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The problem of food security is the top priority of the economic policy strategy of any state, the effectiveness of this solution influences social, political, and ethnic stability in society. Food security and nutrition is everyone's business. Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. By analysing the existing legislation in the area of food security, the author identifies weaknesses and gaps, suggesting ways to improve it.

Government wage bills have been growing across the world, but are exceptionally high in the MENA region relative to countries’ state of development, whether measured as a share of GDP, or of government revenue and spending (World Bank, 2004). Across the region government wage bills threaten fiscal sustainability. There are many drivers behind the large wage bills, whether of central government alone or of general government. Government employment numbers also seem to grow inexorably, in many areas faster than required to deliver services in line with population growth. Other factors have been weak staff control systems, the authorization of new recruitment outside budget frameworks, and laxly applied staff performance assessment systems, in addition to absenteeism, and the difficulty under public service rules of disciplining and ultimately terminating poorly performing staff. This paper takes a look at government wage bill growth, alongside current approaches to recruitment, staff performance assessments and promotions, with particular emphasis on Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia. These country examples are complemented by a broader regional analysis to illustrate overarching trends in public sector employment.The objective is to identify the various forces at work, how they interact, and thereby document and understand better the dynamic of public sector wage bill expansion in the Middle East as well as potential linkages to public sector performance. The paper also looks at reform efforts, extracts lessons and identify potential reform options to better control wage bill growth and the unbalancing effects it has had on the efficiency and effectiveness of government spending generally. Furthermore, while the paper does not present a comprehensive overview of the nature of public employment in MENA, it aims to identify potential areas for further research in this domain.

The November 8, 2015 elections in Myanmar marked a historic milestone in the country’s political and economic transition that began in 2011. Incoming policy makers are preparing to pick up the baton and deliver on the people’s strong aspirations for a harmonious and prosperous Myanmar. In this series of policy notes, the World Bank Group seeks to promote dialogue on critical development challenges and on options for policies and reforms that can contribute to shared prosperity for the people of Myanmar. The policy notes focus on six interconnected areas that are likely to be high priorities for shared prosperity. The first is on closing the gap in access to social services for improving Myanmar’s human development outcomes. This could help to strengthen the productivity and employability of Myanmar’s current and future labor force, which is the critical input to inclusive growth and a precondition to success in all the other areas. The second policy note is on growing together by reducing poverty in rural areas. Policies to boost agriculture productivity and accelerate the delivery of essential services in rural areas, where they lag the most, could help to supply the much needed labor and food for the rapidly expanding industrial, manufacturing and service sectors.

The structure of the Gabonese economy in 2014 reveals a strong dominance of services which account for 57.8 percent of real gross domestic product (GDP), followed by oil industry (20.6 per cent), other industries (15.4 per cent), and agriculture (6.3 per cent). Following lower oil revenues, from reduced prices and production, and lower non-oil revenue, the government reduced public expenditure from 26.7 percent of GDP in 2013 to 23.6 percent in 2014. Despite this, both government wages and salaries and goods and salaries increased leaving public investment to bear much of the brunt of the expenditure cuts resulting in only half of planned public investment being realized. In response to declining oil prices, the government adjusted the initial 2015 budget and revised the revenue assumptions. To cope with the financing gap, the government successfully issued a Eurobond of United States (U.S.) 500 million dollars in June 2015 with a maturity of ten years at a rate of 6.95 percent. Gabon has stated its intention to introduce a modern social protection system, however it has not yet reached the objectives set by the government. It still faces five major challenges to be addressed: (i) a lack of data; (ii) coordination of the system; (iii) ensuring fiscal sustainability; (iv) effective targeting of beneficiaries; and (v) building lesson-learning into policy. To meet these challenges the authors recommend focusing on the following: (a) deepen the analysis of poverty and vulnerability; (b) conduct an institutional audit; (c) formulate a deployment plan; and (d) simulate roll-out options.

This paper analyzes the socioeconomic, fiscal, and governance impact of gold mining in Mali. The analysis finds that, at the national level, mining plays an important role by contributing to export earnings and overall government fiscal revenue. In 2013, the mining sector represented 7 percent of gross domestic product, contributed 1.5 percent to growth in total gross domestic product, and accounted for 65 percent of total export earnings and 25 percent of total government budget revenues. At the local level, despite higher population growth, there is some evidence that outcomes (poverty and infrastructure services) are marginally better in mining communes compared with non-mining communes. Local governments receive fiscal windfalls that are spent significantly on education capital expenditures and current expenditures (salaries and non-salaries). Non-salary current expenditures are 10 times higher in mining areas. Analysis of the political economy of public service provision at the local level suggests that technical or absorptive capacities may be the bottleneck to increasing the local benefit of mining instead of corruption or accountability.

