What transforms a desirable project on a government wish list to an attractive investment opportunity in the eyes of a potential private sector partner? This guide seeks to enhance the chances of developing effective partnerships between the public and the private sectors by addressing one of the main obstacles to the effective delivery of public-private partnership (PPP) projects: having the right information on the right project for the right partners at the right time. Data from the World Bank and the Public-Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility (PPIAF) private participation in infrastructure (PPI) project database indicate that private sector investment in infrastructure in developing economies grew steadily over the past decade. By 2007 the levels had finally surpassed the peak levels seen in 1997, the end of the previous growth spurt. This guide focuses specifically on what should be done, and when, in order to prepare projects to attract the right long-term private partners, procure their involvement, and manage the partnership. This guide is not a detailed project preparation manual; rather...

This paper revisits the institutional determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI) using a comprehensive new data set on the regulations that govern FDI in more than 80 countries. It exploits the presence of confirmed zero investment flows between countries to estimate productivity cut-offs of firms that invest abroad profitably. This approach corrects likely biases arising from firm heterogeneity and country selection in a theoretically derived gravity-type model. The analysis finds inward FDI to be highly responsive to cross-country variation in specific institutional provisions, such as arbitration of disputes and legal procedures to establish foreign subsidiaries. The importance of FDI-specific provisions stands out even after controlling for the general quality of institutions. Statutory openness to FDI, however, has no association with actual inflow of investment. These results are found to be robust to different specifications.

This paper summarizes the estimates of what Russia will get from World Trade Organization accession and why. A key finding is the estimate that Russia will gain about $53 billion per year in the medium term from World Trade Organization accession and $177 billion per year in the long term, due largely to its own commitments to reform its own business services sectors. The paper summarizes the principal reform commitments that Russia has undertaken as part of its World Trade Organization accession negotiations, and compares them with those of other countries that have acceded to the World Trade Organization. It finds that the Russian commitments represent a liberal offer to the members of the World Trade Organization for admission, but they are typical of other transition countries that have acceded to the World Trade Organization. The authors discuss the outstanding issues in the Russian World Trade Organizaiton accession negotiations, and explain why Russian accession will result in the elimination of the Jackson-Vanik Amendment against Russia. They discuss Russian policies to attract foreign direct investment...

Over the past two decades or so, countries have liberalized their FDI regulatory frameworks and have put in place an international investment law regime that provides various protections for international investors. In the past few years, however, there are signs that countries are reevaluating their approach toward such investment. As a result, FDI protectionism is on the rise, with screening of inward M&As becoming more frequent. Typically, this is being done under the guise of "national interest" or similar concepts, often linked to strategic sectors and national champions. While the international investment law regime faces a challenge to find the right balance between the rights and responsibilities of governments and investors, care needs to be taken that the rise of FDI protectionism does not endanger a rules-based approach to FDI. An independent FDI Protectionism Observatory to monitor new protectionist measures and name and shame countries that take them is therefore needed.

One decade remains to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that the international community set out in 2000. Yet the world is still far from achieving the MDGs. This Global Monitoring Report (GMR) reviews the efforts under way to strengthen mutual accountability. Greater resource flows to developing countries must go hand in hand with measures to make aid work more effectively. One key element is improving governance, both in developing countries and globally, to strengthen accountability for resource use and for development outcomes. Measuring and monitoring governance, in support of greater accountability and better MDG outcomes, is the primary focus of this report. Monitoring governance can help to clarify options for scaling up assistance and can support broader efforts to strengthen transparency and accountability, both nationally and globally. The report highlights six key actions to accelerate progress toward the MDGs and strengthen mutual accountability: Favorable growth has helped reduce poverty...

An important question in the design of bilateral and regional free trade agreements (FTAs) covering services is to what extent nonmembers benefit from the trade preferences that are negotiated among members. This question is resolved through services rules of origin. The restrictiveness of rules of origin determines the degree of preferences entailed in market opening commitments, shaping the bargaining incentives of FTAs and their eventual economic effects. Even though the number of FTAs in services has increased rapidly in recent years, hardly any research is available that can guide policymakers on the economic implications of different rules of origin. After outlining the key economic tradeoffs and options for rules of origin in services, the paper summarizes the main findings of a research project that has assessed the rules of origin question for five countries in the ASEAN region. For selected service subsectors and a number of criteria for rules or origin, simulation exercises evaluated which service providers would or would not be eligible for preferences negotiated under a FTA. Among other findings...

This document presents the main findings of the Guyana Investment Climate Survey (ICS) conducted between November 2004 and March 2005. The ICA report provides an evaluation of different aspects of the environment of doing business in Guyana. It covers governance-related obstacles, labor and technology issues, the financial sector, and infrastructure. The ICA is based on the results of the World Bank Guyana Investment Climate Survey (ICS), as well as other sources of information, including an opinion survey of Guyanese commercial bank managers, and interviews with Guyanese entrepreneurs and government leaders. The findings of the survey, combined with relevant information from other sources, provide a practical basis for identifying the most important areas for reform aimed at improving the investment climate.

