Economics & Development

A gestão eficaz das velocidades de trânsito é uma das questões mais complexas de segurança viária. Com base nas pesquisas mais recentes na área, este guia oferece informações práticas e recomendações para gerenciar velocidades em todos os tipos de estradas urbanas e rurais. Ele introduz um processo recém-desenvolvido para definir limites de velocidade seguros: a estrutura Roads-for-Life (R4L). Essa estrutura é baseada na abordagem do Sistema Seguro, uma abordagem centrada no ser humano para o transporte rodoviário que se concentra na segurança de todos os usuários da estrada, no consenso científico sobre risco, gravidade e capacidade de sobrevivência de colisões e nas boas práticas internacionais para planejar, projetar e gerenciar estradas e redes rodoviárias seguras. Este guia fornece ferramentas, não apenas para definir limites de velocidade seguros, mas também para desenvolver estratégias de gerenciamento de velocidade, planos de ação e intervenções para apoiá-los e aplicá-los. Ele revela como essas ferramentas estão vinculadas e podem ser usadas em diferentes tipos de estradas e em uma variedade de contextos. Ele estabelece uma abordagem passo a passo para desenvolver, implementar e monitorar a gestão da velocidade, em nível nacional, regional, local ou urbano, e para locais específicos, como zonas escolares ou vias arteriais com tráfego misto. Ele descreve os vários processos, soluções políticas e condições favoráveis para uma gestão de velocidade impactante. Ele descreve estratégias voltadas para estradas existentes onde a velocidade contribui para mortes e ferimentos graves e também pode ser usada no início do processo de planejamento para estabelecer limites de velocidade seguros para novas estradas, combinar o projeto das estradas com o uso pretendido e selecionar soluções de infraestrutura apropriadas.

The World Bank’s Informal Sector Enterprise Surveys provide a systematic approach to measuring unregistered business activity that is typically excluded from official statistics. Using a standardized methodology and questionnaire applied across countries since 2016, the surveys capture geographically representative samples of informal enterprises in selected urban areas. They focus on a wide range of business environment factors affecting informal firms, including owner characteristics, infrastructure, operations, workforce, and registration practices. By addressing data gaps, the surveys support research on how informal businesses function and respond to economic conditions. This document presents findings from surveys conducted in four Cambodian cities Battambang, Phnom Penh, Siem Reap and Sihanoukville based on structured enumeration of defined city blocks and interviews with informal enterprises. The results provide valuable insights into the scale, characteristics and constraints of informal businesses, helping policymakers better understand their role in urban economies and design targeted interventions to support their development and formalization.

L’atténuation du changement climatique reste plus que jamais essentielle, alors que les émissions mondiales de gaz à effet de serre continuent d’augmenter. Les températures continuent de grimper sans relâche et 2023 a été l’année la plus chaude jamais enregistrée. Alors que l’engagement politique continue de se renforcer, des mesures supplémentaires pour réduire les émissions sont nécessaires. La tarification du carbone est un élément essentiel de la combinaison de politiques nécessaire pour atteindre les objectifs de l’Accord de Paris et soutenir une croissance à faibles émissions. Ce rapport se concentre sur la tarification directe des émissions de gaz à effet de serre par le biais de taxes sur le carbone, de systèmes d’échange de droits d’émission et de mécanismes de crédit carbone. La tarification directe du carbone stimule l’action climatique en incitant à réduire les émissions. Il illustre la manière dont ces mesures s’intègrent dans l’écosystème de la politique de tarification et souligne l’importance de comprendre le signal de prix fourni par les politiques de tarification indirecte du carbone. Le rapport de cette année porte sur la tarification directe du carbone, en mettant l’accent sur les évolutions entre avril 2023 et avril 2024. Le chapitre 2 du rapport explore les tendances des taxes sur le carbone et des systèmes d’échange de droits d’émission dans le monde. Le chapitre 3 analyse les marchés et les mécanismes des crédits carbone, et le chapitre 4 résume les principaux points à retenir de ce rapport.