Myanmar is a country in transition and faces the following main challenges: a) reducing the incidence of poverty and improving human development outcomes, particularly for the poor and vulnerable; and b) addressing the insecurity of incomes and developing mechanisms to reduce exposure to risks and ability to cope with ill-health, disasters, and other shocks. Social protection policies and programs can play an important role in Myanmar’s strategy for poverty reduction and people-centered development. Many countries have used a range of programs to achievetheir development goals, particularly on poverty reduction and inclusive growth. An effective social protection system can help the poor and vulnerable better manage the opportunities and risks arising from the ongoing reforms, and can help promote household and community resilienceand social cohesion.

The Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA) Africa report describes the progress African countries are making on strengthening the quality of their policies and institutions. Some of the results from this report include: The overall quality of policies and institutions in countries in Sub-Saharan Africa was unchanged in 2014, but there was much variation in performance across countries. More than half the countries in the region saw a change in their policy environment: 10 countries experienced an improvement in their overall CPIA score, and an equal number saw a deterioration. There were divergent trends across policy clusters. Economic management weekend on the back of continuing fiscal policy slippage, as the sharp drop in commodity prices underscored weaknesses in the fiscal framework of several of the regions countries. By contrast, there was some strengthening in the governance cluster, with nine countries showing improvements in scores, more than twice the number of countries with declines. The greatest progress in this cluster was in the quality of budgetary and financial management.

The incentives of politicians to provide broad public goods and reduce poverty vary across countries. Even in democracies, politicians often have incentives to divert resources to political rents and private transfers that benefit a few citizens at the expense of many. These distortions can be traced to imperfections in political markets that are greater in some countries than in others. This article reviews the theory and evidence on the impact on political incentives of incomplete information for voters, the lack of credibility of political promises, and social polarization. The analysis has implications for policy and for reforms to improve public goods provision and reduce poverty.

This South African Agricultural Public Expenditure Review (AgPer) is one of a series of similar studies undertaken in several countries in Sub-Saharan Africa under the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (CAADP) of the African Union’s (AU) New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) which encourages governments and development partners (DPs) to target public expenditure on the agriculture sector as the most effective way of stimulating growth. The overall purpose of the budget tracking and public expenditure review is to provide recommendations to address budgetary planning, budget execution, and accountability in the agricultural sector, the creation of a reliable data base, and more effective intra- and inter-sectoral coordination. It is also aimed at stimulating increased resource allocations and to enhance the harmonization and alignment of resources around national and provincial priorities in the agricultural sector. The report aims to produce the following outputs: foundation data set for understanding reflecting the COFOG and South African nomenclature in budgeting; synthesis of the level, composition and quality of budget; and recommendations for enhancement of the budget tracking process.

Madagascar’s economic growth has been slow at 1 percent annually in the last five years and far inferior to sub-Saharan region’s average. Income per capita in 2014 fell to around USD 400 (2005 constant USD), losing about 20 percent from 1970 when per capita income reached the highest point since independence. The economic and social effects of the 2009 political crisis were intensified by the suspension of many donor activities which, in a country where international aid represented 40 percent of the government budget, led to significant cuts in investments and a sharp decline in the delivery of services. Macroeconomic stability was maintained during the crisis, as both fiscal and monetary authorities maintained prudent policies. A low public debt to GDP ratio (37.3 percent in 2014) and a low tax revenue (9.7 percent of GDP in 2014) contributed to hindering public investments necessary for development and adequate provision of public services. In a context of high poverty rates, low overall public resources to finance public services delivery, and continuous fragility, economic and political instability, how can public spending promote better outcomes in education and health? How can the Government of Madagascar and its partners support better access to improved quality of services, in particular for the most vulnerable? The Review of Public Spending in Social Sectors in Madagascar systematically analyses how education, health and nutrition have been financed over the past five years. It examines the amounts, distribution and impact of public spending, and formulates recommendations on how best to allocate future public spending with a focus on incremental resources.

Over the review period covered by this report (2003-2012), the budget allocated to agriculture increased noticeably more than the sector’s contribution to GDP. This reflects a notable effort by the Chad authorities to increase the budget to boost this sector’s development in recent years. In this proactive context, Chad signed its CAADP compact in December 2013 to continue supporting agriculture’s revival. The CAADP is being implemented in Chad even as the terms of the National Rural Sector Investment Program (PNISR, 2014-2020) are being finalized. Within the context of the CAADP, the Government of Chad (GOC) wished to undertake a review of public agriculture expenditures to learn from past budgetary implementation in this sector with a view to improving future program performance. Following a request by the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation (MoAI), the NEPAD planning and coordination agency gave Chad it’s backing for this review. This process was undertaken by the Program for Strengthening National Comprehensive Agricultural Public Expenditure in Sub-Saharan Africa, co-financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the CAADP Multi-Donor Trust Fund. This program, implemented by the World Bank, aims to improve the impact of the still-limited public resources available to governments in Sub-Saharan Africa to foster agricultural development and reduce poverty in rural areas, where most of the poor in these countries, notably Chad, live. This study follows and builds upon a number of similar studies conducted in recent years on public expenditure management, in particular in Chad the Action Plan for the Modernization of Public Finances (PAMFIP). However, these studies have focused on budget management as a whole, and none to date has looked at the agricultural sector specifically.

