This Selected Issues paper provides an overview of past growth performance and an assessment of the outlook for growth in Timor-Leste. It identifies impediments to growth and discusses policies that would contribute to the accelerated rates of growth needed to reduce poverty and unemployment and...

This Selected Issues paper on Azerbaijan Republic reports that the government has made substantial progress in dealing with energy-related subsidies. The domestic market for oil products has been tightly regulated by the government since Azerbaijan gained independence. Azerbaijan is largely...

The performance of Micro Finance Institutions (MFIs) has been affected negatively by the current hypercompetitive economic environment which has beencharacterised by as unfair competition. Huge losses have been reported among MFIs in Kenya, this has forced MFIs to innovate differently; product,...

The performance of Micro Finance Institutions (MFIs) has been affected negatively by the current hypercompetitive economic environment which has been characterised by as unfair competition. Huge losses have been reported among MFIs in Kenya, this has forced MFIs to innovate differently; product,...

The study examines the efficiency differences across the ownership structure of Indian microfinance institutions (MFIs) operating during the year 2005/06 to 2017/18 in response to regulatory reforms initiated by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in the year 2011. We remove the outliers from the...

Using firm level data on 70,000 enterprises in 107 countries, this paper finds important effects of access to finance, business regulations, corruption, and to a lesser extent, infrastructure bottlenecks in explaining patterns of job creation at the firm level. The paper focuses on how the...

In September 2010 the Croatian regulatory agency (HAKOM) put in force the ordinance on technical requirements and conditions of use of optical distribution networks. With this ordinance the Croatian regulatory agency is looking over the rim by proposing a rather technical approach for the...

Many countries in Latin America and the Caribbean are interested in diversifying their energy sources for energy security and in contributing to the reduction of greenhouse gases. Non-traditional renewable energy (NTRE) sources, which include wind, solar, geothermal and small-scale hydropower,...

Using data from a quick survey of various rural (RFIs) and microfinance institutions (MFIs) in East Asia, the paper tries to find out how those institutions and their clientele have been affected by the global financial crisis, how they have coped with the ongoing crisis, and what they plan to...

Global markets for goods and services have opened for countries that have made substantial investments in technological innovations in transportation, communications and production techniques, inventory management and the rapid rate of innovation in financial instruments, among others. This...