In 2012 Papua New Guinea undertook a national Service Delivery Assessment of rural water, rural sanitation, urban water and urban sanitation services to identify coverage and targets, how well services are being delivered and the financing shortfalls in these subsectors.
... Voir la suite Immediately following this assessment, stakeholders, through a national policy task force, have developed a draft of the countrys first National Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Policy. During the course of the assessment and policy development, peri-urban and informal settlements have been consistently identified as areas which are underserviced and overlooked for water and sanitation services. The need to provide affordable and appropriate services in settlements, as well as improve health and living conditions, was highlighted. Amongst stakeholders, it was agreed that baseline information on WASH conditions in settlements was needed in order to develop strategies and to respond appropriately to needs of settlements in the future. Previous settlement research has focused on urbanization, housing ownership, land issues, employment, and anthropology, but WASH has not been researched specifically or in depth. Therefore in 2014, the Water and Sanitation Program of the World Bank (WSP), together with key stakeholders, conducted research in informal settlements in the capital Port Moresby and a representative provincial town (Wewak) to understand the conditions, aspirations, barriers and opportunities to improve water, sanitation and hygiene for informal settlers.
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This issue of the East Asia and Pacific economic update is based on data available through September 29, inclusive. This report also includes a special section, focusing on two crucial medium-term issues facing developing East Asia and Pacific: education and skills development, and international migration; and an overview of the economic prospects and policy priorities for the Pacific Island Countries.
... Voir la suite Overall, the global economy is showing signs of recovery, but at an uneven pace; global growth is expected to rise modestly to 2.6 percent in 2014, and an average 3.3 percent in from 2015 to 2017. The gradual strengthening of activity in high-income economies will boost demand for exports from developing East Asia and Pacific, helping the region sustain its growth performance. In China growth will gradually moderate to 7.4 percent in 2014 and 7.1 percent in 2016, reflecting intensified policy efforts to address financial vulnerabilities and structural constraints, and place the economy on a more sustainable growth path. In the rest of the region, growth will gradually pick up, as exports firm and the impact of domestic adjustment in the large ASEAN countries eases. Investment in the large ASEAN economies weakened, while private consumption remained resilient. Fiscal policy in many countries has aimed at rebuilding fiscal space but these efforts need to be sustained. Credit growth has slowed reflecting tighter policies and inflation generally remains low. Significant uncertainties remain about the strength and sustainability of the recovery in high-income economies, as well as about the timing of policy actions by central banks in these countries. In this uncertain global environment, there is still a window of opportunity to enact critical, and in some cases overdue,reforms; the short-term priority in several countries is to address the vulnerabilities and inefficiencies that have been created by an extended period of loose financial conditions and fiscal stimulus. In China the authorities need to strike a balance between containing the growing risks from rising leverage and meeting the indicative growth targets. Over the longer term, the focus in most countries must be on implementing the structural reforms needed to enhance their export competitiveness.
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Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) have been in existence for many decades worldwide, however most SWFs in the East Asia and Pacific Region (EAP) are relatively new.
... Voir la suite The emergence of the SWFs in Asia is largely a by-product of the strong economic development at East Asian countries in the last two decades and the attendant accumulation of foreign exchange reserves. However, there are other types of SWFs in the region as well. The EAP region is an ideal region to take a look at the issues surrounding SWFs since Asia has the full range of funds from long-established funds to brand new funds; from passive portfolio investors to more aggressive strategic investors; from resource-backed funds to foreign reserve-backed funds; and, based in the largest, most highly developed economies to the smallest, poorest economies in Asia. Therefore, the objective of this report is to document the status of Sovereign Wealth Funds in the East Asia Region and to understand their governance structures. The report will also investigate how lack of standardized, long-term financial instruments devoted to emerging markets leads funds to leak out of the EAP region, an area with significant investment needs. It presents facts from publicly available sources on their size, institutional structure, and investment operations.
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Document de travail 92932 SEP 01, 2014
Seward, James; Ulukan, Mustafa; Kim, Mee Jung; Tsubota, Hiroshi; Gable, Timothy