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Private Sector Development

If I had three minutes with President Jakaya Kikwete…

Jacques Morisset's picture

Imagine that you are in an elevator. It stops to pick up the next passenger going up.  It turns out to be H.E. Jayaka Mrisho Kikwete, yes, the President of Tanzania himself, accompanied by a group of high anking officials.  The President turns and asks you what you think is the most important thing that he could do for his country. You have less than three minutes to convince him.  What would you tell him?

I know what I would say, loud and clear: “Your Excellency, that would have to be improving the performance of the port of Dar es Salaam.”

No doubt there are plenty of issues that matter for Tanzania’s prosperity: rural development, education, energy, water, food security, roads, you name it. They are all competing for urgent attention and effort; yet it is also true that each of them involves complex solutions that would take time to produce impact on the ground, and it is hard to know where to begin and to focus priority attention.

This is not the case for the Dar es Salaam port, as most experts know what to do.

So why the port of Dar es Salaam?

The port represents a wonderful opportunity for his country. The port handles about 90%  of Tanzania’s international trade and is the potential gateway of six landlocked countries. I would tell him that almost all citizen and firms operating in Tanzania are currently affected, directly and indirectly, by the performance of this port.

Could the Next Batman Film Be Animated In Cambodia?

Martin Molinuevo's picture

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN-UTn1DoSwAnimation schools in Cambodia are using the power of international trade to reach the poor. In recent years, a number of institutions have emerged to train young Khmers how to draw the characters used in advertisements, cartoons and films. One of the institutes is run by a French school whose graduates have worked on blockbusters such as the Harry Potter, Shrek and Batman movies. These schools are tapping into a multi-billion-dollar global industry and demonstrating Cambodia’s potential to engage in high-tech services trade. They also confirm that small firms and even community-led projects in LDCs can participate in trade in services, while helping children rise out of poverty.

Jim Yong Kim to Private Equity Investors: We Need Your Help to Boost Growth, Jobs, Equality

Donna Barne's picture
World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim called on private equity firms to increase their investments in developing countries to help generate the growth, jobs, and equality needed to end extreme poverty.

“We have a fantastic opportunity to work together,” Dr. Kim told hundreds of investors at the 15th Annual Global Private Equity Conference, hosted by the Bank Group’s private sector arm IFC and the Emerging Markets Private Equity Association (EMPEA).

“…Private equity is going to play a critical role in whether or not we can truly have high aspirations for the 1.2 billion people living in absolute poverty in the world,” he said in a speech that was liveblogged and followed on Twitter with #wblive and #GPEC2013.

Corporate Governance Reforms Pay Dividends in Thailand

Read this in Thai

Thailand is a clear leader in corporate governance among Asian and emerging economies. But the recently launched 2013 Corporate Governance Report on Standards and Codes (ROSC) finds key challenges remain.

Across the universe of firms in Tanzania

Isis Gaddis's picture

Let's think together: Every Sunday the World Bank in Tanzania in collaboration with The Citizen wants to stimulate your thinking by sharing data from recent official surveys in Tanzania and ask you a few questions.
In industrial countries, small and medium firms are the vectors of economic innovation and job creation. In the USA, small-businesses account for almost two-thirds of all net new job creation. They also contribute disproportionately to innovation, generating 13 times as many patents, per employee, as large companies do. Small business owners are also in general more educated and wealthier than the rest of the active population.
The reality is different in Tanzania. The vast majority of firms are very small and predominantly confined to self-employment. They are also highly concentrated in agriculture and trading activities:

- In 2010/11, there were approximately 11 million family-owned businesses operating in Tanzania, including farms. This is equivalent to a rate of entrepreneurship of 40 percent, which is about the rate reported in Uganda and Ghana, but three and 10 times higher, respectively, than in the United States and France.
- Half of the firms operating in Tanzania have only one employee, typically the owner; while an additional 40 percent report less than five employees. Firms with more than 10 workers represent only 0.6 per cent of the firms’ universe (still almost 70,000).

You need to be outrageously aspirational when you take on a growth pole


Growth poles can help create jobs for Africa's one billion citizens (Credit: World Bank)
We were asked the other day by our senior management to be outrageously aspirational when we engage with growth poles.  I have been reflecting on what this means for our work on this topic in Africa, especially in light of the findings of the Africa Competitiveness Report.  I think we need to be aspirational in three broad directions: (i) developing the capacity to get things done in Africa, (ii) ensuring all stakeholders benefit from growth, and (iii) mobilizing as much capital as we can, whether it be private, philanthropic or public.

Tax Lessons From Peers

Munawer Sultan Khwaja's picture

Read the first of this two-part blog post here.

The idea of a peer learning network for tax administrators came when I realized that tax authorities in different countries had many of the same questions: How do we initiate risk management? How are other countries dealing with compliance issues? How do countries ensure speedy VAT refunds and yet prevent fraudulent claims? And so on.

So why not get the tax officials from different countries together and provide a platform to discuss their challenges, experiences and innovative ways of solving problems. Mix them with a dose of tax experts from developed tax systems, et voila! That’s how TAXGIP (Tax Administrators eXchange for Global Innovative Practices) was born – it provides opportunities to exchange knowledge and good practices, and share experiences.
 