Since the past decade, several Sub-Saharan African governments, through technical assistance provided by the World Bank and other donors, have undertaken to reform their telecommunications sectors, by implementing market liberalization policies, privatizing the incumbent public operator, and creating autonomous and independent regulatory bodies. The core objective of these reforms is to significantly improve access, and affordability, to telecommunications services on the basis of the assumption that a more friendly and predictable business environment will attract more private investment. However, the provision of interconnection services, on fair and efficient terms, has rapidly emerged as a main bottleneck. In fact, new legislation and regulations enacted in Sub-Saharan Africa recognize the interconnection rights ascribed to all telecommunications service providers and network operators. In addition, these regulations also request the incumbent fixed operator to supply interconnection services to new entrants on a fair and competitive basis. Despite the clarity and soundness of the legislative provisions in that respect (cost oriented...

The paper reviews first the most formal such instruments, such as bilateral and multilateral treaties, that include commitments regarding regulatory processes and/or outcomes. Next, it will consider less formal instruments, such as institutional guidelines and model rules, that promote principles for regulatory good practices. Finally, it will consider the different mechanisms available to promote compliance with these norms using both binding and non-binding devices. Two tables summarizing the assessments of these instruments and compliance mechanisms are appended at the conclusion of the report.Furthermore, this paper undertakes to review the international instruments that incorporate standards for domestic regulatory good practices or move toward creating international regulatory regimes, and the mechanisms that promote or secure compliance with those good practices and regimes.

The 15 year licenses of four mobile operators in Bangladesh; Grameenphone, Banglalink, Robi, and Citycell are due to expire in November 2011. The remaining two other mobile operators, state owned Teletalk and Airtel, were issued licenses in 2004 and 2005 and these are not due for renewal until 2019 and 2020 respectively. The World Bank has asked Coleago Consulting Limited (Coleago) to prepare a report on international best practice for spectrum renewal and pricing and to analyze the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) proposals in light of best practice. The mobile industry has changed dramatically in the intervening years and so license renewal provides regulators with the opportunity to update relevant regulation to better align the licensing framework and license conditions with the mobile industry of today and to accommodate future developments. In this report the author have surveyed a number of jurisdictions and examined both successful and not so successful spectrum renewal processes in order to derive a set of international principles of best practice for spectrum renewal and pricing. In doing so the author have also sought to identify best regulatory practice in a broader sense as successful spectrum renewal processes depend...

Global value chains (GVCs) are playing an increasingly important role in business strategies, which has profoundly changed international trade and development paradigms. GVCs now represent a new path for development by helping developing countries accelerate industrialization and the servicification of the economy. From a firm perspective, production in the context of GVCs highlights the importance of being able to seamlessly connect factories across borders, as well as protect assets such as intellectual property. From the policy maker perspective, the focus is on shifting and improving access to resources while also advancing development goals, and also on the question of whether entry into GVCs delivers labor-market-enhancing outcomes for workers at home, as well as social upgrading. GVCs can lead to development, but, at the country level, constraints such as the supply of various types of labor and skills and inadequate absorptive capacity remain. GVCs can create new opportunities on the labor demand side...

This paper analyses the application of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) mechanisms to disputes arising between telecommunications undertakings under the EU Telecommunications Package, as revised on November 4, 2009. The new rules aimed at facilitating the development of the EU common telecommunications market, and were designed to increase the powers of national regulatory authorities (NRAs) across the Member States in the imposition of regulatory obligations in a coherent manner. One key reform concerned the centralisation of the dispute resolution functions of NRAs. Within the new dispute resolution prerogatives, NRAs were empowered with a right to determine their appropriateness for handling regulatory disputes between telecommunications undertakings or to decline their jurisdiction should other ADR means be available and more suitable for the resolution of regulatory disputes. This paper examines the mere development of ADR in telecommunications disputes in the UK, Ireland and Poland following the revision of the EU Telecommunications Package. Moreover, the paper analyses the effectiveness of the recent European Union (EU) policy on promoting ADR within the EU legal order against the background of the fragmented national approaches to ADR...

The objective of conducting this case study on Mozambique is to uncover the pattern of municipal Information and Communication Technology (ICT) impact that may exist in other low-capacity countries with analogous political economy structures in relation to leveraging ICT in public sectors. The study concludes by suggesting measures to link the continent's ICT boom in citizen-based mobile telephony and internet usage with the rapid rise of public sector ICT phenomena as a promising means to plug service delivery gaps. In view of these highlights, this report stands to serve as a valuable resource guide to a wide audience of practitioners, including policy wonks, urban specialists; ICT and climate change enthusiasts, as well as social accountability activists. This report consists of five sections. Section one details the impact of climate change on Mozambique's urban poor while also providing an overview of the country's disaster response system. In view of the decentralization of much of Mozambique's ICT and other resources among municipal governments...