Since the peak of the economic crisis, poverty reduction in Armenia has made limited progress, with poverty rates moving from 34.1 percent in 2009 to 32 percent in 2013. This slow pace has been mirrored by the limited progress of the labor market (LM), particularly in terms of job-creation. In 2013, about 36 percent of people worked in the agricultural sector, and about half of all workers earned wages through informal jobs. These conditions highlight the need to have a robust social protection (SP) system that not only offers adequate protection to people living in poverty but can also serve as a tool to increase the quality of human capital, which in turn can help improve their economic opportunities. The government of Armenia (GoA) has shown a clear interest in building its infrastructure to deliver SP services through integrated social service centers as a means to better harness its investment in SP. Its vision is to ultimately implement an integrated social policy that personalizes interventions and tries to address multiple constraints that people face when trying to escape poverty— not only through the provision of cash benefits. The objective of this policy note is twofold. First, it provides a diagnostic of the SP system in order to identify the key issues that could be addressed to enhance its effectiveness and efficiency to achieve greater poverty reduction. Second, the note outlines a set of options—policies and reforms—for the GoA to consider as it continues to strengthen its poverty-reduction strategy. It is important to note that the focus of the report is on social assistance (SA) and LM policies for vulnerable groups. Other key aspects of SP—such as pensions, labor regulations, or the functioning of the LM as a whole—are not addressed in this report, and they have been the subject of extensive analysis elsewhere.

This report on the assessment of land governance in Brazil summarizes and discusses the results of a series of standardized self-assessments of the land governance situation in Brazil, conducted entirely by Brazilian speakers. Therefore, these findings represent the perception of local experts based on their experience of news and data available. The main aim of this report are federal and state authorities directly involved in land governance in the evaluated states and other states. The general objective of the development of this assessment is to measure reliably the skills and the performance of land governance in a cross section of the country. This assessment is highly relevant and timely, as the land and real estate of natural resources linked to the land are the central core of the current competitiveness of Brazil and its strategically valuable position in the changing world economy. The evaluation methodology was the Assessment Framework of Land Governance (LGAF) developed by the World Bank. It focused on five key areas of good land governance and three additional topics. Key areas were: legal, institutional and associated policies to land rights; planning of land use and taxation; identification and ownership of land management of the state; provision of public land information; and dispute settlement. The optional modules used in some evaluations focused on the large-scale acquisition of land, forestry and the regularization of land tenure. Based on the LGAF in related workshops and review of some publications, the review has identified four areas of relative force on the Brazilian land governance. They include the guarantee of property rights, transparency in allocation of public land, public accessibility of information on registered land and transparency of increasing concern emerging from the influence of democratic and social movements. In addressing these and other areas of reform of land governance, the efforts of the newly created Inter-ministerial Working Group on Land Governance (IMWG) will be vital. That is particularly so because some of the reforms depend on the consistency of improving legal and institutional framework for land governance, which is necessarily a collaborative and cross-sector enterprise. This report therefore calls on the IMWG to join the Presidents Office to create an annual and transparent work program, for a period of at least three years with a regular mechanism of agreed reporting to the IMWG Office and Civil Office of the Presidency.

The question of the role of higher education in society and culture today is linked, in this article, with two parallel processes: the questioning of the nation-state in the global age and the gradual decomposition of the welfare state in the majority of the OECD countries. What is currently happening is, first, a major redefinition of the general responsibilities of the state vis-a` -vis the familiar type of society characterized by the welfare state and, second, a major revision in thinking about the role of the state in contemporary politics and economies brought about by globalization processes (and hence the possible demise of the nation-state). The modern German-inspired university in the form in which it exists in Europe is certainly affected by the two processes. The aim of this article is to discuss higher education in this particular context.

