Economics & Development

Ratings of the Ferghana Valley Rural Enterprise Development Project for Uzbekistan were as follows: outcome was satisfactory, Bank performance was satisfactory, and monitoring and evaluation quality was substantial. Simple, focused design amplifies impact, and non-financial components must be structurally protected; successor operations should limit component proliferation and establish a minimum expenditure floor for non-financial support, with any reduction subject to mid-term review approval. Partial credit guarantees (PCG) are most effective when paired with liquidity, participating financial institution (PFI) capacity building, and clear uptake incentives; future projects should monitor PCG uptake, default performance, and changes in PFI risk appetite, and ensure coverage reaches women-led and smaller enterprises rather than only already bankable borrowers. Financial intermediary operations should pre-specify an adaptive product menu that can activate credit lines, leasing, guarantees, and micro-credit as needed, monitor catalytic effects beyond direct beneficiaries, guard against concentration risk by pairing financing volume targets with minimum enterprise counts, and include explicit borrower protections against unilateral post-disbursement interest rate changes. Innovation and ecosystem components require grant-like instruments, realistic timelines, and mandatory sustainability plans; early-stage innovators are better served by grants, convertible grants, or equity-like instruments, and a Business Incubation Hubs (BIHs) sustainability roadmap specifying operating cost coverage and institutional mandates should be a required mid-term review deliverable. Gender and regional inclusion require proactive product design, binding conditions, and demand-anchored targets; future rural finance operations should include gender-responsive products, simplified documentation, targeted outreach, and PFI-level monitoring of approval and refusal rates for women-led enterprises, alongside region-specific capacity assessments and dedicated field coordination for underserved areas. Job attribution methodology must be standardized at design and verified independently; projects should define what counts as a job, the time horizon, treatment of part-time and seasonal work, and the verification institution, and should build independent impact assessments into the results framework as a routine verification mechanism.

This chapter provides a practical guide for policy makers and civil society organizations to apply the report’s fiscal frontier framework and tailor tax reforms to their country’s specific circumstances. Emphasizing that there is no universal path to a stronger tax system, it introduces a two-step diagnostic approach for identifying feasible and effective reforms. First, countries assess their structural fundamentals, including economic conditions, administrative capacity, and political and institutional factors, to determine which reforms are practical. Second, they benchmark the performance of their tax system against peer countries with similar characteristics to identify priority gaps in revenue generation, efficiency, fairness, and compliance. Based on this assessment, the chapter outlines reform priorities across the overall tax system as well as income, consumption, and property taxation. It also highlights the role of technology, transparency, and trust in strengthening tax administration and improving tax system performance, providing a roadmap for prioritizing and sequencing reforms that are both achievable and impactful.

Resumen de dos páginas con los resultados de PISA 2025 para Uruguay. Reúne los puntajes en lectura, matemática y ciencias, la proporción de estudiantes bajo el nivel mínimo de competencia, la evolución del desempeño en el tiempo y las diferencias por nivel socioeconómico y género. Cierra con seis prioridades para la educación secundaria, basadas en el reporte del Banco Mundial Donde los caminos se bifurcan. Fuente: OCDE (2026), PISA 2025 Results (Volume I).