Political risk remains the top preoccupation for foreign investors operating in developing countries over the next three years, in spite of persistent concerns over the global downturn in the short term. The global economic recession triggered by the financial crisis that has unfolded over the past two years has not spared the developing world. Yet, the fragile and modest recovery now under way is being led by developing countries, which are expected to remain attractive destinations for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). In light of overt political risk perceptions, the revival of FDI to these destinations calls for continued risk mitigation, including Political Risk Insurance (PRI). In the short term, concerns over the fallout from the financial crisis appear to dominate investors' preoccupations. Yet, FDI projections and surveys conducted for this report suggest that investors are cautiously optimistic about prospects for a global economic recovery led by the developing world. As a result, FDI to developing countries is expected to recover over the medium term. Investors from the primary industries...

Although it had a a lower income level than India in 1980, China's 2006 per capita gross domestic product stands more than twice that of India's. This paper investigates the role of the business environment in explaining China's productivity advantage using recent firm-level survey data. The analysis finds that China has better infrastructure, more skilled workers, and more labor-hiring flexibility than India, but a worse access to finance and higher regulatory burden. Infrastructure appears to be a key constraint for India: it lags significantly behind China, yet it has important indirect effects for the effectiveness of labor flexibility. Labor flexibility is also likely a major constraint for India, as evident in the predominance of small firms, the importance of firm size in accounting for India's disadvantage in productivity, and the complementarity of proxies of labor flexibility with infrastructure and access to finance. Interestingly, regulatory uncertainty has adverse effects in India but not in China. The empirical analysis suggests that it is important to consider country-specific growth bottlenecks and the indirect effects of policy reforms.

Recent trade theory emphasizes the role of market-share reallocations across firms ("stealing") in driving productivity growth, while the older literature focused on average productivity improvements ("learning"). The authors use comprehensive, firm-level data from India's organized manufacturing sector to show that market-share reallocations did play an important role in aggregate productivity gains immediately following the start of India's trade reforms in 1991. However, aggregate productivity gains during the overall period from 1985 to 2004 were driven largely by improvements in average productivity, which can be attributed to India's trade liberalization and FDI reforms.

The objectives of this Investment Climate Assessment (ICA) are to: (i) provide an up-to-date, fact-based analysis of the business environment for policy-makers in the Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC), the private sector, civil society, and development partners; and (ii) outline priorities for improving the business environment and suggest policy options. The body of this report is comprised of three chapters. Chapter one gives a picture of the private sector in Cambodia in early 2008, including its structure, main features, and overall performance across key sectors and nationwide. The sectors featured are: garments, food packaging, telecoms, and finance. Chapter two reviews the business environment, starting with existing firms' perceptions of the business environment, and then goes into more depth on each dimension. The chapter concludes by discussing which of these challenges are truly binding constraints on growth. Chapter three, after taking stock of on-going reform efforts, concludes with some key directions for reform and a few concrete policy options for the short and medium term.

This analyzes, based on more than seventy company case studies across 13 Russian regions during the spring, summer, and fall of 2000, and the summer of 2001, examines four key issues that Russian firms face in carrying out business transactions in Russia's regional markets: 1) the state of enterprise competition; 2) the regulatory regime governing the delivery of infrastructure services (with a focus on the telecom, and Internet sector); 3) the sources, and use of corporate finance; and, 4) the efficacy of the court system in fostering the settlement of commercial disputes. The study formulates policy recommendations for each of the areas analyzed. In so doing, it sheds light on salient inter-regional differences in existing policy frameworks, and in the structure, and nature of the country's enterprise sector, as well as on how regional governments, and firms both respond to, and shape these differences. The study also highlights the evolution of inter-regional policy, and economic changes over time, assessing the extent to which...

The World Bank's strategy for Africa's future recognizes the central importance of industrialization in Sub-Saharan Africa, and the consequent creation of productive jobs for Africans, which have long been a preoccupation of African leaders and policy makers. This book represents an attempt to address these issues. The book stresses that, while the recent turnaround in Africa's economic growth is encouraging, this growth must be accompanied by structural transformation to be sustainable and to create productive employment for its people. For many African countries, this transformation involves lifting workers from low-productivity agriculture and informal sectors into higher productivity activities. Light manufacturing can offer a viable solution for Sub-Saharan Africa, given its potential competitiveness that is based on low wage costs and abundance of natural resources that supply raw materials needed for industries. This study has five features that distinguish it from previous studies. First, the detailed studies on light manufacturing at the subsector and product levels in five countries provide in-depth cost comparisons between Asia and Africa. Second...

Critical appraisals of the current and potential benefits from developing country engagement in the World Trade Organization (WTO) focus mainly on the Doha Round of negotiations. This paper examines developing country participation in the WTO dispute settlement system to enforce foreign market access rights already negotiated in earlier multilateral rounds. The dispute data from 1995 through 2008 reveal three notable trends: developing countries sustained rate of self-enforcement actions despite declining use of the Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU) by developed countries, developing countries increased use of the DSU to self-enforce their access to the markets of developing as well as developed country markets, and the prevalence of disputes targeting highly observable causes of lost foreign market access, such as antidumping, countervailing duties, and safeguards. The paper also examines potential impacts of the Advisory Centre on WTO Law (ACWL) into the WTO system in 2001. A close look at the data reveals evidence on at least three channels through which the ACWL may be enhancing developing countries' ability to self-enforce foreign market access: increased initiation of sole-complainant cases...