Babah Salekna El Moustapha, co-founder of the project Mauritanian Society for the Typha Coal Industry (SMICT) with Mohamed and Moctar Abdallahi Kattar. Photo Credit: Moussa Traoré, HADINA.
Foreign direct investment (FDI) is often considered by economists and policymakers as integral to economic growth – a cornerstone of modernization, income growth and employment.
Yet for many countries, FDI can be elusive, and chasing it can lead policymakers to frustration.
Even economies built by FDI – for example, Singapore – are on this continuous chase, aware that attracting and retaining FDI is not an easy task. They also know that the benefits of FDI do not accrue automatically and evenly across all countries, sectors and local communities.
But first, there must be a realization of the importance of FDI. Singapore – a country once called a “political, economic and geographic absurdity” by its first Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew – never doubted the centrality of FDI, promoting it from the outset of its independence. Singapore saw in FDI an opportunity to develop a substantial industrial base, to create new jobs for its then-poor and low-skilled workforce, and to generate crucial tax revenues for its nascent government to spend on education and infrastructure.
Two decades after that initial strategic acceptance of FDI, Singapore emerged as a newly industrialized economy.
It is little surprise, then, that Singapore’s experience was highlighted at a recent World Bank Group peer-to-peer learning event here in the city-state. Responding to strong demand from client countries, two teams from the Trade & Competitiveness Global Practice – the Investment Policy and Promotion (IPP) team and the Singapore Hub team – co-hosted the learning forum entitled "Promoting Investment Policy and Promotion Reform in Times of Uncertainty."
Supported by SPIRA – the Support Program on Investment Policy and Related Areas – the forum enabled some 80 government officials from East Asia, South Asia and Africa to share their experiences in economic and export diversification; to discuss the role of international trade and investment agreements as leverage toward domestic reforms; and to discuss how to translate investment policy and promotion strategies into measurable results. SPIRA, implemented by the IPP team, supports client countries across all regions in attracting, facilitating and retaining different types of FDI.
Deposit insurance systems (DIS) play a key role in building confidence among depositors and helping keep their money safe. However, deposit insurance should never be considered a "magic bullet," a "quick fix" or a stand-alone solution to maintain financial stability.
The 2008 global financial crisis created a crisis of confidence in banking systems around the world. As a response, the number of countries with deposit insurance systems quickly shot up from 84 (in 2003) to 125 (in 2016). For the existing DIS, this period tested their design and effectiveness.
Over the past decade, the FIRST Initiative has funded 16 projects across the globe to assist in strengthening existing deposit insurance systems or establishing new ones. Drawing from these experiences, we recently published a Lessons Learned Note on the Challenges in Building Effective Deposit Insurance Systems in Developing Countries. The note provides seven lessons learned from our work across the six World Bank regions and provides a number of specific country examples.
The note provides insights to better understand: (1) the role of a DIS, (2) how to design an appropriate framework and (3) keys to effective implementation and operations.
A World Bank Group team set out to answer the questions: Who are Moroccan green entrepreneurs, and what is the entrepreneurial landscape they operate in? They found that:
Almost half of surveyed Moroccan green entrepreneur businesses are solo-run.
84 percent of surveyed entrepreneurs were self-funded at the early-stages.
54 percent of entrepreneurs identified a lack of access to market information as the biggest barrier to doing business in Morocco.
Those are just a few findings from their work on the first World Bank Group climate entrepreneurship ecosystem diagnostic in Morocco, a deep dive into the North African nation’s green start-up ecosystem.
The diagnostic, surveying more than 300 entrepreneurs and industry players, shines unprecedented insight into multiple facets of Morocco’s climate entrepreneurship ecosystem, and how different political, financial, and cultural forces play out to drive the sector.
In a highly visual format, a new report explores the top findings from the diagnostic, bolstering them with case studies, key facts, and graphics. The report uncovers interesting clues to Morocco’s strengths and challenges: Typical Moroccan green entrepreneurs are young, educated, and started their businesses because they wanted to be their own boss. These entrepreneurs work in diverse sectors — from green information technology to energy efficiency — and are creating and adapting technologies and solutions to solve some of Morocco’s greatest environmental challenges.
