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This Systematic Country Diagnostic (SCD) is designed to assess the key constraints and opportunities facing Mozambique as it strives to sustain robust growth and macroeconomic stability while accelerating poverty reduction and promoting greater economic inclusiveness. The SCD is organized into six chapters. Chapter two describes the evolution of poverty and inequality, explores their regional and demographic dimensions, and identifies strategies for accelerating poverty reduction. Chapter three analyzes key economic constraints and opportunities, identifying the drivers of recent growth, describing developments in the real sector and assessing emerging challenges associated with the rise of the extractive industries. Chapter four examines the inclusiveness of growth, presenting an in-depth analysis of the labor market, the social sectors and the ongoing urbanization process. Chapter five discusses fiscal, institutional, political, social and environmental risks to the sustainability of growth and poverty reduction. Chapter six completes the analysis by identifying a set of priority objectives for accelerating progress on the World Bank’s twin goals of eliminating extreme poverty and promoting shared prosperity.

Over the past quarter century, Vietnam’s agricultural sector has made enormous progress. Vietnam’s performance in terms of agricultural yields, output, and exports, however, has been more impressive than its gains in efficiency, farmer welfare, and product quality. Vietnamese agriculture now sits at a turning point. The agricultural sector now faces growing domestic competition - from cities, industry, and services - for labor, land, and water. Rising labor costs are beginning to inhibit the sector’s ability to compete globally as a low cost producer of bulk undifferentiated commodities. Going forward, Vietnam’s agricultural sector needs to generate more from less. That is, it must generate more economic value - and farmer and consumer welfare - using less natural and human capital and less harmful intermediate inputs. The strategic shift was highlighted in the government’s agricultural restructuring plan (ARP), approved by the Prime Minister in June 2014. The ARP defines sector goals in terms of the triple bottom line of economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable development. It lays out expected changes in the roles and spending patterns of the government in the sector and discusses the need to work with other stakeholders, including in the private sector. It calls for an ambitious and ongoing process of learning and experimentation, and several potential directions are offered in this report.

This 2015 index of sustainability indicators has been prepared in accordance with the internationally recognized standard for sustainability reporting Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines and complies with the ‘core option.’ The GRI Index provides an overview of sustainability considerations within the World Bank’s lending and analytical services as well as its day-to-day operations and management of staff. The World Bank aims to be comprehensive in its reporting and thus the Index includes indicators from GRIs financial sector supplement. The GRI Index covers activities from fiscal 2015, July 1, 2014, through June 30, 2015.

This Country Partnership Framework (CPF) presents the World Bank Group (WBG) program for Côte d’Ivoire (CIV) during the period FY16-FY19. The CPF comes at an opportune moment to accelerate and scale up the WBG engagement. The program will take advantage of CIV’s current climate of renewed stability to modernize the economy and eliminate long-standing disparities aggravated by a decade of multifaceted crisis, during which the World Bank Group had to suspend its operation four times. In 2009, a transitional Government resulting from the Ouagadougou Political Agreement (OPA) provided an appropriate platform to reengage. The transitional Government prepared the country’s first Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) covering 2009-2015. The WBG Country Partnership Strategy (CPS) for FY10-14, which supported the PRSP’s goals, was prepared in this context. Political unrest following the 2010 Presidential Elections then rendered implementation of the 2009 PRSP difficult. During the past four years, CIV has made an impressive transition from crisis to relative stability, and from fragility and low equilibrium, through stabilization, to aspiring emerging economy status. Although some of the root causes of the conflict remain, there are high expectations that those will be tackled if the current transformation is maintained and the reconciliation agenda is intensified. The Government expects to accelerate implementation of measures designed to improve social cohesion, develop human capital, build a resilient economy, support territorial development and promote regional synergies towards integration. The CPF will also support the achievement of the WBG’s twin goals of reducing extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity, which is also in line with Côte d’Ivoire’s plans.

The objective of this Systematic Country Diagnostic (SCD) is to identify the priority constraints Bolivia faces in sustaining its gains on reducing poverty and enhancing shared prosperity over the next years. It will analyze the dynamics behind the progress achieved in the past decade on inclusive growth, and identify a number of key constraints for sustaining and consolidating this progress. The SCD begins, in Chapter two, with a presentation of four characteristics that make Bolivia special, including its State‐led development strategy, large natural resource wealth, difficult geography and landlocked condition, and rich ethnic diversity. In chapter three, this SCD presents an in‐depth evaluation of the generally positive evolution in growth and in the reduction of poverty and inequality over the past decade. An assessment of the recent past and current context concludes that there is a need for enabling new inclusive growth engines, particularly through increased private investment and higher productivity. Chapter four makes a case for rebalancing the path of inclusive growth, and presents three main challenges in this sense: sustaining macroeconomic and fiscal stability, developing non‐extractive sectors with higher productivity and a lower environmental footprint, and reducing gaps and disparities in access to opportunities. The discussion of these challenges reveals a number of priority constraints, a key input for the prioritization exercise. Finally, in chapter five the SCD presents the findings of a prioritization exercise aimed at producing a restricted list of prioritized constraints, as well as a list of knowledge gaps identified in the different parts of the analysis.