Guinea-Bissau’s risks of external and overall debt distress remain high, as in the November 2023 Debt Sustainability Analysis (DSA). The PV of external debt-to- gross domestic product (GDP) and the external debt-service-to-revenue both remain below the indicative threshold for the whole projection period. The PV of external debt-to-export ratio remains above the threshold for several years but gradually declines over the medium term and falls below the threshold by 2029. The external debt service-to-exports ratio breaches the threshold between 2030 and 2032 with a declining trend afterwards. This DSA incorporates into the baseline the new debt service schedule resulting from the recent reprofiling of BOAD’s debt. The breaches observed to public and external debt levels are attributable to the prolonged effects of recent shocks to cashew exports, while BOAD’s debt reprofiling reduces debt service obligations and improves liquidity indicators between 2024 and 2029. The PV of total public debt-to-GDP ratio is on a downward path under the baseline scenario, but it stays above its indicative benchmark of 35 percent throughout the entire forecast period. However, public debt is assessed as sustainable with high risk of debt distress reflecting that: (i) the country benefits from WAEMU currency union safeguards that provide for financial and technical support from the regional debt market institutions and larger regional members with strong debt carrying capacity; (ii) the ongoing fiscal consolidation strategy includes marginal additional net issuance, and the rollover of maturing domestic debt should be supported by country’s minor role in the regional market; (iii) the PV of public debt shows a consistent downward trend from 2024 onwards under the baseline scenario; and (iv) the external DSA indicators are trending downwards consistent with sustainability over the medium term. This conclusion is contingent on the authorities’ continued commitment to an ambitious, yet feasible, fiscal adjustment that aims to bring the fiscal deficit within the 3 percent of GDP WAEMU convergence criterion by 2025. This fiscal adjustment is supported by the extended credit facility (ECF) arrangement. Risks include political instability, uncertainty around the forthcoming elections, limited state capacity, weaker cashew nut exports, tighter global and regional financial conditions, higher global food and oil prices, and natural disasters. Financial stress in state-owned enterprises and high NPLs are a source of contingent liabilities and pose macro financial risks. The downward trend of the baseline debt indicators will further improve with full multilateral donor re-engagement and a further shift towards debt obligations on concessional terms. The authorities are also following International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB) advice on improving debt management and dedicating efforts to resolve legacy external arrears.

Ove godine, Subnacionalna B-READY serija pokriva 40 gradova u šest država članica EU—Bugarskoj, Hrvatskoj, Mađarskoj, Portugalu, Rumunjskoj i Slovačkoj Republici—pokrivajući 36 europskih regija. U Hrvatskoj, Subnacionalni B-READY pokriva pet gradova u četiri regije na razini NUTS2: Osijek (Panonska Hrvatska), Rijeka (Jadranska Hrvatska), Split (Jadranska Hrvatska), Varaždin (Sjeverna Hrvatska) i Zagreb (Grad Zagreb). Primarni cilj Subnacionalnih B-READY studija je identificirati i riješiti regionalne nejednakosti u regulatornom okruženju te promicati reforme koje potiču rast privatnog sektora, otvaranje radnih mjesta i održivost. Subnacionalna serija B-READY pruža rigoroznu, na podacima utemeljenu analizu poslovnog okruženja na lokalnoj razini, nudeći primjenjive uvide kreatorima politika.