Mapping the Kyrgyz Republic’s Poverty Distribution

Sarosh Sattar's picture

A significant share of the population in the Kyrgyz Republic – 37 percent – lived below the poverty line in 2011, according to the latest available data. And despite a relatively modest population of about 5.5 million, poverty rates across oblasts (provinces) span a striking range -- from 18 percent to 50 percent.

Why? Well, that is a surprisingly difficult question to answer.  

The Landscape for Forests after the Forum

Peter Dewees's picture

A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about the opening of the 10th Session of the United Nations Forum on Forests, in Istanbul, and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s impassioned challenge to the global community to get serious about stopping the loss of forests. Unusually, he did this without reference to the usual concerns about climate change or biodiversity loss, but instead quite simply said – we have a moral responsibility to stop this.

"The global threats which humanity faces eliminate the luxury of saying, ‘What do I care?’” Erdoğan said. “We are not only creatures of bodies, heads, and brains. We carry hearts, we carry souls, and we carry a conscience.”

So what did the UN Forum accomplish after days of discussions and negotiations?  Did the Forum rise to Erdoğan's challenge?

The Many Faces of Corruption in the Russian Federation

Gregory Kisunko's picture

"No single national score can accurately reflect contrasts in the types of corruption found in a country." Michael Johnston, 2001

Corruption comes in various forms - administrative corruption being one example, state capture (a.k.a. “grand corruption”) being another. Although administrative corruption is not necessarily the most damaging form for economic growth and private sector development in Russia, and while its occurrence appears to be declining in Russia, perceptions of “state capture” are worsening.

Making the most of Africa’s growth momentum

Punam Chuhan-Pole's picture

Co-authored with Luc Christiaensen and Aly Sanoh

For a decade and a half now, Africa has been growing robustly, and the region’s economic prospects remain good. In per capita terms, GDP has expanded at 2.4 percent per year, good for an average increase in GDP per capita of 50 percent since 1996.

But the averages also hide a substantial degree of variation.  For example, GDP per capita in resource-rich countries grew 2.2 times faster during 1996-2011 than in resource-poor countries (Figure 1).  Though not the only factor explaining improved performance—fast growth has also been recorded in a number of resource-poor countries such as Rwanda, Ethiopia and Mozambique (before its resource discoveries)—buoyant commodity prices and the expansion of mineral resource exploitation have undoubtedly played  an important role in spurring growth in several of Africa’s countries. Even more, with only an expected 4 or 5 countries on the African continent without mineral exploitation by 2020, they will continue to do so in the future. Yet, despite the better growth performance, poverty declined substantially less in resource-rich countries.

Study: Liberalizing Foreign Investment in Services Boosts Manufacturing in Indonesia

Gonzalo Varela's picture

Rice sacks on a truck in Indonesia. Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ricephotos/6025129068/Sometimes trade policy works through unexpected channels. In the case of Indonesia, opening the services sector to foreign investment appears to be a way to significantly boost the productivity of domestic manufacturing firms, according to recent joint research from the World Bank’s Office in Indonesia and the International Trade Department. This finding has implications for governments around the world that have restricted foreign investment in services – such as transport, electricity and communications – that are vital to other productive sectors in the economy.

At IFC-Gates Foundation Event, A Call to Deepen Private Sector’s Impact on Poverty

Donna Barne's picture

Available in: Español, عربي 

April 15, 2013--The private sector could play a key role in ending extreme poverty by 2030 by gathering high quality data and evidence of entrepreneurial impact in developing countries, speakers said at a conference organized by IFC and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation ahead of the World Bank-IMF Spring Meetings.

 

World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim and IFC CEO Jin-Yong Cai of the Bank Group’s private sector  arm called the private sector an invaluable ally in a plan to reduce global extreme poverty to 3% by 2030, and foster income growth of the bottom 40% of the population in every country. Those targets will be proposed to the World Bank’s Board of Governors this weekend.

 

“There is no way that we’ll get there without a robust private sector that is creating the jobs that are critical to lifting people out of poverty,” said Dr. Kim at The Private Sector and Ending Poverty conference.

 

“The extent to which we commit to working with the private sector to foster growth will determine how ambitious we can be for the poorest people in the world.”

 

The event, attended by a cross-section of private sector companies, academics, think tanks, and foundations, was watched in Pakistan, Ghana, Albania, Venezuela and Colombia, among other countries, and followed on Twitter with #Results4Impact and #wblive.

After the Shooting Stops—Rebuilding Infrastructure

David Lawrence's picture

Public-private partnerships can help rebuild post-conflict countries for future generations. (Credit: EU Humanitarian Aid, Flickr Creative Commons)

According to the numbers, the prospects for post-conflict countries are dim. Half of the world’s poor live in conflict-affected countries, a percentage expected to climb over 80 by 2025. They can also look forward to lower economic growth rates—a reduction of up to three percent for every year of conflict. And sustained peace is hardly a sure thing—a United Nations-World Bank report famously says that post-conflict countries have a 50 percent chance slipping back into war within 10 years. With stats like these, it’s tempting to write off the future of any country that’s had a shooting war in recent years.


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