Reforms aim to deliver simplicity and access, supported by CEOs and G20 Expert Group
WASHINGTON, February 28, 2024 – The World Bank Group today announced a major overhaul to its guarantee business that will deliver simplicity, improved access, and faster execution through a new, convenient marketplace. The new reforms are critical to achieving the goal of tripling annual guarantee issuance to $20 billion by 2030.
Unprecedented Shocks Hit the Palestinian Economy
WASHINGTON, February 21, 2024 – The World Bank Group announced a $30 million grant to help ensure the continuity of crucial education for children. A sharp decline in economic activity, including trade, coupled with a lack of clearance revenues since October 2023, has worsened an already acute fiscal crisis, thus severely impacting the delivery of public services. This grant will contribute to the education sector to help ensure that learners don’t miss out on essential education.
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The World Trade Organization’s (WTO) top decision-making body will have every reason to fret when it meets on February 26. International trade—a key engine of global prosperity since the fall of the Berlin Wall— has ground nearly to a halt and is set to remain anemic in the coming years. In 2023, trade in goods and services expanded by the slenderest of argins, an estimated 0.2 percent, the slowest pace in 50 years outside of global recessions. It would have declined outright but for the growth of trade in services. Trade in goods shrank roughly 2 percent, the sharpest contraction during this century outside of a global recession. Trade growth will improve this year but it will still be half the average rate in the decade before the pandemic. In fact, by the end of 2024, global trade will register the slowest half-decade of growth since the 1990s.
Continue readingKYIV, February 15, 2024—After almost two years of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, an updated joint Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment (RDNA3) released today by the Government of Ukraine, the World Bank Group, the European Commission, and the United Nations currently estimates that as of 31 December 2023 the total cost of reconstruction and recovery in Ukraine is $486 billion over the next decade, up from $411 billion estimated one year ago.
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Progress in poverty reduction has been measured primarily in terms of consumption or income. However, other aspects of life are also critical for wellbeing, and a number of initiatives have been underway to develop multidimensional measures of poverty. This conference brought together academics, practitioners, and people who have direct experience of poverty as co-researchers to better understand the key dimensions of poverty and their relationships. It also looked into the Inclusive and Deliberative Elaboration and Evaluation of Policies (IDEEP) tool that has been developed to better design, implement and assess policies, trainings or projects, that aim to address poverty with the active participation and inclusion of people who are experiencing poverty.
Some developing economies are finally seeing light at the end of the tunnel. Global inflation is receding and global interest rates appear to have peaked, prompting a bond-issuance rush by these economies to refinance their debt before the opportunity vanishes. In early January, Mexico, Indonesia, and several other developing economies easily raised more than $50 billion from bond investors.
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Event | Fragility Forum 2024: Adapting and Innovating in a Volatile World | World Bank Live
Faced with the urgency of climate change, many countries are embracing policies to tackle
it. However, these policies are not only reshaping the landscape of global trade flows but also risking further fragmentation and inequality. One challenge concerns the consequences for low-income countries that rely on export-led growth and especially their Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) part of global supply chains.
Reforms to boost investment and strengthen fiscal policy could help turn the tide
WASHINGTON, Jan. 9, 2024— As the world nears the midpoint of what was intended to be a transformative decade for development, the global economy is set to rack up a sorry record by the end of 2024 —the slowest half-decade of GDP growth in 30 years, according to the World Bank’s latest Global Economic Prospects report.
Netherlands for the World Bank 
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