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East Asia & Pacific is facing some great development challenges today: urbanization, protection of the environment, the need to find renewable energy sources and many others. This site wants to create a conversation around those important issues. More »

Information and Communication Technologies

Can you hear me now? Yes - Mobile phones in the Mongolian countryside

Submitted by Dave Lawrence on Tue, 2012-05-08 15:14
Photo courtesy of Steve Burt through a Creative Commons license

A few years ago, I spent a few days in a ger (yurt) in what seemed like the end of the world—Baruunburen district in Mongolia’s Selenge province. It took more than seven hours to get there from Ulaanbaatar, via Erdenet, Mongolia’s third-largest city. The paved roads gave way to dirt ones, but even these faded away until they were nothing more than tire marks in the grass. We took the final leg of the journey on horseback through a small, rain-gorged river, and finally arrived at a ger, a white speck in a huge, green valley surrounded by hills that went on forever.

A little later, I checked my phone to see if there was a signal. There wasn’t. Then my host pointed to a nearby hilltop and explained that I could catch a signal from there, so off I went. It took about 20 minutes of vigorous climbing to get the top, but it was worth it. The view was spectacular, and sure enough, I caught a stray signal. I pinched off a few text messages to my wife, a continent away in Ukraine.

How will China’s external current account surplus evolve in the coming years?

Submitted by Louis Kuijs on Wed, 2011-06-08 00:27

How China’s current account surplus will evolve in the coming years is one of the key questions on the economic outlook, both for China itself and for the global economy. China’s increasingly competitive manufacturing sector will continue to power ahead, to expand exports and to gain global market share. At the same time, China’s domestic economy should continue to grow rapidly, thereby drawing imports. However, how this will on balance play out with regard to the current account surplus is less certain. It will largely depend on how much progress is made with rebalancing the economy.

China’s export volumes have continued to rise very rapidly in recent years.An increasing array of manufacturing sectors is becoming more competitive internationally, including many types of machinery and equipment. Competitiveness is boosted by technological catch up, movement up the value chain, and economies of scale as well as by traditional strengths such as infrastructure and the business climate. Reflecting these factors, labor productivity growth in manufacturing has remained solid, thus helping containing unit labor costs despite respectable wage growth.

Some have argued that China is losing its competitive edge because its export prices are rising. However, that is an incorrect inference. Higher raw commodity prices mean export prices are rising all over the world—not just in China. Prices of US imports from China are now rising at the same pace as those of US imports of manufactured goods from developed countries. But those of US imports of manufactured goods from other emerging markets and developing countries are rising faster. On this price metric, the most we can say is that China’s competitiveness is improving at a slower pace than before.

世界银行推出中文数据平台—一个免费、丰富、友好的新数据源

Submitted by Xiaoli Wan on Thu, 2011-04-14 10:27

(Originally posted in English)

作为一个跟踪宏观经济发展的研究人员来说，与数据打交道是我的日常工作。我很高兴现在有了一个新工具来帮助我处理数据和做研究分析，这就是世界银行新近推出的开放数据平台。根据我现有的使用经验，它主要有两大特点：

World Bank Open Data now in Chinese–a free, comprehensive and friendly new data source

Submitted by Xiaoli Wan on Wed, 2011-04-13 11:43

(Also available in Chinese)


As an economist monitoring the macroeconomic developments of the Chinese economy, dealing with data is one of my main jobs. I am so happy that now I have a new tool to handle data and make economic analysis. It is the World Bank Open Data platform launched recently. Based on my user experience till now, I found two features of it are specially worth highlighting:


Indonesia: Hacking for Humanity

Submitted by Stuart Gill on Thu, 2010-12-16 16:22

It has been another inspiring and exciting weekend of 'hacking for humanity' at the 3rd bi-annual Random hacks of Kindness (RHoK). On 4-5 December, the Australia-Indonesia Facility for Disaster Reduction (AIFDR) alongside other partners including the Bank hosted the Jakarta-leg of Random Hacks of Kindness. This global event brought together disaster risk managers and over a thousand software engineers (the hackers) to 21 locations around the world for a 48-hour “hackathon”. During the event teams of hackers developed practical software solutions to reduce the impact of natural disasters and help save lives.

