Economics & Development

Prezentul raport reprezintă Livrabilul 2 și oferă recomandări în vederea (i) îmbunătățirii procesului actual de Planificare a forței de muncă aplicabil administrației publice și funcției publice și (ii) pregătirea acestuia pentru a avansa către o abordare bazată pe competențe. Acesta analizează cadrul de reglementare și operațional existent, identifică lacunele structurale cheie și evaluează eficacitatea practicilor actuale de planificare a forței de muncă (PFM) pentru managementul resurselor umane și planificarea bugetară. Pe baza acestei analize, raportul oferă recomandări Guvernului României și ANFP în vederea consolidării politicilor, a guvernanței și a proceselor de planificare a forței de muncă, inclusiv integrarea domeniilor funcționale și a competențelor. Raportul ilustrează, de asemenea, modul în care implementarea unei planificări strategice poate poate ajuta la îmbunătățirea capacităților TIC ale resurselor umane în administrația publică din România.

Remote digital work is increasingly positioned as a pathway to economic inclusion for forcibly displaced people, offering income opportunities independent of physical location or host-country labor market access. Yet the conditions under which this potential can be realized remain poorly understood. This study evaluates Opportunities Without Borders, a structured intervention combining soft skills training, freelance skills development, and mentorship implemented by Na'amal across displacement-affected communities in East Africa, reaching 2,000 refugees and host community members through a randomized controlled trial in 2024–2025. Drawing on quantitative, administrative, and longitudinal qualitative data, the study asks whether supply-side readiness constitutes the primary constraint to online labor market participation among displaced individuals. The intervention produced measurable gains in platform literacy and freelancing orientation but no statistically significant effects on job applications, hours worked, or earnings. A persistent "conversion gap" emerges between improved capability and actual employment, driven by structural barriers at market entry: payment system access, identity verification, application costs, and the absence of reputation signals required to secure initial contracts. Longitudinal follow-up reveals divergent participant trajectories determined not by motivation or skill, but by differential access to connectivity, financial tools, and sustained support. The findings demonstrate that remote work functions as an ecosystem: supply-side training alone cannot produce employment outcomes when structural barriers remain unaddressed. Effective programming requires a shift from individual preparation toward system-level interventions that reduce transaction costs, create first-job pathways, and sustain support through the full journey from learning to earning.

The development objective of the Horn of Africa Initiative: Djibouti Regional Economic Corridor Project for Djibouti is to improve regional connectivity and resilience, enhance logistics efficiency, and to improve spatial accessibility for the population living in the territory of the Recipient, along the Djibouti- Addis Southern corridor. The additional financing (AF) expands the scope of the parent project and the first AF and thus remains relevant to the higher-level objectives of the parent project. The second AF builds on the parent project and first additional financing by scaling up corridor investments, strengthening institutional reforms, and deepening climate resilience, while remaining fully aligned with the Country Partnership Framework 2022-2026 (CPF FY22-26) for Djibouti. AF2 responds to emerging implementation lessons by expanding road safety-focused upgrades along the Djibouti-Addis corridor, extending benefits to surrounding rural areas, and reinforcing institutional capacity critical for sustainable corridor management. It supports Djibouti’s Inclusion Connectivity and Institutions agenda and the Horn of Africa Initiative by further reducing trade and transit costs, improving the competitiveness of the port hinterland, and enhancing resilience to climate shocks.

Does cybersecurity preparedness matter for growth, and if so, where? This paper provides evidence that cybersecurity preparedness amplifies growth in digitally exposed sectors, highlighting its role as a key institutional complement to digitalization. The analysis uses an interaction design across countries and sectors on a panel of 178 countries, five sectors, and two growth intervals, exploiting differences across sectors within the same country period and over time. The estimates imply that a one standard deviation increase in cybersecurity preparedness is associated with about 1 to 2 percentage points higher annualized value added growth in sectors that are more vulnerable to cyber risk relative to less exposed sectors within the same country and period. The result is robust across alternative measures of sectoral vulnerability and a range of additional tests. Effects are slightly larger in high income countries, indicating potential differences in the effectiveness of cybersecurity systems. Overall, the results suggest that investments in digital infrastructure and digital adoption may yield larger and more resilient growth returns when accompanied by effective cybersecurity.