Tag Archives: World Bank Group

Women Helping Women Out of Poverty—One Business at a Time

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At 2 a.m. in the quiet streets of Balykchy, a small town in the Kyrgyz Republic, most peoplealtynai-arzymatova-kyrgyzstan-2023_035-edit-1440x810 are deep in the embrace of their dreams.

But for Altynai Arzymatova, a 34-year-old single mother of three, the day is already getting started.

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Building Green: Sustainable Construction in Emerging Markets

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Switching to greener technologies in construction and operation of buildings and materials, combined with more climate-friendly capital markets, could reduce the construction value chain’s carbon footprint 23 percent by 2035, while creating investment opportunities in emerging markets, according to a major report from the International Finance Corporation.

 
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Publication: Commodity Markets Outlook, October 2023: Under the Shadow of Geopolitical Risks

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Abstract02 - CMO 2023b Frontmatters.pub
The conflict in the Middle East—the latest of an extraordinary series of shocks in recent years—has heightened geopolitical risks for commodity markets, in an already uncertain global environment. Before the conflict began, voluntary oil supply withdrawals by OPEC+ producers pushed energy prices up 9 percent in the third quarter. As a result, the World Bank’s commodity price index rose 5 percent over that period and is now 45 percent above its 2015-19 average. For now, the war’s impact on commodity prices have been muted. Prices of oil and gold have risen moderately, but most other commodity prices have remained relatively stable. Nevertheless, history suggests that an escalation of the conflict represents a major risk that could lead to surging prices of oil and other commodities. A Special Focus section provides a preliminary assessment of the potential impact of the conflict on commodity prices. It finds that the effects of the conflict are likely to be limited, assuming the conflict does not widen. Under that assumption, the baseline forecast calls for commodity prices to decline slightly over the next two years. If the conflict does escalate, the assessment also includes what might happen under three risk scenarios, relying upon historical precedents to estimate the effects of small, moderate, and large disruptions to the global oil supply. The magnitude of the effects will depend on the duration and scale of the supply disruptions.