The economic recession, the end of
stimulus funding and central government cutbacks, rising
social costs and aging, and the need for infrastructure
upgrading for urbanization are putting enormous fiscal
stress on cities. The financing capacity of municipalities
is greatly affected because of the decline in the tax base,
expenditure pressures, and growing and more expensive debt.
Today's urban fiscal crisis is similar to that

Signing the accession treaty with the
European Union (EU) and its forthcoming membership to the EU
are remarkable opportunities for Croatia to address a number
of economic challenges and join the EU as a competitive and
successful economy. The new Croatian government in its
program for 2011-2015 seeks higher standards of living for
its citizens through sustained economic growth and greater
social cohesion. Given the legacies from the past, these

In this report, in addition to aggregate
results, six brief case studies are used to highlight the
impact of Bank supported mining sector reform on various
indicators at different links of the value chain. These
include: the impacts on investment; production and
employment in Argentina; institutional capacity building in
Papua New Guinea; production and fiscal revenues in
Tanzania; community and regional development in Madagascar;

This document proposes a set of
generally applicable recommendations and good practices for
creating a Mineral Rights Cadastre (MRC), an administrative
body responsible for overseeing the process of granting and
managing mineral licenses throughout a country. The document
reviews lessons learned from World Bank-funded projects
aimed at reforming mineral rights management and assesses
the impacts and benefits of the implemented changes. The

The objective of this study on the
Development of 13 Mozambican Municipalities in Central and
Northern Mozambique is to assess the impact that the 2008
reforms on own-source revenues is having on the municipal
revenue potential. To do so, it calculates the revenue
potential of four fiscal and three non-fiscal revenue
sources. The analysis shows that there is substantial
untapped revenue potential at the municipal level, with

Municipalities in Mozambique were
established by law in 1997 and elected in 1998 for the first
time, only a few years after the peace agreement. Most
inherited archaic and dysfunctional remnants of colonial and
central government systems and infrastructure, and as such
limited progress was achieved in transforming them into
functioning local governments during the first mandate
(1998-2002). During the second mandate (2003-2008), however,

This document presents the main
governance indicators for the country, as compiled by the
World Bank Institute (WBI), and how are they used by
international institutions in making decisions about
assistance to Nicaragua. Although these indicators have
weaknesses, they can provide a general indication of what
are the priority areas for investigation. Accordingly, the
present review concentrates on a few key areas where the

The present study examines the
challenges facing municipal governments in FYR Macedonia.
The introductory chapter provides some further context for
these developments, in terms of the challenges they pose
for urban areas and their governments. Chapter Two examines
issues for financial management of municipalities under the
decentralized regime, and the attendant need for improving
local government capacity. The third chapter highlights

The purpose of this Independence
Evaluation Group (IEG) special study is to illuminate the
scale and scope of Bank support for municipal development
and to draw specific lessons from the achievements and
failures of a sample of individual projects. The study
focuses on three dimensions of municipal management:
planning, finance, and service provision that figure
repeatedly in Bank financed municipal development projects

Danang City is the capital and economic
hub of the central region of Vietnam. As in all of the major
urban centers of the country, Danang is currently
experiencing rapid urbanization fueled by consistent
economic growth and the resultant steady increase in
population, much through rural-urban migration. For this
reason, central and city government has been increasingly
concerned with the urban development and housing sectors.

The private enterprise sector in Bosnia
and Herzegovina (BiH) has been expanding steadily, and
estimates are that it presently contributes close to 50
percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The BiH private
enterprise sector initially developed following the
privatization program starting in 1999. Under that program,
the majority of state owned enterprises (SOEs) that were
privatized were done so using the voucher privatization

This study focuses on the tax system for
non-subsurface users in Kazakhstan. It takes as given the
tax reform package that the authorities and stakeholders are
designing, but proposes a number of additional steps to be
taken over the next 2-3 years aimed at maximizing the
benefits of tax neutrality on competitiveness. The first
volume of this report mainly focuses on tax policy: taxes on
labor, capital, and consumption. A draft report on