This Systematic Country Diagnostic (SCD)
aims to identify the major constraints on and opportunities
for sustaining poverty reduction and shared prosperity in
Serbia. The SCD serves as the analytic foundation on which
the World Bank Group and the Government of Serbia will
define a new Country Partnership Framework for FY2016 to
FY2020. It is based on the best possible analysis, drawing
on available evidence, and not limited to areas where the

The Tunisia Systematic Country
Diagnostic (SCD) seeks to identify the challenges and
opportunities to achieve the twin goals of reducing poverty
and boosting shared prosperity in a sustainable way. This
SCD takes into account Tunisia’s historical sociopolitical
context and the political economy of past reforms to provide
the context for the challenges and opportunities that exist
today to make progress toward the twin goals. The economic

The Country Opinion Survey in Côte
d’Ivoire assists the World Bank Group (WBG) in gaining a
better understanding of how stakeholders in Côte d’Ivoire
perceive the WBG. It provides the WBG with systematic
feedback from national and local governments,
multilateral/bilateral agencies, media, academia, the
private sector, and civil society in Côte d’Ivoire on 1)
their views regarding the general environment in Côte

Between 2002 and 2012-13, most of the
reduction in poverty was due to increased earnings, as
opposed to higher employment or higher transfers. Although
it is hard to be certain, increases in earnings are
associated with: (i) a slow structural transformation away
from agriculture and into industry and services that led to
productivity increases; (ii) agglomeration around key urban
areas that supported this structural transformation; (iii)

The country’s forest areas occupy 21.7
million ha (approximately 27.6 percent of its total surface
area), and are inhabited by close to 10 percent of its total
population. The forest sector generates a variety of timber
and non-timber products and eco-services. The Turkish
government has put great effort into reforestation and
forest management, increasing the total area of forests. In
their tenth national development plan (2014-2018), the

Climate change is a core development
challenge in Tanzania, and the potential costs of inaction
are significant. Current climate variability (including
extreme events such as droughts and floods), already leads
to major economic costs in mainland Tanzania and in
Zanzibar. Individual annual events have economic costs in
excess of 1 percent of GDP, and occur regularly, reducing
long-term growth and affecting millions of people and

In July 2013, the World Bank Group
launched its Strategy, outlining how it will partner more
effectively with clients to help them achieve the ambitious
goals of eradicating extreme poverty and boosting shared
prosperity through economic growth, inclusion,
sustainability and resilience. In April 2014, the World Bank
Group Corporate Scorecard was launched for the first time
and the World Bank Scorecard revised to monitor the

This paper identifies the low-elevation
coastal zone populations and developing regions most
vulnerable to sea-level rise and other coastal hazards, such
as storm surges, coastal erosion, and salt-water intrusion.
The focus is on the rural poor in the low-elevation coastal
zone, as their economic livelihoods are especially
endangered directly by coastal hazards and indirectly
through the impacts of climate change on key coastal and

This Country Partnership Framework (CPF)
presents the World Bank Group (WBG) program for Côte
d’Ivoire (CIV) during the period FY16-FY19. The CPF comes at
an opportune moment to accelerate and scale up the WBG
engagement. The program will take advantage of CIV’s current
climate of renewed stability to modernize the economy and
eliminate long-standing disparities aggravated by a decade
of multifaceted crisis, during which the World Bank Group

Rahees Mohammed and his wife lived in a
rented house in a slum and had one wish - to build a house
that will be a permanent home for the whole family. Aadhar
Housing Finance Private Limited can help Rahees realize his
dream by offering a housing finance product that
corresponded to his needs, preferences, and capacities. This
smart lesson, building on Aadhar’s experience and that of
other housing finance clients in South Asia, provides a

The West African coastal zone hosts
critical natural resources and habitats that provide
important ecosystem services. The area’s natural resources
play vital roles in the functioning of the shoreline,
providing natural protection against erosion, pollution, sea
level rise, and extreme weather events. Coastal and marine
ecosystems, including cold-water coral reefs, sea¬grass
meadows, mangrove forests, and coastal wetlands and lagoons,

Seventy years after independence and
more than a decade of political and institutional reforms,
Indonesia has emerged as a stable democracy. Indonesia’s
achievements are now under stress, with a slowdown in its
commodity driven economy, stagnant rates of poverty
reduction, and rapidly rising inequality. The development
policy review, completed in 2014, and the systematic country
diagnostic (SCD), completed in 2015, explain the limited