The Tanzania country office of the World
Bank has been exploring ways in which it can be more
responsive to Government in supporting the National Strategy
for Growth and Alleviation of Poverty (MKUKUTA) and ensuring
growth is an integral part of strategic planning. Given
Tanzania's great regional variations in resource
endowments, growth potential and degree of institutional
development, it was proposed that a regional case study of

Russian economy has been growing at an
average nominal rate of 6 percent annually for the past
decade. Among the most important factors contributing to its
expansion has been the skyrocketing cost of oil and gas. In
2000, when Vladimir Putin took office, the cost of oil was
approximately $20 a barrel; at the end of his term, it was
five times higher. Meanwhile, the competitiveness of Russian
enterprises has become increasingly fragile because of the

The Government of Bangladesh has
requested the World Bank to provide further assistance to
the livestock and dairy sectors. During a mission of the
Sector Manager of Agriculture and Rural Development (ARD) of
the South Asia region of the World Bank to Bangladesh in
November 2008, the Secretary of the Ministry of Livestock
and Fisheries (MOFL) of the former Caretaker Government of
Bangladesh (BD) requested the Sector Manager for assistance

This policy note, Environmental
Management for a Sustainable Economic Development Strategy
for Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam, investigates six environmental
management topics which will affect the capacity of the
province to develop the economy and need to be underpinned
by strong environmental and natural resource management. The
six topics cover: agriculture, forestry, fisheries, land and
water, environmental law and regulations, and spatial

The situation in The Gambia is a good
example of the many challenges small states have to deal
with. The country is faced with institutional capacity
constraints and due to a narrow resource base and a small
domestic market, its production base and exports show little
diversification. Like other small states, the country tends
to rely heavily on external trade and foreign investment to
overcome its scale and resource limitation, increasing its

The World Bank had commissioned an
independent team to evaluate and assess the future role of
PROFISH, the Global Program on Fisheries. The evaluation
team found that PROFISH, since its inception in 2005, had
made excellent progress in raising World Bank, bilateral
donor and client country awareness of fisheries development
needs, contributed fisheries and aquaculture content to
global development products and assisted World Bank country

This focus note presents key findings of
a 2008 report on implementing Financial Action task Force
(FATF) standards in developing countries The Financial
Sector Reform and Strengthening(FIRST) Initiative funded a
five-country study to analyze the effects of anti-money
laundering (AML) and combating the financing of terrorism
(CFT) regulation on access to finance, especially in
low-income populations. Standard AML and CFT measures

This policy note assesses the potential
of foreign direct investment (FDI) to diversify Lesotho s
exports. Lesotho must preserve capacity to produce more and
better goods, seek new markets, preserve existing
manufacturing jobs, undertake structural and institutional
reforms, and take advantage of its location inside South
Africa. Given the low savings in the country, as well as
major fiscal challenges arising from declines in SACU

The dramatic increases in world food and
fuel prices during 2007 and early 2008 may set back
Mozambique's considerable advances in poverty reduction
during the past decade. This study assesses the impact of
higher fuel and food prices at both household and
macroeconomic levels, and also considers policy options to
mitigate some of the negative impacts of higher prices.
Rising world prices certainly represents a negative

The strategic / sectoral social and
environmental assessment of power development options (SSEA)
offers an overview analysis of major regional power
development options and regional transmission
interconnections in the Nile Equatorial Lakes region in
Eastern Africa. The assessment provides a solid foundation
for planning the development of the power sectors of the
region as it contains a proposed development strategy and a

One of every two people in Sub-Saharan
Africa survives on less than $1.25 a day. That proportion
has changed little over the past three decades, unlike in
Asia and elsewhere, so the region's share of global
poverty has risen from one-tenth to almost one-third since
1980. About 70 percent of today's 400 million poor
Africans live in rural areas and depend directly or
indirectly on farming for their livelihoods. While that

This study is part of a global research
project seeking to understand the changing scope and impact
of the policy bias against agriculture and the reasons
behind agricultural policy reforms in Africa, Europe's
transition economies, Latin America and the Caribbean, and
Asia. One purpose of the project is to obtain quantitative
indicators of the effects of recent policy interventions. A
second objective is to gain a deeper understanding of the