Economics & Development

In the 1990s, the World Bank and other development financiers supported a power sector reform framework emphasizing restructuring or unbundling of utilities, creation of regulators, private sector participation (both in terms of financing and managing the operations of power networks and utilities), and the establishment of competitive power markets. These reforms aimed to create commercially viable power utilities, without the continuing need for government ownership and financial support. Private sector participation (PSP) can be an effective component of power sector performance improvement when used to address some of the common challenges faced by state-owned utilities. This paper presents a primer on the operations concession model and how it has been deployed in developing countries. The paper is targeted primarily at governments, financiers, lawyers, advisors, and other practitioners undertaking or considering PSP transactions in the power distribution sector in developing countries. The paper aims to provide a unifying language and framework for stakeholders to conceptualize this less common approach to PSP and takes stock of past experiences and lessons learned.

The focus of this Country Economic Memorandum (CEM) is to review key policy and reform options for Equatorial Guinea to build the foundations for renewed, diversified, and more inclusive growth. The CEM thus aims to contribute to the government’s economic development and diversification agendas. The first chapter of the report examines the drivers of past growth, and the country’s asset portfolio, and discusses possible long-term growth trajectories. The second chapter examines fiscal policy as the main instrument for efficient transformation of natural capital into physical and human capital, and outlines the fiscal challenges associated with the reliance on the volatile oil and gas markets. It identifies the key gaps in public financial management, including the challenges posed by climate change and provides reform options for implementing an effective fiscal policy. The third chapter explores the present state of education, health, and social protection and discusses priority options to boost human capital. The fourth chapter then turns to the private sector and the main cross-cutting issues that need to be addressed to encourage higher investment, innovation, and productivity. The final chapter drills down into some key sectors which are likely to play a prominent role in any new growth strategy. These include digitalization in both the public and private sectors, and integration into the world economy through trade and ecotourism.

The Nepal Living Standards Survey (NLSS), first conducted in 1995-96, marked a significant step in objectively measuring Nepal's living standards and poverty levels. The survey covered a wide range of topics related to household welfare, including demography, consumption, income, access to facilities, housing, education, health, employment, credit, and remittances, among others. Subsequent survey rounds, NLSS-II and NLSS-III, were conducted in 2003-04 and 2010-11, respectively. Since 1996, the NLSS survey has been used to update official poverty measures and monitor and track improvements in people’s living conditions. Over this time, the methodology underlying how poverty is measured in Nepal has also been regularly updated to align with global best practices. The technical note is organized as follows. Section 2 discusses the poverty measurement methodology using the cost of basic needs approach used in Nepal (and other developing countries globally). In addition, it provides an overview of the sample and survey design, data collection, and data quality and describes the rationale behind updating the poverty line in 2023. Section 3 describes the methodology used to construct the welfare aggregate and its components. Section 4 details the spatial and temporal adjustments that need to be made to the welfare aggregate. Section 5 documents the steps in estimating the new official poverty line and highlights methodological departures from the previous method. Section 6 presents key data and statistics on the domain-level cost of basic needs, price deflators, new poverty lines, and poverty rates in Nepal in 2023. In addition, this section presents estimates of vulnerability to poverty and statistics on sampling variability. Section 7 shows the decline in poverty rates since 2011.