Corporate governance (CG) is a journey, not a destination. The International Finance Corporation (IFC) China Corporate Governance Program started its journey in ten cities of China in 2009 and sowed 'seeds' on the ground. Today, some of those seeds are germinating, blossoming, and bearing fruit....

Given the strong trade flows among the United States, Central America (Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador) and the Dominican Republic, the ratification of the Central America and Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR) represents an opportunity for the trade...

The creation of new microfinance institutions (greenfielding) is a key International Finance Corporation (IFC) intervention to increase access to finance in countries where there are few institutions serving micro and small businesses. IFC uses this approach extensively in Africa and in post...

In the event of global climate change, agriculture will be one of the worst-hit sectors in Bangladesh. Increasing global temperatures, rising sea levels, and melting polar ice caps result in land submergence, salinity intrusion, drought, and so on all of which drastically impact agricultural...

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Africa have been hailed as the engine of economic growth. They are at the heart of developing countries' entrepreneurship, the source of most new employment and productive investment, and the basis for growth and poverty reduction. Despite the economic...

Once pushed to the periphery as an unattractive market segment, the mass of low-income consumers throughout the developing world 4 billion of them are emerging as key players in the global marketplace and climate mitigation equation. Collectively, these base-of-the-pyramid (BoP) consumers make...

How do you turn a confusing tangle of red tape into a smooth operation? In Georgia, the solution involved risk management, automation, and a good mechanism for public-private dialogue. This customs reform was a key component of the trade logistics reform introduced by the Government of Georgia...

You don't have to be a psychologist to find yourself having to change or influence people's behavior. And that is a challenge, especially when the change involves costs in time, effort, and money and the potential benefit is not yet tangible. Though many of us intellectually understand the...

The problem of our time is not how to keep nations peacefully apart, but how to bring them actively together, wrote David Mitrany in 1943. With that in mind, think about developing the concept for a regional trade facilitation project to introduce leaner and greener transit routes and simplified...

In 2008, the Integration and Trade Sector (INT) of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) designed an innovative project in Central America called International Goods in Transit (or TIM, its Spanish acronym), which has dramatically improved the speed and efficiency of border clearance for...