The report contains eight chapters. Chapter one leads off with the main macroeconomic and fiscal determinants to understand the general health financing situation in DRC. Its sections one and two provide a brief overview of the country’s macroeconomic and fiscal environment. Section three sheds new light on decentralization, a core health issue, and focuses on the fiscal implications of decentralization. Section 4 offers a brief analysis of the management of public finance, a key element for the effectiveness and quality of expenditure, especially in health. Chapter two starts with a brief overview of the main objectives and analyzes its organization and governance, with a focus on health care delivery. Chapter three discusses the performance of the main health system’s outputs and outcomes. Section one analyzes major changes in health outcomes based on different household surveys. Section two addresses service coverage with a focus on mother and child services. Section three explores service quality issues. In a detailed analysis of health financing sources, Chapter four looks at changes in public, external, and private sources over 2008–2013 (section one). Section two analyzes the adequacy of government funding for health financing needs, and assesses the prospects for expanding fiscal space for health. Chapter five examines government funds mobilized for health, both allocated in the budget and executed (or actuals). Government resources for health are taken to mean all domestic financing sources allocated to the Ministry of Public Health and other health entities. Section one examines changes in the health budget envelope over 2007–2013, while section two focuses on actual spending. Section three analyzes government executed expenditure by nature and section four reviews trends and types of personnel expenditure, the largest share of government health expenditure. Chapter six focuses on health expenditure performance in the light of three main parameters: financial protection; equity; and efficiency. Section one analyzes financial protection using standard indicators (share of out-of-pocket payments, catastrophic expenditure, and impoverishing expenditure). Section two scrutinizes health outcomes and service use disparities and inequalities based on income, gender, and place of residence. The last section presents an overview of the efficiency of health expenditure in DRC, primarily in comparison to its peer countries. Chapter seven analyzes health financing from the point of view of the provinces, the new ‘entitled’ authorities for the health sector, drawing on a survey of financial and fiscal data from six provinces. Section one presents an overview of health financing flows after decentralization. Section two focuses on financing sources for the health sector at the provincial level, examining provincial government funds, external assistance, and central government transfers. The chapter ends with an analysis of the volume and type of decentralized government health expenditure. The report concludes in a brief chapter eight with a series of recommendations to improve short- and medium-term health sector financing and performance.

The rural sector, defined here as the economic sector that falls under the scope of the Ministry of Agriculture and Water (MAH), the Ministry of Animal Resources (MRA), and the Ministry of the Environment and Sustainable Development (MEDD), is one of the pillars of the Burkina Faso economy. Although its contribution to GDP has decreased in recent times from 35 percent in 1999 to 30 percent in 2011 due to the development of the other sectors of the economy, agricultural activity still employs approximately 86 percent of Burkina Faso s labor force and is the main source of income for poorer populations. Consequently, the rural sector is among the primary beneficiaries of public expenditures by the Burkina Faso government and constitutes one of the pillars of the Strategy for Accelerated Growth and Sustainable Development (SCADD) adopted in 2010. The goals of this agriculture public expenditure review in Burkina Faso are as follows: draw lessons from the past in terms of budget execution in the agricultural sector in order to promote the design and implementation of public expenditure programs that are more efficient and more equitable and have a greater impact; initiate the implementation of the databases and methodology required to conduct similar reviews regularly and thus contribute to the institutionalization of the process; and contribute to establishing the conditions for increased support for the sector while encouraging the harmonization and alignment of support with respect for national strategies.

Tanzania continues to stand out as a model of sound economic performance in the African continent, with a growth rate of over six per cent in 2011 and 2012, surpassing other regional economies and demonstrating impressive resilience to the global economic crisis. This is the second issue of the Tanzania economic update series. The series aim to engage a broad audience in a discussion of the state of the economy in general, as well as in specific debates of topical importance in Tanzania. The current issue seeks to get the discussion going on how to achieve the structural transformation of the rural economy so that rural households can also benefit from the country's remarkable growth performance.

The World Bank's Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA) is an important knowledge product that assesses the performance of 39 IDA countries along 16 dimensions of policy and institutional quality. This is the first in the series of annual reports. The 16 dimensions are grouped into four clusters: economic management; structural policies; policies for social inclusion and equity; and public sector management and institutions. The CPIA has been measuring and tracking the strength of policies and institutions in IDA-eligible countries since 1980, and releasing that information since 2006. Until now, the CPIA has been used mainly to inform IDA's allocation of resources to poor countries and in research. Yet the information contained in the CPIA is potentially valuable to governments, the private sector, civil society, researchers and the media as a tool to monitor their country's progress and benchmark it against progress in other countries. By presenting the CPIA scores for 38 African countries over six years in one easy-to-read document, this report aims to provide citizens with information that can support evidence-based debate that can, in turn, lead to better development outcomes. The scope of the report is motivated by the World Bank's open data initiative and the new Africa strategy, both of which seek to foster participation in development from a wide range of stakeholders by providing broader access to data and knowledge.

Lesotho is a small landlocked country with a homogenous population of 2.1 million. Lesotho's gross domestic product (GDP) per capita was 1,023 dollars and gross national income (GNI) per capita was 1,080 dollars in 2010. The country also faces numerous challenges to its social and human development. In this context, more attention on the role and quality of public investment is warranted. To improve public accountability and transparency, the Government of Lesotho (GoL) introduced the automated integrated financial management information system (IFMIS) in April 2009. The study directly responds to an explicit request of technical assistance from the ministry of finance and development planning (MoFDP) and aims at supporting the GoL in its major reform efforts to enhance the efficiency of public investment management (PIM) and increase the "value for money" in capital spending. The overarching objective of this study is to support the GoL in its efforts to prioritize public resource allocation and enhance efficiency in capital spending, with the ultimate goal of contributing to improved governance, service delivery, and economic growth. The work is aligned with the World Bank country assistance strategy (CAS) 2010 to 2014, in particular its first pillar on fiscal adjustment and public sector efficiency. This report emphasizes the complementary aspects of the institutions, incentives, capacity, and process-related constraints to the functioning of PIM. The focus of this report will also complement ongoing public financial management (PFM) support by other development partners. The report is presented in four chapters, which are organized as follows: chapter one offers a macro-level country analysis; chapter two presents recent trends in public investments; chapter three focuses on institution mapping and the diagnostic assessment of the PIM system; and chapter four concludes with policy implications.

