrastructure (PPI) Project Database, which includes information on over 6,000 projects from 1984 onwards, capturing data across 30 fields, including contractual form, project closure date, location, contract duration, private sector partners, and multilateral support. By drawing on that resource, alongside other large data sets and comparative case studies, we can confirm or debunk PPP myths rooted in popular commentary. Here are a few examples that show how research can set rumors right.

Ask before you watch: How to get the most out of learning videos

Tanya Gupta's picture
Welcome to the fourth blog of the technology aided gut (TAG) checks series. In our last post we showed you how to be reasonably confident that the information you find from an online resource is accurate, especially when you do not have the subject matter expertise to ascertain its correctness. In the next two blogs, we will take a closer look at educationational videos - arguably the “hottest” format for knowledge exchange.
 
This is a pragmatic blog for providing technical knowledge to adult professionals. So we are not going to address big questions like: The debate rages on while the trillion dollar online education industry blossoms.
 
No matter which side of the aisle you are on in this big debate, if you are in the need to learn something useful (quickly) and you are choosing a web source to learn from- remember these five critical factors - and then decide whether to use a video or some other source. These factors may not guarantee the success of a learning session but ignoring them will most likely ensure the session’s failure.


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