This document constitutes Module 4 of the World Bank Group's Risk-Based Approach (RBA) Tool series, focusing on the consolidated supervision of financial groups in the context of AML/CFT compliance. Drawing on international standards, principally FATF Recommendations 18, 26, and 40, and Basel Core Principles 12 and 13, it provides supervisory authorities with a practical framework for overseeing financial groups on a worldwide, consolidated basis. The module opens with a snapshot of South Africa's financial sector landscape, encompassing banks, insurers, financial service providers, and retirement funds, to ground the discussion in a concrete jurisdictional context. It then delineates the respective roles and responsibilities of home and host supervisors: home supervisors oversee the parent entity and its global operations, while host supervisors focus on foreign branches and subsidiaries operating within their jurisdictions. A central concern of the module is the requirement for financial groups to implement group-wide AML/CFT programs, including robust internal policies for information sharing across subsidiaries and foreign branches. Where host country standards are less stringent than those of the home jurisdiction, financial groups are expected to apply the higher standard, thereby preventing regulatory arbitrage that could create compliance gaps. The module emphasizes the mechanics of supervisory coordination, both domestically and internationally. It examines the use of supervisory colleges, Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs), joint examinations, and formal information-exchange arrangements as essential instruments for effective consolidated oversight. Licensing procedures for foreign financial institutions, including the requirement for a Statement of No Objection from the home supervisor, are also addressed. Overall, the module reinforces that effective consolidated supervision is not achievable in isolation: it demands sustained collaboration between home and host authorities, mutual access to information, and alignment around the shared objective of FATF Immediate Outcome 3, ensuring that financial institutions and Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs) are appropriately monitored for AML/CFT compliance commensurate with the risks they present.

Panama has been one of the fastest-growing countries in the region, with rapid economic expansion accompanied by significant poverty reduction. Driven by public and private investment as well as labor accumulation, the Panamanian economy grew by an annual average of 5.7 percent between 1990 and 2023, much higher than the regional average of 2.5 percent. This growth contributed to a significant reduction in poverty. Using the poverty line of US$6.85 per day per capita (2017 PPP), the share of Panamanians affected by poverty improved from one in two in 1989 to only one in ten lived in 2023. Nevertheless, Panama remains one of the most unequal countries in the world. While poverty in urban areas was 4.8 percent in 2023, poverty in indigenous regions (comarcas) reached 76 percent—15 times higher. Limited progress in reducing inequality, as measured by the Gini coefficient, contrasts with Panama’s achievements in other areas. Globally, Panama ranked 11th in inequality in 2000, with a Gini coefficient of 53.8. Two decades later, it ranked 8th, with a Gini coefficient of 50.9 as of 2022. This report examines Panama’s achievements and challenges in reducing poverty and inequality to inform policy options. With a special focus on the 2008–2023 period the report documents progress in poverty and equity in recent decades, highlighting access to basic services, expansion of quality jobs, improvement of human capital, and promotion of household resilience as critical policy priorities.

The Country Opinion Survey in Chad assists the World Bank Group (WBG) in better understanding how stakeholders in Chad perceive the WBG. It provides the WBG with systematic feedback from national and local governments, multilateral and bilateral agencies, media, academia, the private sector, and civil society in Chad on: (1) their views regarding the general environment in Chad; (2) their overall attitudes toward the WBG in Chad; (3) overall impressions of the WBG’s effectiveness and results, knowledge work and activities, and communication and information sharing in Chad; and (4) their perceptions of the WBG’s future role in Chad.

Ghana’s development path, although registering past successes, faces a series of current and future challenges. Ghana succeeded in halving its poverty rate between 1991 and 2016, from 87 percent (US$3.65 per day in 2017 purchasing power parity [PPP]) to about 50 percent of the population, outpacing progress across Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), along with improvements in health and education indicators. However, recent global crises have pushed poverty upward, as the country faces multiple challenges. Ghana needs to provide more and better jobs and foster inclusive productivity growth, especially through investments in human capital. At the same time, the country’s growth path is increasingly vulnerable to climate change and climate-related shocks. Tackling these challenges will require fiscal policy to promote macroeconomic stability, create the right incentives, and generate the necessary public investments.

This document collection explores the use of Earth observation data for managing our planet's resources and mitigating risks. It examines how satellite imagery and other remote sensing technologies can be used to monitor land use changes, plan for sustainable development, and prepare for and respond to natural disasters.