The objective of the Bhutan Investment
Climate Assessment (ICA) is to evaluate the investment
climate in Bhutan in all its operational dimensions and
promote policies to strengthen the private sector. This ICA
consists of two volumes. Volume 1 summarizes the main
results. Volume 2 presents a more detailed analysis of each
of the three main themes of the report: labor productivity
and skills, access to finance, and business government

The Government of Lao PDR (GoL)
announced that its 7th national socio-economic development
plan, covering 2010 through 2015, will focus on achieving
the Millennium Development Goals by 2015 and exiting least
developed country status by 2020. To achieve these goals,
one of the priority areas in the 7th National Socio-Economic
Development Plan (NSEDP) is to reduce vulnerability to
shocks by providing and improving social safety nets (SSN).

The second Climate Investment Funds
(CIF) partnership forum took place at the headquarters of
the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in Manila, Philippines, on
March 18-19, 2010. The objective of the 2010 partnership
forum was to share lessons learned from the CIF design
process and from early implementation of CIF-funded
programs. The forum aimed to provide an open, transparent
and constructive platform for dialogue on knowledge gained

Lao PDR has experienced high levels of
economic growth in recent years and the incidence of poverty
has fallen dramatically since the 1990s. Yet, this report
shows that Lao households continue to be highly vulnerable
to regular seasonal fluctuations, as well as agricultural
shocks and natural disasters. The report also highlights the
importance of health shocks, injury and death for household
welfare. Households adopt a variety of strategies to cope

The Sub-Saharan Africa Refinery Study
evaluates the effects of improved fuel specifications on
refiningoperations and air quality in Sub-Saharan Africa
(SSA). The improved fuel specifications would reduce the
levels of certain pollutants in fuels, in turn reducing
human exposure to these pollutants in ambient air. The
health study estimates the health impacts and associated
monetary benefits associated with the proposed improvements

The report is structured as follows.
Section one examines the contribution of the rural economy
to the national economy, the structure of the farm and
non-farm sectors and their relative importance. Section two
describes policies and constraints affecting the wider rural
economy including, reforms in macro-economic management,
recent external influences and financial services before
discussing those which relate specifically to agriculture

Big cities are becoming even bigger and
these have been and will be the key drivers of economic
growth in Serbia. Belgrade, Novi Sad, Nis and Kragujevac,
Serbia's four largest cities contributed to about 60
percent of the increase of value added in the economy over
the period 2001-2008. These four largest cities in 2008
accounted for about two thirds of country s economy. Spatial
characteristics of foreign direct investments inflow,

This report describes a pilot study of
natural risk hazards in the peri-urban extension areas of
the Dakar Metropolitan Area, Senegal. The area subject of
this study stretches across 580 square kilometers, covering
less than 1 percent of the national territory, but housing
about 50 percent of Senegal's urban population. Much of
the rapid population growth of the Dakar Metropolitan Area
is taking place beyond the boundaries of the Department of

The objective of the First Initiative
Project in Uganda is to expand the access of households to
housing finance, especially modest and lower income
households, by introducing new and innovative housing loan
products, by introducing innovative loan products combined
with affordable housing designs. The project has delivered
two studies to the Bank of Uganda: i) a study addressing the
financial and banking sector context for housing finance,

This assessment of the anti-money
laundering (AML) and combating the financing of terrorism
(CFT) regime of the Arab Republic of Egypt (Egypt) is based
on the Forty Recommendations 2003 and the Nine Special
Recommendations on Terrorist Financing 2001 of the Financial
Action Task Force (FATF), andwas prepared using
the AML/CFT assessment Methodology 2004, as updated in
February 2008. The assessment team considered all the

This report attempts to diagnose
existing constraints and prospects for growth in
people's incomes in South Kordofan. Given the breadth
and depth of difficulties facing the state, the focus is on
identifying the key areas of reform, or binding constraints,
to growth. There is a combination of extremely low social
returns, the prevalence of government and market failures,
the weak investment climate and the limited access to

This learning note prepares policymakers
to engage with their technical experts and staff in
designing and implementing an evidence-informed response to
the challenges of existing and future slum settlements. To
that end, the note discusses a set of indicators and data
analysis techniques needed in the identification and
characterization of slums as well as relevant lessons and
examples. In addition, the noted discusses the data