Solomon Islanders enjoying cheaper calls as competition is increased in telecommunications

Submitted by Alison Ofotalau on Wed, 2010-10-20 18:24

Competition in the telecommunications sector in Solomon Islands has officially arrived. bemobile held its launching ceremony on  Aug 31, making it the first competitor to Solomon Telekom (known as “Our Telekom”) effectively ending the previous monopoly. This is the result of the Government’s policy of reforming the telecoms market in Solomon Islands including promoting competition, developing a new legal framework, and setting up a new regulator, the Telecommunications Commission of Solomon Islands (TCSI).

Random Hacks of Kindness: software developers create and share code to tackle disaster relief

Submitted by Claudia Gabarain on Mon, 2009-11-30 01:06

A bunch of software programmers get together, listen to a list of desired projects formulated by aid, emergency, and development experts that would help tackle issues related to disaster relief, work for two days and the result is eleven applications that will allow users to easily report their status in the event of a disaster, locate family, provide data needed by emergency responders, or that will automatically process aerial images taken by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), among others.

Presentation of the microUAV image registration system (photo courtesy of Todd Huffman under a Creative Commons license).

This is what happened at the first "Random Hacks of Kindness" event in San Francisco, a hackathon that served as the basis of a global community of developers and subject matter experts that will work on development and reconstruction issues. The idea originated at a Crisis Camp barcamp held at the World Bank in Washington DC last May, when representatives from Google, Microsoft and Yahoo agreed that some matters supersede competitive concerns and decided to cooperate and mobilize developer communities to create software that is openly shared with the international community to have a real impact on the field. The Bank led the partnership and it now includes NASA and SecondMuse as well.

Information about NT2 hydropower project in Laos: A Library of Babel? It depends on your point of view

Submitted by Victoria Minoian on Mon, 2009-11-23 00:42

In “The Library of Babel,” Borges talks about the infinite nature of information and knowledge, because of its endless combinations. The information the Nam Theun 2 (NT2), the hydropower project in Laos which aims to generate revenues for poverty reduction following principles of social and environmental sustainability, offers a lot of angles—but thankfully, not infinite—from which to see the same piece of information over time.

So in this post I’d like to remind you of some key sources of information, like these websites:

Telecommunications in the Solomon Islands: "Hem Expensif Tumas" (It’s too Expensive)

Submitted by Hamish Wyatt on Mon, 2009-10-05 12:06
"The only way to really speak to someone is to go over to where they are", Primo told me about the state of telecommunications in the country.

There seems to be a real love of discussion around Honiara, the capital of the Solomon Islands. In nearly every patch of shade around the capital people can be found escaping the heat and talking, or ‘storying’, to pass the time.

Topics change quickly and, as many people carry a well thumbed local paper, there is often a focus on current events and political issues. However, one topic that seems to be something of a perennial favorite and has been coming up a lot recently is telecommunications.

With around 85 per cent of the population living in rural areas (many of which are extremely remote) and the country stretching over nearly 1,000 islands, communication between families and friends in different parts of the country is a constant challenge, especially considering the lack of coverage and prohibitive price of telecommunications.

Last August, the Solomon Islands Government, with technical assistance from the World Bank, negotiated an early end to what would have been a 15 year monopoly agreement with the national provider, Our Telekom. Parliament has also approved a new telecommunications bill that will, among other things, establish the country’s first telecom regulator, the Telecommunications Commission.

Departing thoughts on NT2: The simple importance of information

Submitted by Nanda Gasparini on Tue, 2008-12-02 12:30

It’s now that time for me when you have to sit down and write goodbye and thank you emails, throw away all those trees you’ve cut over the years (that would be paper), wrap up work, pack up your stuff and say goodbye.

Strategically I guess I could ‘use’ this last blog posting as a way to highlight all the progress that Nam Theun 2 has made over the past two years. Don’t worry, I won’t. While that has definitely been a component of my job – highlighting progress and explaining challenges and ways to overcome them – I think the broader and most important component of this job has been access to information: Access to people, to the site, and to reports.

Over the past two years, among other things, I’ve worked on liaising with journalists, students, NGOs, academics and others to visit the site, to respond to letters, emails and phone calls with questions, suggestions, recommendations…. And I know the people working in the Lao Government (check out their updated website here), the Nam Theun 2 Power Company and the Asian Development Bank, among others, have been doing the same. Access to the project exists, and in a country like Laos, where information – for a number of simple and more complex reasons – is not always in high supply, this has been of high importance.