This scoping study aims to help promote large-scale improvements in child nutrition through quality certification of local infant foods. Certification of nutrient density would allow new producers to compete with heavily advertised global brands, and thereby help families meet more of their infants’ needs than is currently possible. As a first step, this study surveys the availability of infant foods in greater Accra and tests their nutrient density so as to diagnose the need for certification, then proposes a design for its introduction that permits rigorous evaluation.
Policy
The IGC will endeavour to publish policy briefs that draw together the experience of different countries confronting similar development issues, such as managing oil revenues, macroeconomic stability and taxation, and others offering concise summaries of the policy implications of IGC research.
This book describes the history and current capabilities of Ethiopia’s leading industrial companies (agribusiness, manufacturing and construction), focusing on 50 key large and mid-size firms. The motivation for the study is to help with the expansion of economic capabilities in the country by first understanding where the capabilities of the existing successful companies came from. The fifty firms chosen for this study represent almost all the largest firms in their respective sectors. An early observation is that around half the leading firms in Ethiopia have emerged from the import/export (trading) sector – where the deepest and most acute knowledge of local and international market conditions is already at hand. A common and unfortunate tendency among many observers of developing economies is to see the trading sector as separate from and irrelevant to the growth of manufacturing industry. The authors find that these firms have a vital role in seeding
successful manufacturing firms.
A second important observation is that, among the fifty leading firms, only two can trace their origins back to a small domestic firm. The second private-sector source of Ethiopia’s leading industrial companies is foreign companies. This is likely to be an increasingly important route to future industrial growth – and the inflow of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the past decade has been increasing significantly from a very low base. Four countries are leading this phenomenon: China, India, Saudi Arabia and Italy. These FDI projects span every sector of Ethiopian industry. The authors conclude that a careful monitoring and development of FDI ventures should be a key focus of policy concern over the next decade.
Another crucial issue of economic policy identified here is import substitution (i.e. developing local industry to provide substitutes for expensive imports), and the need to nurture this on a level playing field with export projects, which are tending to be given preferential treatment. Finally the authors address issues of access to medium-term finance for growth, and the availability of land for industrial use.
John Sutton is Sir John Hicks Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science. “Industrial Mapping in Ethiopia” was funded by the International Growth Centre (IGC).
Contact: Adam Green, IGC Communications Officer: adam.green@theigc.org,
+44 (0) 20 7852 3665
This policy brief draws on research papers and reports from a large-scale longitudinal study conducted by Tahir Andrabi, Jishnu Das and Asim Ijaz Khwaja through a grant
from the World Bank’s South Asia Regions and Knowledge for Change Trust Funds. The study, titled “Learning and Educational Achievements in Punjab Schools” (LEAPS)
analyses the education sector in Pakistan, its major challenges and policy options for moving forward. The data from the study is public and is available at www.leapsproject.org.
A short policy brief of Bloom's research into the role of management in the Indian textiles sector.
Governments must decide whether to enforce noncompete clauses at the risk of discouraging employee entrepreneurship. The project finds for the period 1995-2001 in Brazil that between one-sixth and one-third of new formal sector businesses are employee spinoffs, and that spinoff firms outperform new formal sector businesses without identifiable parents in terms of size and survival. These results suggest that, as developing countries increasingly reform their legal practices to resemble those of developed countries, they should be wary of importing expanded enforcement of non-compete clauses that could restrict worker mobility and formation of employee spinoff firms.
This policy note summarizes policy lessons for Rwanda from the Chilean experience. It cautions that, contrary to intuition, PPPs do not provide additional resources. It suggests ways to prevent Chile’s costly mistakes related to excessive contract renegotiation. Moreover, the experience of Chile – a country renowned for imperviousness to corruption – underscores the importance of adequate independent oversight and transparency in large transactions of PPP-financed public infrastructure. This note is based on the work of Prof. Ron Fischer presented at the IGC Growth Forum in Rwanda on 17th February 2011, and his paper “The Promise and Peril of Public Private Partnerships: Lessons from the Chilean Experience”.
Institutions are important determinants of economic development. However, there is little evidence about how best to ‘improve’ institutions that are already in place. Moreover, is it
possible, or even desirable, for external actors like foreign aid donors to attempt to restructure local power dynamics in less developed countries? Community Driven Development (CDD)
programs are among the most popular approaches to make local institutions more inclusive. This research project uses a rigorous randomized experimental design to assess the impacts of a
well-implemented CDD program on local public goods and institutions in post-war Sierra Leone.
Property tax collection in the Punjab is roughly a fifth of the level of comparable countries both in terms of the proportion of total local revenues and as share of GDP. This would be ten times compared to what is collected today, amounting to 13% of Punjab’s development budget and 26% of its health and education budget for FY10. This policy brief outlines improvements that could be made to the property tax system in Punjab.
Encouraging Seasonal Migration to Mitigate the Consequences of a Seasonal Famine in Rural Bangladesh
In Bangladesh, during the annual seasonal famine, incomes decrease by 50-60% and expenditures on food drop by 10-25%. The government has instituted food or cash-for-work
programs, while NGOs attempt to enhance income and employment mostly through credit and to a lesser extent through job training and marketing initiatives. However, there is a need for
long term solutions rather than consumption-smoothing interventions.
The current EAC-CET is imposing costs on Rwanda, weighing down export performance and growth, and raising prices for Rwandan consumers. This is in addition to the constraints imposed by Non-Tariff Barriers (NTBs) and transport costs. Rwanda can reduce these costs through negotiations with the EAC, particularly advocating changes in the common external tariff based on its own interests, intensifying EAC work on reducing NTBs, and working collectively with EAC partners on a common transport infrastructure. This note summarizes elements of recent IGC work on Rwanda’s trade.
