PSD Blog - The World Bank Group

World Business and Development Awards

The International Chamber of Commerce and the United Nations Development Programme announced the ten winners of the World Business and Development Awards last Wednesday (Hat tip: Business Fights Poverty). The companies demonstrated "clear linkages between their core business practices and the contribution they make to achieving the MDGs." You can read more about the winners here. I think my favorite has to be ZMQ Software Systems:

On World AIDS Day, 1 December 2005, under the banner“ Freedom HIV/AIDS”, ZMQ released four mobile games on HIV/AIDS awareness to reach out to millions of people. It was a pioneering initiative to create awareness of HIV/AIDS within grass-root communities. The objective was to make use of the latest mobile technology to help
combat a serious disease. In the span of 15 months, the four games reached 42
million people in India, with a download of 10.3 million game sessions.

On the ZMQ website, you can shoot the HIV, save your village, or take a quiz with Mandela.

Trading without Doha

Still upset about the failure of the latest round of Doha talks? Don't worry - there are still many ways to improve the outlook for international trade. You can take Simeon Djankov's advice over on the Doing Business blog and reduce the delays related to trade. Or, according to a new World Bank working paper, you could make trade more transparent. In Governance, Corruption, and Trade in the Asia Pacific Region, authors Kazutomo Abe and John S. Wilson estimate huge gains for trade and GDP due to reforms that improve transparency:

[T]he reforming economies in APEC stand to benefit significantly in regard to GDP and welfare gains with the type of reform we examine here. In particular, Vietnam could expect an increase in real GDP by more than 30 percent in Case 1. Russia, Philippines and Thailand’s GDP and welfare would rise substantially, as well. The benefits to Malaysia and China would be almost one year’s growth. The estimated global benefits here with transparency reform, US$406 billion in Case 1 and US$290 billion in Case 2 in the 2006 prices are larger than those reported in previous work on trade facilitation.

China jigsaw puzzle

See how the populations of 34 countries could fit into China's provinces.

And for another take, see how China is an island.

How to fight a banking crisis

The world has undergone enough banking crises that some useful lessons might be gleaned from past experience. A working paper from the IMF attempts to do just that with a database of all systemic banking crises between 1970 and 2007 - a total of 42. Systemic Banking Crises: A New Database offers up a few guidelines on what to do when faced with a crisis:

Our preliminary analysis based on partial correlations indicates that some resolution measures are more effective than others in restoring the banking system to health and containing the fallout on the real economy. Above all, speed appears of the essence. As soon as a large part of the financial system is deemed insolvent and has reached systemic crisis proportions, bank losses should be recognized, the scale of the problem should be established, and steps should be taken to ensure that financial institutions are adequately capitalized.

Perhaps just as important is what has not worked well during a crisis:

Emerging markets, meet subprime mortgages

A new World Bank working paper called The Sub Prime Crisis: Implications for Emerging Markets makes an argument that the world may not quite be ready to hear, at least not so soon after the implosion of Wall Street. Authors William Gwinner and Anthony Sanders delicately explain in the abstract that "[i]t is possible to extend mortgage lending down market [in emerging markets] without repeating the mistakes of the subprime boom and bust." You don't have to start worrying about this question quite yet, though. Subprime mortgages still seem to be pretty rare in emerging markets:

[E]merging markets have been slow to move down market with mortgages. Mortgage lending is typically less than 20 percent of GDP in emerging markets, while it ranges between 40 and 100 percent of GDP in developed countries.

The authors lay out a lot of "lessons learned" that could help guide policymakers in emerging markets. Perhaps it would make good reading for policymakers in the U.S. as well!

In Praise of Lukewarm Water

September 2008. Yesterday, suddenly, our apartment got lukewarm water the color of weak tea. I was delighted.

In Ulaanbaatar, as in cities of the former Soviet Union, hot water and heat for buildings is produced in a power plant and piped throughout the city. You can still see thick, insulated pipes running above ground, and arching up and over roads. Very ugly, but cheaper than putting them underground.

Every year, the hot water supply is shut off for maintenance and cleaning of pipes. This usually lasts a few weeks in major cities, and can last for months in smaller ones. In my district, there was major pipe work done. Because of this I have never had hot water in Mongolia. They promised it in June, then August. Then in mid-September, when the heat is supposed to go on. It makes me long for the simple bak mandi bathing system I had in Aceh.

 

Africa Can End Poverty - The Blog

If you haven't seen it, you should check out the newest addition to the World Bank Group family of blogs: Africa Can End Poverty. Spearheaded by Shanta Devarajan, the blog promises to introduce some debate on the pressing issues of development in Africa. Want to know how to promote exports or whether Africa is growing too fast? This is the place to go. Welcome to the blogosphere! 

China is not the only one courting Africa

Turkey is making big strides in building relations with Africa. The Jamestown Foundation reports that:

Turkish interest in Africa is underwritten by soaring bilateral trade: while Turkey's trade volume with the entire African continent was $5 billion in 2003, Gul noted that with government encouragement, Turkish-African trade had been increasing annually by double digit figures since 2004 and exceeded $12 billion last year, a figure that his government hoped to increase to $30 billion by 2010.

The article also reports that Turkey brings a lot of agricultural expertise to bear. Perhaps this kind of partnership will bring more development benefits than the results reported by UNCTAD in Economic Development in Africa: 2008.

Benchmarking microfinance

CGAP recently announced the launch of SmartAid 2009, an initiative to measure and rank microfinance funders. This round builds on the results of a pilot round in 2007 that included the Asian Development Bank, KfW, GTZ, FMO, and others. Here are the results from the earlier round:

   

It will be interesting to see if this kind of ranking exercise can help promote greater transparency and accountability among microfinance institutions. (It will undoubtedly court controversy, as every ranking exercise inevitably does.) And if you're interested in having your institution assessed, you still have time - submissions are open until the end of November.

Combating corruption in Paraguay

Transparency International hosted an interesting interview with the new president of Paraguay, Fernando Lugo.

Transparency Watch: How do you plan to institutionalise the fight against corruption?

Fernando Lugo: First, as a basis, by auditing and establishing permanent controls by and within each of the government’s departments. Additionally, through the creation – which will be finalised at the appropriate time – of a National Anti-corruption Ministry, which will set the political and technical norms to elevate such a battle to the most institutionalised level possible.

Perhaps they should take a page from Kenya's book and work on creating a system of e-government to help combat corruption. Although Paraguay has only 4.3 internet users per 100 people compared to Kenya's 7.6, Paraguay ranks higher in terms of the e-government readiness index of the World Development Indicators.