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Project
The impact of COVID-19 on Ethiopia’s industrial parks: A rapid review
Over the past decade, the government of Ethiopia has pursued a strategy of labour-intensive industrialisation through export-oriented light manufacturing. The strategy is predicated on the use of low-cost labour as a source of competitive advantage within global value chains. For this purpose, the government has encouraged large-scale foreign direct investment (FDI) in the...
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Publication - Policy Brief
Firms in Ethiopia’s industrial parks: COVID-19 impacts, challenges, and government response
The COVID-19 pandemic poses an unprecedented challenge for Ethiopia’s ambitious industrialisation agenda focused on export-oriented light manufacturing. To quantify the impacts of COVID-19 on firms in Ethiopia’s export processing zones, the World Bank Group in cooperation with the Government of Ethiopia administered a phone survey of firms. Survey data suggest...
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Publication - Policy Brief
Digital information channels in the Rwandan potato value chain
The potential of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to provide smallholder farmers with useful agronomic and market information is widely heralded. Mobile phones can offer much richer modes of communication sharing, but in many parts of the world limited digital literacy, use of smart phones, and poor data connectivity can constrain this potential. ...
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Publication - Working Paper
Financial intermediation and economic development in the state of Bihar, India: A district-level analysis
This paper analyses the relationship between financial intermediation and economic development in the state of Bihar in India. We find that the standard index of depth of financial intermediation measured by credit deposit (CD) ratio is very low in the state (30%) and has little impact on economic development at the aggregate level. However, the analysis of sectoral CD...
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Event
The private sector in the pandemic: From impact to recovery
The objective of this seminar is to highlight new findings on the ongoing impact of the pandemic to the private sector and discuss scenarios about the recovery phase that will follow. The workshop features a keynote address by Mari Pangestu, Managing Director for Development Policy of the World Bank, presenters from 13 leading development and academic institutions, and...
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Publication - Policy Brief
The COVID-19 impact on Ugandan supply chains: The importance of imports
Ugandan firms do not operate in isolation: Supply chains depend on the quick supply of goods and services as inputs for productive activities. Crucially, Uganda sources these inputs both domestically as well as from foreign firms. This study first investigates the impact of COVID-19 at the outset of the pandemic on Uganda’s trade. Starting from the documented...
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Event
The impact of COVID-19 on small-holder farmers in India and the way forward
In India more than 80% of the agriculture sector comprises of small and marginal farmers (Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, 2015). Agriculture and its allied sectors are the source of livelihood of around 54.6% of the population (Economic Survey 2019-20) and its contribution was around 16.5% of the GDP. Furthermore, small-holder farmers contribute to both...
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Blog post
Rental markets for mechanisation in India: Trends and current state
Agricultural landholdings and mechanisation levels vary considerably in the developing world. Whether smaller farmers adopt lower levels of mechanisation because returns to adoption are lower, or because there are barriers to adoption that are particularly detrimental to them remains unclear. Our project aims at estimating the impact of access to equipment rental markets on...
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Blog post
Ideas Matter: Improving private sector performance
Unleashing the potential of the private sector in developing countries is critical to achieving productive job creation and inclusive growth. Productivity growth - increasing how much output is realised from a given amount of inputs - is one of the main contributors to economic development (Caselli, 2004, Hall and Jones, 1999). One reason for productivity in developing...
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Publication - Policy Brief
Making the most of investment in Uganda: The role of supplier development programmes
Growing investment in Uganda offers an opportunity for policymakers to boost local production through supplier development programmes. This brief considers the potential benefits of such programmes in Uganda to both large firms and suppliers. It also considers best practice for implementation, drawing on evidence from such programmes in countries such as Mexico,...