The president of the Somali Chamber of Commerce, Mohamoud Abdi Ali, joins with the country's Minister of Commerce and Industry, Khadra Ahmed Dualle, at the IFC-sponsored Public-Private Dialogue at the Somalia Conference, which was convened in London in May 2017. The need to increase revenue, growth and trust led to the creation of the Public-Private Dialogue. Photo credit: MPF.
Stabilizing countries that have long been afflicted by fragility, conflict and violence (FCV) – and helping them shape effective reforms to strengthen the investment climate – is one of the most difficult challenges in international development. The task is all the more severe when, as in Somalia, a large proportion of the population has been displaced by violence and natural disaster and when the economy is overly concentrated on a few sectors. Such factors make rebuilding investor confidence a daunting challenge for the newly elected government.
However, despite these challenges, Somalia represents a rare example of private-sector resilience. The major sectors of the economy survived the tumultuous period after the collapse of the state in 1991. Entrepreneurs in Somalia and abroad continue to innovate and adapt in a country void of regulatory frameworks or government oversight. Domestic mobile-money transfers average $1.2 billion in monthly transactions, and mobile money usage is above 70 percent.
Nonetheless, economic growth in Somalia has stagnated and has not resulted in a peace dividend for the population. Government revenue is low – around 2.5 percent of GDP – in an economy driven by consumption, as identified in the World Bank Group’s Somali Economic Update (SEU) from 2016. According to the SEU, two of the biggest obstacles to equitable growth are access to finance and lack of regulations. Moreover, investment in priority sectors is low, held back by protectionism, conflict and instability.
Somalia was the focus of an international conference in May 2017 in London that brought together some of Somalia’s top private-sector firms, development institutions and government leaders to discuss how to jump-start private-sector-led growth and achieve long-term peace and development. Among the distinguished attendees were the newly elected president of Somalia, Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed “Farmaajo”; Prime Minister Teresa May of the United Kingdom; United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres; and the European Union’s foreign-policy chief, Federica Mogherini. The World Bank Group delegation was led by Jan Walliser, the Vice President for Equitable Growth, Finance and Institutions.
With financial inclusion now established as an objective for most financial sector policymakers worldwide, the day-to-day responsibility for ensuring its achievement in a responsible, consumer-friendly, and evidence-based manner often falls to financial sector supervisors. Two challenges are particularly relevant: first, with an increased policy focus on financial inclusion, supervisors are often tasked with adapting reporting systems to collect granular data to monitor financial inclusion and inform policy. For example, how many customers are using each product? Are newly opened accounts active or dormant? What is the rate of growth of agent networks in rural areas?
Second, there is a global trend towards diversifying the range of financial service provider (FSP) types
in a given market in order to improve competition and consumer choice, and ultimately financial inclusion. This means that non-bank FSPs such as mobile network operators (MNOs), fintech companies, financial cooperatives and microfinance institutions are increasingly brought under the supervisory mandate of supervisory authorities. This presents a significant challenge for financial sector supervisors who must cover a large and diverse set of FSPs with distinct risk profiles and capacities, stretching their already limited resources. Collecting and analyzing accurate, relevant, and timely information from these providers is at the heart of this supervisory challenge.
Many financial sector supervisors are seeking technology-enabled solutions to address these challenges, an approach known to some as “suptech” (i.e. supervision technology). The National Bank of Rwanda (BNR) provides a case in point.
Traditional trade mission functions are becoming obsolete. Over hors d'oeuvres, business cards are exchanged, elevator pitches are delivered but, in most cases, entrepreneurs leave with empty promises to stay in touch and no useful contacts. This may sound a little cynical but the reality is that in an age of business models “ripe for disruption,” the ways to create viable business partnerships across borders have not changed for decades.
