International Debt Statistics 2019: External debt stocks at end-2017 stood at over $7 trillion

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The 2019 edition of International Debt Statistics (IDS) has just been published.
International Debt Statistics 2019 presents statistics and analysis on the external debt and financial flows (debt and equity) for the world’s economies for 2015. This publication provides more than 200 time series indicators from 1970 to 2017 for most reporting countries. To access the report and related products you can:untitled.png

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Bangladesh’s success in public procurement: Sustained reform really pays off

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A healthy mix of innovation, continuous engagement, and effective implementation can school_children_in_bangladeshbring about sustained transformation in public procurement. A more effective and transparent procurement system frees up public money for achieving more and better development outcomes and improving the delivery of public services.

Procurement makes up a substantial portion of government spending with significant impact on the delivery of public services such as water, health, education, and other infrastructure. Bangladesh spends about $16 billion or about one third of its annual budget on public procurement. Of this, $13 billion is spent on the public procurement of goods, works, and services for the implementation of development programs, constituting approximately 70% of the country’s development budget.

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Helping poor women grow their businesses with mobile savings, training, and something more?

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Growing a business is not easy, and for women firm owners the challenges can be acute, untitled.pngespecially when they are poor and run subsistence level firms. In developing countries, 22 percent of women discontinue their established businesses due to a lack of funds, and women are more likely than men to report exiting their businesses over finance problems, according to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. Meanwhile, personal savings are a crucial source of entrepreneurial financing, and nearly 95 percent of entrepreneurs globally state that they used their own funds to start or scale up their businesses. Women, however, face unique constraints in accumulating savings to invest in growing their firms.

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eC2: Abidjan BRT. GIF Project Definition Activity. PPP assessment.

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Deadline: 03-Dec-2018 at 11:59:59 PM (Eastern Time – Washington D.C.) PPPs

To tackle urban mobility challenge in the Greater Abidjan Agglomeration, the Ivorian authorities have chosen to promote mass transit systems and envisage a 20-km long Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) infrastructure on an east-west corridor. The capital investment in the required infrastructure might be partially-financed publicly however the system could be operated and maintained by private sector operators under a PPP modality.
The objective of the assignment is to assess the various PPP options for designing, financing, building, operating and maintaining the BRT system, and possibly mobilizing private sector financing in infrastructure, rolling-stock and supporting systems of the BRT/feeders, to recommend a preferred business model (using a robust options appraisal model), and to outline the main legal, regulatory, financial, technical and cost and risk sharing aspects of that preferred model, seek market input on the model and prepare an outline structure.

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Tackling gender inequality through investments in health equity

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Still today, in almost all societies around the world, women are less well-off than men.democratic-republic-congo_final_edit_0029.jpg Women are still paid less than men; they are less represented in business, politics and decision-making. Their life chances remain overwhelmingly less promising than those of men.

This inequality hurts us all. The world would be 20% better off if women were paid the same as men. Delaying early marriage in the developing world by just a few years would add more than $500 billion to annual global economic output by 2030.

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Towards a water security assessment in Latin America and Caribbean

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Water Security is the new buzzword in the water sector… but what does it mean, really?waterkraan-nieuws-header And how is it applied to real life?

In a world of rapid changes, unequal water resources, polluted water bodies, growing demands, and increasing climate variability and climate change, our relationship with water is quickly shifting. For countries and governments, the term national water security means having adequate water, both in quantity and quality, to meet all demands of the population, the productive sectors and the environment, but also dealing well with extremes, and overall managing the resource adequately and efficiently.

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Culture – the “X Factor” for Building Back Better after Conflict and Disasters

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STORY HIGHLIGHTS

  • As the world continues to urbanize rapidly, cities are increasingly bearing the brunt of conflicts, crises, and disasters, which have a devastating effect on culture.
  • A new World Bank-UNESCO Position Paper, Culture in City Reconstruction and Recovery (CURE), proposes an enhanced culture-based framework for city reconstruction and recovery.
  • The CURE Framework marks an important milestone in the partnership between the World Bank and UNESCO on culture, urban development, and resilience.

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eC2: Consulting services for update of the National Methodology for Preliminary Flood Risk Assessment and Flood Hazard & Risk Mapping, and implementation of PFRA & identification of areas at risk.

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Deadline: 03-Dec-2018 at 11:59:59 PM (Eastern Time – Washington D.C.)Bangladeshi villagers repair a vital flood-protecting embankment

The objective of this assignment is the update of the National Flood Risk Assessment Methodology for stage I and II of the FRMP, and implementation of stage I of the FRMP: Preliminary Flood Risk Assessment (PFRA) and identification of associated APSFR in accordance with the EU Flood Directive and the national Water Act, and based on the updated (and approved) methodology. Bulgaria is an EU member state and covers 4 River Basins or Units of Management; Black Sea River Basin, Danube River Basin, East Aegean River Basin and West Aegean River Basin. This assignment covers the entire country and should be built upon the work done for the 1st cycle FRMP.

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Global solidarity to finance the Sustainable Development Goals

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Achieving sustainable development depends on incremental investments in six priority sdg-atlas-2018-cover-400pxtransformations: building human capacities (health, education, new job skills); decarbonising energy; promoting sustainable agriculture and biodiversity; building smarter cities; implementing the circular economy; and harnessing the digital revolution. As such, sustainable development and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in particular pose a financing challenge. There are three distinct financing conundrums to solve: financing complex infrastructure, financing public services and amenities, and shifting investments from unsustainable to sustainable technologies. I discuss these in turn.

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Five ways to do better post-disaster assessments

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Post-disaster assessments changed my life by starting my career in disaster risk 29098244797_4d265740f6_kmanagement. Three months after arriving in Indonesia as the World Bank’s environment coordinator, the Indian Ocean tsunami and related earthquakes struck Aceh and Nias at the end of 2004. I was asked to pull together the economic evaluation of the disaster’s environmental impact as part of what was then known as a damage-and-loss assessment. Subsequently, the World Bank, United Nations and European Union agreed on a joint approach to crisis response in 2008, including a common methodology for post-disaster needs assessment (PDNA).

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