Bangladesh is one of the world's poorest and most densely populated countries, and subject to annual cyclones and flooding. Despite these challenges, it benefits from strong economic growth, good performance on health and education, and poverty reduction, alongside weak governance and pervasive corruption. The reasons include strong macroeconomic policy, pro-poor spending, credible elections, export growth and remittances, improved capacity for managing natural disasters, and a stronger civil society than comparable countries. After over a decade of intense engagement with the Bank on governance, Bangladesh adopted in 2006 a governance-oriented Country Assistance Strategy (CAS) with four main objectives: to improve implementation capacity; to 'tackle corruption' by fully operationalizing the Anti-Corruption Commission; to lay the foundation for comprehensive legal and judicial reform; and to strengthen 'voice, empowerment and participation.' The choice of a wide range of instruments and areas of intervention was appropriate, given the political instability at the time of 2006 CAS preparation. The Bank signaled it was ready to engage in all areas, and could scale up or pull back depending on emerging political and bureaucratic commitment. The 2006 CAS yielded mixed results, and the subsequent Country Partnership Strategy (CPS) has been more selective on GAC issues. At the project level, governance has been a key priority, in line with the South Asia region's heavy emphasis on GAC-in-Projects. Investments in GAC-in-primary education, a local government project, anti-corruption efforts in the power sector, and projects strengthening the investment climate have yielded positive results. Investments in GAC-in-roads projects have had mixed results in terms of effectiveness. GAC activities were mainly adopted prior to the 2007 GAC strategy. Although Bangladesh was a Country Governance and Anticorruption (CGAC) country, the country team chose not to use CGAC funds because the country had already been intensively using GAC approaches well before the GAC strategy was adopted.

The focus of this paper is on the institutions outside the executive branch that include supreme audit institutions, legislative oversight bodies (such as parliamentary public accounts and budget committees, and ombudsmen), related independent bodies, and civil society organizations. Through their support for accountability, donor countries and international financial institutions seek to help countries: promote voice and accountability as an intrinsic human right, and improve development outcomes in terms of poverty reduction, sustainable development. The report is organized as: first, provide a brief literature review of research on accountability, and how donors and other actors can work to improve it, including a review of the experience of other bilateral and multilateral donors in supporting domestic accountability through their policies, strategies, and behaviors as well as through direct support to accountability actors and systems. Second, briefly review the guidance prepared for Bank staff toward enhancing accountability. Third, review some examples of the Bank's experience in supporting domestic accountability. Finally, we present some conclusions and accountability-related questions for further analysis.

A key driver of Liberia's re-emergence from utter destruction, between 2004 and 2008, was the willingness of international actors to accept the responsibility and risks associated with stabilization. This was accomplished by confronting these risks directly, even at the cost of temporarily filling institutional voids and sharing sovereignty with the Liberian transitional authorities. The main international diplomatic representations and aid agencies on the ground came to accept from their varying perspectives that peace in Liberia was fragile and that the Accra Comprehensive Peace Agreement (ACPA) of September 2003 was only the beginning of a protracted stabilization effort. The domestic market for consultants and goods did not exist, requiring the World Bank to innovate with new modes of delivering assistance. Thus, peace consolidation compelled international partners to simultaneously (i) prevent full state capture by corrupt elites in advance of elections and (ii) secure a peace dividend to vulnerable groups which could most directly threaten peace (young ex-combatants and refugees). Building on a solid UN-World Bank partnership, the international community found the internal consensus to address each of the two complementary peace consolidation challenges, adopting two highly innovative instruments: (i) an anti-corruption scheme labeled Governance and Economic Management Assistance Program (GEMAP), involving such robust measures as expatriate co-signing authority, and (ii) a short-term employment-generation scheme now known as roads-with- United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), centered on a rare direct collaboration between the Bank and the engineering units of the UN's military peacekeeping force on the ground. This paper examines these two instruments more closely, in their successes and failures as well as from the perspective of temporary shared sovereignty and co-production.