Energy efficiency (EE) is critical to help Turkey continue its trajectory of economic growth in a sustainable manner. The Government of Turkey recognizes this and has placed EE as a key component of its energy strategy and National Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan. Over the past 5-10 years, it has made considerable advances in establishing a strong policy and legal framework, creating a robust institutional set-up and developing programs to support EE implementation. Institutionally, the General Directorate of Electric Power Resources Survey and Development Administration (EIE) had been mandated with EE policy making, implementation and promotion since 1981, and an Energy Efficiency Coordination Board (EECB) was established under the 2007 EE Law to coordinate various EE policies, programs and other efforts. In November 2011, EIE was converted into the General Directorate for Renewable Energy (GDRE) and absorbed within the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources (MENR). The World Bank conducted an EE institutional review in consultation with the Turkish Government with the objective to enhance their ability to more effectively manage EE policies and programs and thus contribute to helping meet its stated national EE targets. The review consisted of a detailed assessment of the current institutional set-up, including roles and responsibilities for EE in Turkey, along with a comparison with international experience and best practices. A final set of institutional options and recommendations are provided at the end of the report.

In past four years, the World Bank, in close cooperation with the Government of Zimbabwe, and the support of international partners - has carried out a number of studies and technical assistance activities in key areas of the socio-economic recovery. In line with Bank’s Africa strategy of fostering Africa’s economic transformation and poverty reduction, the overall goal of these studies has been to support broad-based development of Zimbabwe by facilitating evidence-based debate and policy-making. As a new government for 2013-2018 is about to take function, sectoral teams at the World Bank have distilled key analysis from those studies, and prepared the short policy notes. The policy notes attempt to summarize the main findings, challenges, constraints, and lay out policy options. While the past decade of hyperinflation and weak economic management has undoubtedly eroded a significant share of Zimbabwes physical and human capital, these can be rebuilt with the combination of sound economic policy and proper incentives to private sector investors, both domestic and foreign. It is therefore imperative that, however policymakers choose to proceed with regard to the future direction of the economy, they deliver well-articulated, credible, and stable economic policies. Such policies will enable and unleash the creative energies and entrepreneurial spirit of the private sector, the one that has delivered so often in the past. The policy note highlights the breadth and complexity of challenges in fostering long-term development. Addressing these challenges is a long haul task that will require a good sense of overarching priorities, as well as strong commitment to long-term objectives and policy consistency.

This report evaluates International Development Association (IDA) support to Nepal during 2003-2008. IDA’s overarching goal during this period was to support the Government’s efforts to reduce poverty and improve human well-being. IDA focused on helping to foster broad-based growth, social development, social inclusion, and good governance. The evaluation highlights the need to introduce greater realism into the country assistance strategy, and to retain flexibility to adjust to changing circumstances. It also stresses the need to consult widely and continually with national stakeholders and development partners. In addition, it points to the importance of making agriculture and rural development central to the program. The evaluation also focuses on the significance of designing and implementing a mechanism to systematically track the impact of the Poverty Alleviation Fund and adjust its design to enhance benefits to the poor. Finally, supporting reforms in public finance management through policy based lending or (if the prerequisites for budget support cannot be met) a sector-wide approach is also a key.

The World Bank Group (WBG) has been active in public and private sector pollution management for the past several decades. The Bank has mainstreamed environmental health concerns into its rural and urban services through projects that improved the management of solid and hazardous waste and wastewater, and controlled pollution related to a large variety of sectors including transport, industry, energy, and mining, with each decade having its flagship issues and projects. The changing global context illustrated by the wave of global crises, the rising acknowledgement in different countries of the impacts of climate change and the necessity to address greenhouse gas mitigation, the challenges in reaching the Millennium Development Goals pertaining to environment and poverty, and the voices calling for new approaches through green new deal, green growth, and green development require that pollution management be addressed within a new context.

The objective of this study is to identify lessons for improving cookstoves in Bangladesh through an evaluation of existing programs, the international experience on improved stoves, and the lessons from successes in the sanitation sector. Bangladesh's new renewable energy policy endorses creating a better environment for renewable energy technologies and promoting market development for improved cookstoves (Government of Bangladesh 2009). This study supports this policy direction by examining possible strategies to move forward the development of markets for improved stoves in Bangladesh. The study consists of several components: a national review of household energy programs; an evaluation of national sanitation programs; and an examination of improved cookstove programs from around the world, including China, Guatemala, Haiti, Mongolia, Nepal, and Uganda. The study is based on published literature, consultations with organizations throughout Bangladesh, site visits, and structured discussions with beneficiaries and other stakeholders.

Governments and international development agencies have intensified efforts to promote small-scale enterprises as an engine of pro-poor growth. In Brazil, however, small scale industries may also be responsible for the bulk of air pollution emissions. Although employees of polluting small-scale industries in Brazil are not disproportionately poor, simulations suggest that stringent environmental regulation resulting in widespread closures of pollution-intensive small-scale industries would result in a non-negligible increase in poverty among employees of these firms. The results suggest that the enthusiasm for small-scale enterprises needs to be tempered by awareness of the potential environmental costs imposed by this sector.

Major changes are needed if Africans and their children are to claim the 21st century. With the rapidly growing population, 5 percent annual growth is needed simply to keep the number of poor from rising. Halving severe poverty by 2015 will require annual growth of more than 7 percent, along with a more equitable distribution of income. Trends in Africa will need to change radically for a catch-up process to materialize. This will require determined leadership within Africa. It will require better governance developing stable and representative constitutional arrangements, implementing the rule of law, managing resources transparently, and delivering services effectively to communities and firms. It will require greater investment in Africas people as well as measures that encourage private investment in infrastructure and production. And it will require better support and perhaps more support from the international development community. In facing these challenges, Africa has enormous potential including the potential of its women, who now provide more than half of the regions labor but lack equal access to education and factors of production. This report brings together the recent body of work particularly that emanating from Africa itself to show how some African countries are approaching common issues. African economies and sub-regions are diverse and each will have to find its way to address the challenges of the 21st century.