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Trust, Voice, and Incentives: how to improve education and health services

Mario Marcel's picture

Girls sitting exams in the Middle East
Bill Lyons / World Bank

A new World Bank report addressing the widespread dissatisfaction of citizens with the delivery of essential public services and calling for accountability in public service delivery in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region was released a few weeks ago.

The statistics in Trust, Voice, and Incentives: Learning from Local Success Stories in Service Delivery in the Middle East and North Africa  are grim, as nearly three quarters of MENA students are scoring “low” or “below low” in international student performance tests and one third of the public health clinics in MENA countries lack essential medicines and staff.

The good news, however, is that the report also sheds light on local success stories in health and education where, against serious odds, a number of clinics and schools have managed to deliver quality servicesto citizens. The examples from Jordan, Morocco, and the Palestinian Territories highlight the power of collaboration and mutual trust between citizens and public servants to produce better results.

Financing Needs Cannot Be Met Without Private Sector's Help

Nazaneen Ismail Ali's picture
 
Photo: Dana Smillie / World Bank


To maintain current growth rates and meet demands for infrastructure, developing countries will require an additional investment of at least an estimated US$1 trillion a year through 2020. In the Mashreq countries, the required infrastructure investment for electricity alone is estimated at US$ 130 billion by 2020, and an additional US$108 billion by 2030.
 
These gigantic financing needs will continue to place a huge burden on government budgets. Simply put, they cannot be addressed without private sector participation. Public-private partnerships (PPPs) can help to close this growing funding deficit and to meet the immense demands for new or improved infrastructure and service delivery in sectors like water, transport, and energy (among others). In countries with diverse and numerous needs,PPPs can fill gaps in implementation capacity as well as the scarcity of public funds.

Three Reasons Procurement is Essential for Development

Philipp Krause's picture

Public procurement is not among the most popular topics in development circles. However, consider just these three ways in which procurement is probably one of the most indispensable elements that make up a truly capable state:

First, without effective procurement, hospitals wait for drugs, teachers for textbooks, and cities for roads. Whenever a news item surfaces about drugs shortages in hospitals, schools without textbooks or failing road networks, the reader may be looking at a procurement problem. Without efficient procurement, money gets wasted on a very large scale. Many developing countries channel significant proportions of their budgets through the procurement system – even marginal savings can add up very fast. Third, public procurement is a part of the government that citizens see every day. Lack of transparency and corruption in procurement directly affects citizens, and the losses to corruption are estimated in the billions of dollars every year. Corruption in procurement is a big problem that affects rich countries as well.