The firming of the economic recovery is putting the policy spotlight back on the longer term challenge of faster, more inclusive Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth. Modest investment rates despite attractive returns and low savings rates despite favorable demographics are important impediments. A virtuous cycle of faster capital accumulation, job creation (especially for the youth), and technological advancement needs to be stimulated. There are no quick fixes that can produce the desired stimulus. The quest for inclusive growth calls for a different, bolder approach. Integration of the advanced and less-developed economies and more effective integration with the global economy, using factory Southern Africa as a platform, hold considerable potential. South Africa's medium-term growth prospects point to a strengthening recovery. GDP growth is projected to be 3.5 percent in 2011, 4.1 percent in 2012 and 4.4 percent in 2013. The long term potential growth rate under the current policy environment is estimated at 3.5 percent. In light of South Africa's low national savings, the reemergence of high current account deficits, financed mostly through volatile portfolio flows, will reemerge as the biggest cause for macroeconomic concern over the medium term. With considerable strengthening of the economic recovery and GDP projected to reach its potential by 2014, the focus shifts back to the longer term challenge of raising GDP growth to 6-7 percent and making it much more inclusive to tackle the extremely high unemployment. This first issue is anchored in the national aspirations of faster and more inclusive growth, with special emphasis on the issues of savings and investment.

The Lao PDR has been a one-party, socialist state since the overthrow of the monarchy by the communist Pathet Lao in 1975, which was preceded by a long period of civil and regional strife. After a decade of relative isolation and close military cooperation with Vietnam, the new economic mechanism, introduced in 1986, ushered in an era of market-based reforms, which has continued to the present day. Lao PDR is one of the poorest countries in East Asia, with a 2006 per capita income of US$ 500. In 2004, 71 percent of its population of 5.7 million lived on less than US$ 2/day and 23 percent on less than US$ 1/day. However Lao PDR has grown rapidly since the inauguration of reforms two decades ago. During the 1990s growth averaged 6 percent per annum despite severe imbalances during the Asian crisis. Following successful stabilization, growth continued to average close to 6 percent during 2001-2004, accelerating in 2005-2007 to over 7 percent. Inflation remained well below 10 percent since 2005. Although Lao PDR qualifies for the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative, the Government has chosen to maintain normal creditor relations. The latest debt sustainability analysis confirms that, while risk of debt distress is high, medium term debt service is manageable, contingent on continued reform and prudent fiscal management. Foreign direct investment has almost quadrupled between 2004 and 2007, and exceeds US$ 800 million annually, mostly in hydropower and mining. Growth in Lao PDR has been pro-poor. Based on the national poverty line, the poverty headcount has fallen from almost half to one-third of the population during the decade ending in 2002-2003. The country's performance on other elements of poverty reduction as summarized in the millennium development goals is mixed.

Nicaragua's state domination of productive capacity from the late 1970s to 1990, coupled with the civil war of the 1980s, left the economy with hyperinflation, large fiscal and current account deficits, and an external debt that was six times gross domestic product. As a result, economic activity declined at a sharp rate. By 1993, per capita income had fallen by a full 60 percent from the 1977 level. By the early 1990s the country was receiving aid equivalent to more than 70 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Subsequent administrations tried to address the country's economic problems through fiscal and monetary discipline and market-oriented reforms to redefine the role of the state. There were some successes, for example, decisive government action reduced inflation to around 10 percent by 1995, but many reforms failed due to their slow pace and to continued political volatility. The Bank supported the reform agenda with two economic recovery credit operations in the early 1990s. The results were less positive than expected, as the government's capacity to privatize state-owned enterprises and otherwise reform the public sector wavered in the face of political instability. The lack of political consensus prompted the Bank to withdraw from structural adjustment lending for several years. An opening for re-engagement was provided in 2002 when, after several failed attempts, Nicaragua successfully implemented the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF). This allowed the Bank to respond to the government's request for assistance to close a financing gap through fast disbursing budget support in the form of a programmatic structural adjustment credit. While technically a structural adjustment loan, the credit supported objectives based on budget-based goals already attained in implementing a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP), which had been prepared by the government in 2001. In this sense, the credit was the last structural adjustment loan and the precursor to the Poverty Reduction Support Credits (PRSCs).

Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) is an extremely complex, multidisciplinary and skill intensive endeavor. Government-wide M&E is even more so because it requires detailed knowledge across and within sectors, as well as of interactions among planning, budgeting, and implementation functions in the public sector. The situation is complicated even further when the machinery of government is decentralized, with powers and functions distributed across three spheres of government. This paper outlines the process of implementing a government-wide monitoring and evaluation (GWM&E) system in South Africa. The first section sketches the context that created the impetus for establishing such a system. This context is clearly shaping the evolution of the system and influencing its longer-term sustainability. The second section outlines the various stages of conceptualizing and implementing the GWM&E system, which is currently very much a 'work in progress.' The third section reviews international experiences for lessons learned, which may also be germane to the South African context, noting similarities and differences in approach. Some of the critical implementation factors relate to the role of political leadership and championing of M&E, incentives for promoting usage of M&E findings, dealing with information and data constraints, capacity building, "ownership" of the M&E system by line ministries and other agencies, and managing the challenges of change. The fourth section examines a range of challenges and difficulties encountered in South Africa. The final section reflects on lessons distilled from the South African experience to date.

