In 2002, the producer company model emerged to benefit poor farmers in India. This smart lesson, based on the World Bank's growing experience with producer companies in India, builds on lessons learned from the first and second Madhya Pradesh district poverty initiatives projects, which...

The 2014 World Bank entrepreneurship database provides a unique indicator of new business registration, allowing the measurement of entrepreneurial activity across economies and over time. The most recent data show that by 2012, only 56 percent of economies around the world had reached the level...

To Croatia, the ripples of the European financial crisis felt more like large waves! The challenging market conditions limited the ability of the Croatian Bank for Reconstruction and Development (HBOR) to raise funds efficiently without credit enhancement. This in turn impeded a steady flow of...

The author all want to build something that matters. From the advisory Services perspective, no matter the business line, it's about helping meaningful players accomplish sustainable results. However, entering a continent with a new product is something that can be extremely challenging. This...

The Kenya agricultural carbon project is breaking new ground in designing and implementing climate finance projects in the agricultural sector. The project is regarded as an innovative example for climate-smart agriculture within and outside the World Bank. For the first time, while increasing...

The East Asia region is home to more than half the world s stock of pigs and more than one-third of the world s poultry a population that is expected to grow rapidly over the next decades. As a result, about 26 percent of the total area in East Asia suffers from significant nutrient surpluses,...

In the push for tax reform, there was a twofold guiding principle: 1) to lower the cost of compliance for taxpayers, reduce the cash flow burden by allowing quarterly rather than monthly tax payments and expediting refunds, and minimize points and frequency of contact between taxpayers and the...

As International Finance Corporation (IFC) continues to further scale up its operations, seeking to deliver more development impact, could it be in danger of inadvertently becoming an increasingly slower and higher-cost delivery mechanism, and thus a less relevant change agent? This smart...

Over the past 10 years, nearly 100 economies have reformed their insolvency regimes as a result of many factors, such as financial crises and to some extent the International Finance Corporation, or IFC and World Bank doing business project. In the aftermath of the global financial crisis,...

Enda Inter-Arabe (ENDA), a market-leading microfinance institution (MFI) in Tunisia, was one of the first MFIs affected by a repayment crisis linked to the so-called Arab Spring. However, rather than spiral out of control, ENDA took quick steps to limit the damage while demonstrating an...