Ideas to Action:
Independent research for global prosperity
While recent aid transparency buzz has largely revolved around the latest donor rankings, MCC (always a top ranked donor) has been busy quietly raising the transparency bar yet again. The latest display of commendable openness? A concise report on closeout economic rate of return (ERR) for 94 projects in 10 compacts, as well as compiled data on original ERRs for 45 projects in 11 open compacts.
We were bemused to read the World Bank’s press release of April 28, dateline Singapore: “The winners for the 2015-2016 Competition Advocacy Contest are: Mexico and Zimbabwe for competition advocacy in fast growing and innovative markets.” Hmmm.
At the World Bank’s Annual Universal Health Coverage (UHC) Financing Forum this year, I took part in a mock competition to help determine the topic of next year’s forum. I was up against Larry Gostin, who argued that the 2017 forum should focus on equity and human rights, and Sara Bennett, who made the case for it to be the political economy. My pitch was for the forum to focus on efficiency—or value for money—in UHC reforms, and here’s why.
The recent Ebola outbreak in Liberia underscored the need to focus on health systems strengthening and local resiliency. But who should take the lead? As the case of Liberia shows, even in a country still reeling from a health crisis and with perpetually low capacity, there are opportunities for donors to take a more ambitious approach to country ownership and institution strengthening.
What should you read first if you’re a new policy advisor in a Ministry of Education? I’ve had two emails with this question in the last week alone. So, here is a quick (RISE-heavy) Top Ten.
Somewhere in a village in Nigeria, a young girl is sitting in school today, just like she does every day, packed onto a crowded wooden bench in a faded school uniform. She represents a victory in the global effort to get all children learning, and her presence will be recorded as progress in the global databases maintained by UNESCO and the World Bank. There's just one catch. She's not learning anything.
Does broadening financial access to large segments of the population pose risks to financial stability? Not necessarily, according to recent remarks by IMF managing director Christine Lagarde. Increasing access to basic financial transactions such as payments does not threaten financial stability, especially when appropriate supervisory and regulatory frameworks are in place. In fact, with the right regulatory supervision, increased access to financial services can result in both micro and macro benefits. Recognizing the macroeconomic and regulatory dimensions of financial inclusion, CGD and the IMF joined forces for a seminar to kick off the IMF Spring Meetings 2016.
Even among policymakers, there is plenty of misunderstanding around how the US government’s premier agency charged with advancing a private sector-based development agenda, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), actually operates. When we searched for a database with key OPIC project-level information, we couldn’t find one. So we spent months manually entering all of the publicly available information on OPIC projects into a single location, the OPIC Scraped Portfolio dataset.
It has operations in more than 30 countries worth around $9 billion. And now the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is searching for its next leader. Current president Sir Suma Chakrabarti is seeking a second four-year term as EBRD president, and he faces the challenge of Marek Belka, a former Prime Minister and Finance Minister of Poland and currently president of the country’s National Bank. Recently both candidates recorded interviews with me, which we have edited together into this edition of the CGD Podcast.
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