This study examines Public Expenditure Tracking Survey (PETS) and Quantitative Service Delivery Survey (QSDS) carried out in Africa with the objective of assessing their approaches, main findings, and contributions. Section 2 investigates the context, motivations, and objectives of PETS and QSDS that have been carried out in Sub-Saharan Africa. Section 3 examines the institutional arrangements for resource allocation and service delivery in social sectors. Section 4 presents some of the main findings of tracking surveys. Section 5 analyzes methodological approaches used in previous tracking surveys in order to identify factors that could explain the difference in past surveys' success, and identify potential methodological harmonization. Section 6 presents a series of good practice principles that arise from past experience, and discusses how they could be implemented. Section 7 proposes potential future surveys and endeavors.

Infrastructure contributed 0.6 percentage points to Ethiopia's annual per capita gross domestic product (GDP) growth over the last decade. Raising the country's infrastructure endowment level to that of the region's middle-income countries could lift annual growth by an additional 3 percentage points. This will represent a significant boost over the growth performance of the mid-2000s, which averaged around 5 percent. The Africa Infrastructure Country Diagnostic (AICD) has collected and analyzed extensive infrastructure data for more than 40 Sub-Saharan countries, including Ethiopia. The results are presented in reports on various infrastructure sectors Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), irrigation, power, transport, water and sanitation and policy areas, including investment needs, fiscal costs, and sector performance. This country report presents the key AICD findings for Ethiopia. This will allow its infrastructure situation to be benchmarked against that of other African nations that, like Ethiopia, are low-income countries, with particular emphasis on immediate regional neighbors in East Africa. Several methodological issues should be borne in mind. First, the cross country nature of the data collection creates an inevitable time lag. The period covered by the AICD runs from 2001 to 2006. Most technical data are presented for 2006 (or the most recent year available), while financial data typically are averaged over the available period to smooth out the effect of short term fluctuations. Second, cross country comparisons require standardization of the indicators and the analysis to ensure consistency. Therefore, some of the indicators may be slightly different from those that are routinely reported and discussed at the country level. During the 2000s, Ethiopia's annual economic growth has averaged 4.8 percent, compared with only 0.5 percent in the previous decade. Notwithstanding this improvement, current annual growth levels still fall short of the sustained 7 percent needed to meet the Millennium Development Goals. Improved structural and stabilization policies generated an estimated 4.2 percent of Ethiopia's improved per capita growth performance during the 2000s, and improvements in the country's infrastructure platform over that period contributed up to 0.6 percentage points to growth. This was due almost entirely to the introduction of mobile telephony in Ethiopia. Simulations suggest that if Ethiopia's infrastructure platform could be improved to the level of the African leader, Mauritius, annual per capita growth rates could increase by 3.8 percent. This potential impact would come equally from improvements to transport, power, and ICT infrastructure.

The public expenditure and institutional assessment (PEIA) were motivated by a number of factors. First, both the Government of Iraq (GoI) and its international development partners have recognized the critical importance of sound management of Iraq's substantial public financial resources. Both parties support the reform and modernization of public financial management (PFM), as articulated in the International Compact for Iraq (ICI). Secondly, international experience demonstrates the importance of establishing a baseline against which progress in PFM over time can be measured. This implies the need for an assessment which provides the information necessary to measure the performance of a country's PFM system. Thirdly, the devastating circumstances in Iraq during the past 5 years have made the institutional arrangements for PFM the subject of considerable uncertainty. The PEIA can help to shape and prioritize the necessary development program. The report is organized in two main parts. Volume one contains a summary of the main issues to emerge from the public expenditure and financial accountability (PEFA) assessment and a discussion of a number of specific PFM issues of current importance to Iraq, including: capital investment budgeting (CIB), oil revenue management, the Iraq financial management information system (IFMIS), public accounting and accountability, and payroll management. Volume two contains a detailed technical analysis behind the PEFA assessment.

The public expenditure and institutional assessment (PEIA) were motivated by a number of factors. First, both the Government of Iraq (GoI) and its international development partners have recognized the critical importance of sound management of Iraq's substantial public financial resources. Both parties support the reform and modernization of public financial management (PFM), as articulated in the International Compact for Iraq (ICI). Secondly, international experience demonstrates the importance of establishing a baseline against which progress in PFM over time can be measured. This implies the need for an assessment which provides the information necessary to measure the performance of a country's PFM system. Thirdly, the devastating circumstances in Iraq during the past 5 years have made the institutional arrangements for PFM the subject of considerable uncertainty. The PEIA can help to shape and prioritize the necessary development program. The report is organized in two main parts. Volume one contains a summary of the main issues to emerge from the public expenditure and financial accountability (PEFA) assessment and a discussion of a number of specific PFM issues of current importance to Iraq, including: capital investment budgeting (CIB), oil revenue management, the Iraq financial management information system (IFMIS), public accounting and accountability, and payroll management. Volume two contains a detailed technical analysis behind the PEFA assessment.

