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Although many studies consider the spatial pattern of manufacturing plants in developing countries, the role of services as a driver of urbanization and structural transformation is still not well understood. Using establishment level data from India, this paper helps narrow this gap by comparing and contrasting the spatial development of services with that in manufacturing. The study during the 2001-2010 period suggests that (i) services are more urbanized than manufacturing and are moving toward the urban and, by contrast, the organized manufacturing sector is moving away from urban cores to the rural periphery; (ii) manufacturing and services activities are highly correlated in spatial terms and exhibit a high degree of concentration in just a few states and industries; (iii) manufacturing in urban districts has a stronger tendency to locate closer to larger cities relative to services activity; (iv) infrastructure has a significant effect on manufacturing output, while human capital matters more for services activity; and lastly, (v) technology penetration, measured by the penetration of the Internet, is more strongly associated with services than manufacturing. Similar results hold when growth in activity is measured over the study period rather than levels. Manufacturing and services do not appear to crowd each other out of local areas.

Romania faces today the critical need to enhance the coordination of public investment programs and projects in order to ‘do more with less,’ maximizing development impact given limited financial resources available. In this context, ‘value for money’ is the key guiding principle of public investments, making this final report is both critically important and timely. Romania’s preparations for the 2014-2020 EU programming period are in full swing, with multiple operational programs recently approved. In parallel, the Government is working on revamping instruments financed entirely from the state budget. The core focus is on the National Local Development Program (PNDL), the main state-budget-funded investment program for local infrastructure development, though findings and recommendations may be extrapolated to other state-budget-funded instruments (e.g., the Environment Fund) and, indeed, as decentralization and regionalization may evolve in the future, subnational governments may also apply the lessons of this work. The main goal of this work is to recommend and facilitate the adoption of prioritization and selection criteria that enhance coordination at the level of infrastructure programs and the projects they finance.

This policy note describes the state of transport and logistics in Georgia, carries out a needs assessment and identifies the main areas for improvements.The purpose of this policy note is to develop a common understanding between the Government of Georgia (GoG) and its partners of the institutional and physical challenges which face the transport and logistics sector, and of a strategy for meeting these challenges in the medium-term. The policy note identifies the key strategic directions and actions which will enable the sector to grow and improve. It intends to help the Bank and the development partners to engage with the GoG in dialogue on the critical bottlenecks and to provide the Government with advice based on the Bank’s international experience. The strategic directions outlined in this policy note require institutional reforms. This is inevitably a long term process but one which will gradually improve Georgia’s Logistics Performance Index ranking and its trade and competiveness.

This issue includes the following headings: finding the right broadband public-private partnership (PPP): whats key for emerging economies?; reform has its rewards: telecom takes off in Myanmar; e-gov excellence: models from Colombia, Ghana, India, and Portugal; know what you know: creating a government technology strategy; and closing the gap: Facebook and intel connect the unconnected.

Every year, nearly 1.3 million people worldwide are killed in road crashes, which have become the leading cause of death among people between the ages of fifteen and twenty-nine. More than 90 percent of the world s road fatalities occur in developing countries, and half of the accident victims are pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists. Road accidents disproportionately affect the poor, making road safety an economic development issue. Many crash victims are of working age, and their death or serious injury too frequently leaves their dependents destitute. Governments in poorer countries have assumed they cannot act to reduce death rates until they are wealthier. However, many of today s road safety measures can be implemented relatively inexpensively to reduce death rates, if managed correctly. The United Nations (UN) invited the World Health Organization (WHO) to coordinate a drive to improve road safety globally. It also proclaimed a decade of action for road safety (2011 2020) to stabilize and then reduce the level of traffic fatalities and serious injuries around the world. More than 100 countries as well as multilateral development banks, including the World Bank, support the interventions. The Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) is aware of the rapidly worsening road safety situation in the developing world and efforts by the Bank's transport sector to encourage the use of best practices in road projects. This study, a pioneering learning product created by IEG in cooperation with transport operational staff and the Bank s Global Road Safety Facility (GRSF), aims to provide useful knowledge to Bank operational staff involved with road safety, to support Bank and client countries in fine tuning their road safety strategies and practices, and to support the acceleration of the Bank s operational road safety agenda.

This issue of the Handshake, IFCs quarterly journal on public-private partnerships, contains the following topics of interest: weighing the options: burn or bury?; waste and climate: supporting governments; community engagement: integrating Indias informal sector; an interview with the director of the documentary Trashed; and bonus: podcast with 2013 CNN hero on community cleanups.

This issue includes the following headings: donors: aid versus trade; investment: seeking strong partners; power: hydro heats up; water: sanitation solutions; and first person: African Development Bank President

Azerbaijan is a secular, majority-Shiite, oil and gas-rich country whose per-capita income quadrupled in real terms during the period 2004-10. While rising incomes have reduced poverty, steps towards a more secure, diversified economy are held back by a public sector that rests on vested interests, patronage-based incentive structures, and ingrained patterns of behavior that include significant rent extraction, particularly from the non-oil economy, with minimal checks and balances from Parliament, the private sector, and civil society. Bank engagement in Azerbaijan at the country level focused on areas which had government support. Some modest results have been achieved, even though in many cases modern laws and practices were adopted without adequate plans for implementation. At the project level, the Bank has supported the strengthening of project implementation units (PIUs) and tools for monitoring, and governance and institutional filters have signaled that Governance and Anticorruption (GAC) processes need to be embedded in the Bank projects. At the sector level, the Bank's work was highly relevant in supporting oil revenue transparency, primary education, roads, and the development of safeguards. It was substantially relevant in public financial management, and private sector development and procurement. Bank engagement was moderately relevant in decentralization, civil service reform, and accountability institutions.

The World Bank financed the Gujarat State Highway Project (GSHP) during 2001-07. The project development objective was to enhance the capacity of the Government of Gujarat (GOG) for effective and efficient planning and management of road infrastructure, while concurrently maximizing existing road infrastructure asset productivity through priority investments and increased maintenance funding. The project not only achieved its objective and targets successfully, but also was implemented with a significant cost reduction (about 23 percent). The GSHP resulted in a reduction in the backlog of major maintenance and an improved network to meet rapidly growing transport demand in the state. The project had the unique distinction of no contract disputes, a rarity among the highway development projects in India. The project also set best practices in developing and managing a very comprehensive asset management system, state of the art quality assurance framework and a very comprehensive training and capacity building program. The annual road sector allocation has grown from USD 30 million in 1995-1996 to an impressive USD 610 million in 2010-11, currently the second largest among all the Indian states. This study attempts to identify the key elements of the Gujarat road sector reforms and explores whether and, if so, how such reforms can be replicated across other Indian states and possibly even in other countries in the region.