The world faces unprecedented opportunities to reduce global poverty and improve human welfare. Strong global growth and better economic policies in recent years have substantially reduced poverty in many developing countries. However, with the recent financial turmoil in the United States and rising prices for food, oil, and other commodities, the world economy faces heightened risks and volatility. Policymakers around the world face the challenge of maintaining momentum in growth, as well as of improving the quality of growth. This concern over quality is reflected in the highly uneven reduction in poverty, rising inequality in numerous countries, and widening environmental degradation during the past decade, a period of unprecedented high economic growth in developing countries. Unless these issues are confronted, gains from growth are likely to be undermined and the pace of growth, itself, will not be sustained. Growth is clearly linked to reductions in poverty. But the strength of this relationship depends on the quality or nature of growth. Various studies show that some growth patterns systematically reduce poverty and inequality, but others do not. And some growth patterns lead to underinvestment in human capital, overexploitation of natural resources, and degradation of the environment, patterns inimical to the sustainability of growth.

This housing policy in developing countries, conjectures and refutations article discusses housing policy in developing economies. It examines recent research findings in light of earlier arguments as to the benefits of more market-oriented approaches. It also looks at whether the recommendations of earlier work have been refuted or developed in subsequent analyses and policy measures. In particular, it reviews the empirical analysis of the effects of policy on housing supply, the richer understanding of the effects that land market regulations have on housing affordability and the functioning of urban areas, and the alleged mysterious effects that researchers claim effective property rights have on housing policy and on development more generally. It also examines the effects of the increased emphasis on community participation, showing how it helps to more fully reconcile the incentives faced by beneficiaries of housing policy and donors. Finally, it examines recent literature on the welfare effects of rent control. The article shows that some of the conjectures as to the likely benefits of more market-based policy have been refuted, but large welfare gains for poor people can still be realized by adapting this approach. Furthermore, this approach appears to be gaining ground as the consensus approach to effective housing policy.

Infrastructure is crucial for generating growth, alleviating poverty, and increasing international competitiveness. For much of the twentieth century and in most countries, the network utilities that delivered infrastructure services such as electricity, natural gas, telecommunications, railroads, and water supply were vertically and horizontally integrated state monopolies. But this approach often resulted in extremely weak services, especially in developing and transition economies and especially for poor people. Common problems included low productivity, high costs, bad quality, insufficient revenue, and shortfalls in investment. Over the past two decades many countries have implemented far-reaching institutional reforms restructuring, privatizing, and establishing new approaches to regulation. This article identifies the challenges involved in this massive policy redirection within the historical, economic, and institutional context of developing and transition economies. It also reviews the outcomes of these policy changes, including their distributional consequences especially for poor households and other disadvantaged groups. Drawing on a range of international experiences and empirical studies, it recommends directions for future reforms and research to improve infrastructure performance.

To increase investment in infrastructure, in the early 1990s Chiles government introduced private capital into the transport infrastructure sector, covering roads and highways, bridges, tunnels, and airports. The chosen mechanism: a concession scheme through which private firms would finance and build a given project and then operate the infrastructure for a set of number of years, recovering their investment by collecting tolls from users. Among the lessons learned from the experience: 1) As much as possible, avoid concessioning roads for which there are convenient alternative freeways nearby. 2) Choose the right variable for awarding a concession. Avoid mechanisms that (by promoting large payments to the state or short-term concession periods) encourage high tolls, and if you choose to award a concession to the firm charging the lowest tolls, place a floor and ceiling on possible bids. The floor is to guarantee the concessions financial viability; the ceiling is to prevent inefficient traffic diversions. Ties at either end should be resolved by a second variable, such as the level of transfers between the state and the firm. 3) Allow downward toll flexibility so that the concessionaire can react to unexpectedly low traffic flows, especially for certain types of vehicles. 4) Pay special attention to the tendering mechanism and to the general incentive structure. There are limits to the pure least-present-value-of-revenue (LPVR) auction, but income guarantees do enhance liquidity. In fact, a minimum-income guarantee through an LPVR auction is an instrument for credit enhancement, not income support. Alternatively, some form of financial innovation should be encouraged to make debt service commitments more flexible. 5) If concessions are tendered by traditional methods and income guarantees will be given, cover only a fraction of the concessionaires expected income stream, to reduce the states financial exposure and to improve the incentives to the concessionaire. 6) Make the contracts as complete as possible but allow for later modifications or renegotiations, and include a well-designed dispute resolution mechanism.

This article considers the legal issues of food security as a major component of national security of the republic. The problem of food security is the top priority of the economic policy strategy of any state, the effectiveness of this solution influences social, political, and ethnic stability in society. Food security and nutrition is everyone's business. Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. By analyzing the existing legislation in the area of food security, the author identifies weaknesses and gaps, suggesting ways to improve it.