Development Links

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PODCAST: Higher revenue, easier filing- How Armenia improved the way its citizens pay taxes

Podcast by: The World Bank Duration: 5:37 In 2012, the World Bank launched a 12 million dollar 5-year-project on tax administration reform in Armenia. Back then, the tax to GDP ratio was 16.3% (just above the 15% threshold)- foreign remittances were low, the domestic economy was slow, revenue collection was low and there was a mismatch between spending needs and revenue collection. The tax system was archaic, frustrating and inefficient, with time-consuming manual, in-person, paper filings that led to informal payments and bribe-seeking. Following the reforms, Armenia now has electronic tax filing system, trained tax administration, a training center for tax administrators, a call center with a hotline people can access regarding taxes. Without raising the tax rates, the Government has increased tax revenue to 20% of GDP. Indicators such as number of tax audits, taxes collected per capita, number of active VAT and CIT payers are all on upward trends. Listen to this podcast to learn about the project. 

Domestic resource mobilization is essential to finance development. In Bangladesh, the tax-GDP ratio is 10.3%, though lower according to the Heritage Foundation. The country is targeting to raise the ratio to 15.3% by FY2019.    

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I think that honestly the world is getting to be a better place. There are fewer wars, less poverty. Everything is getting better, people are trying really hard to fix problems. But we're also far more aware of how bad it is because actually we have such great visibility through computers, right? Through the Internet. We can see everything terrible that's happening and we're trying to take it on and fix it. And I hope that we continue to try. And I think algorithms are a big piece of trying. I think it's great to try but we just have to try to remember that computers are not magic and that we have to make sure that we don't embed our biases into them and give them full rein to make decisions without accountability.

- Julia Angwin, Journalist, ProPublica

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PODCAST: Development Finance Institutions “a proven theory of change” - Heads of OPIC and CDC

Podcast by: CGD Podcast by Rajesh Mirchandani Duration: 17:01

There’s a very short Wikipedia stub on Development Finance Institutions or DFIs, which says: “A development finance institution (DFI) is an alternative financial institution which includes microfinance institutions, community development financial institution and revolving loan funds. These institutions provide a crucial role in providing credit in the form of higher risk loans, equity positions and risk guarantee instruments to private sector investments in developing countries. DFIs are backed by states with developed economies. In 2005, total commitments (as loans, equity, guarantees and debt securities) of the major regional, multilateral and bilateral DFIs totalled US$45 billion (US$21.3 billion of which went to support the private sector). 

DFIs provide finance to the private sector for investments that promote development and to help companies to invest, especially in countries with various restrictions on the market.”

OPIC or the Overseas Private Investment Corporation is the US Government’s DFI, which CDC is the UK Government’s DFI. The two, with a portfolio of almost 25 billion dollars, are among the largest bilateral DFIs. I recently read an article on The Guardian about legislation to ”lift the cap on aid funds spent through the CDC from £1.5bn to £6bn”. In this Center for Global Development Podcast, Rajesh Michandani questions OPIC and CDC heads about the choice of countries they invest in, which has been criticized.

What role will DFIs play in the larger “blended finance” landscape? Intuitively, it seems that with greater emphasis on market-led approaches, DFIs will become more prominent in the future. Also curious to follow how the new administration in the US responds to OPIC needs and priorities. 

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What is blended finance?

This morning, blended finance has been on several of my feeds. So I decided to learn more about it.

Blended finance brings together public, philanthropic/charitable and private funds to advance Sustainable Development Goals. There is a huge funding gap that public funds alone cannot cover. Although there has been increased flows of private finance to emerging and frontier markets, they often do not flow to initiatives that support sustainable development. Hence, this funding mechanism proposes to use development finance and philanthropic funds to channel private capital into investments that drive social, environmental and economic progress. You can learn more about it here. Examples are given in this article by The Economist. Here’s a blog post from Oxfam that might be of interest. Currently two platforms exist which link capital suppliers to blended finance project transactions. There’s Convergence and Sustainable Development Investment Partnership. 

Development finance has always been one of those topics that interested me, that I want to learn more about. Expect more related posts in the future.

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PODCAST: World is Friendlier Place for Business

Podcast by: The World Bank Duration: 2:57

Did you know about the Doing Business project of the World Bank? I learned about it in this podcast and decided to take a look. They have a Doing Business 2017 report, which is updated till June 1, 2016. This is pretty handy, eh? New Zealand, Singapore and Denmark rank in the top 3 in ease of doing business. Somalia, Eritrea and Libya rank in the bottom 3. Bangladesh ranks 176 out of the 190 countries. It ranks second-last within the 8 countries ranked in South Asia (Afghanistan ranks last). You can read more about Bangladesh’s business environment here. While it ranks pretty low in a lot of the indicators, it ranks 189/190 in enforcing contracts. This is pretty alarming.       

So what do they look at while ranking? The countries are scored on 10 topics. These are: 1. Starting a business 2. Dealing with construction permits 3. Getting electricity 4. Registering property 5. Getting credit 6. Protecting minority investors 7. Paying taxes 8. Trading across borders 9. Enforcing contracts 10. Resolving insolvency I’m sure this is not a comprehensive list of factors that determine how easy it is to do business, but it’s a good start. I like that there are individual country profiles- would be quite useful if I were to set up a business in a country I don’t know much about.  

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Find jargon in international development reports

Am I allowed to find this quite hilarious? (Hashtag self-referential humor, hashtag don’t take it too seriously)

h/t NPR article: Global Buzzwords That Will Keep On Buzzing In 2017

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PODCAST: Jim Yong Kim- African Technology Boon to Business

Podcast by: World Bank Podcasts Duration: 1:36

I’ve had the opportunity to hear Dr. Jim Yong Kim speak twice- once at the Prince Mahidol Award Conference in Pattaya, Thailand in 2014 and a second time at the World Bank’s End Poverty Day in Dhaka in 2016. Besides his list of impressive qualifications, he is an anthropologist and a highly interesting speaker. You can hear him talk about buying a watch using M-Pesa in Nairobi, Kenya. What is M-Pesa, you ask? If you live in the States, you might have used Venmo. Well, M-Pesa is kinda similar. It’s "a mobile phone-based money transfer, financing and microfinancing service” first launched in Kenya and now available in many other countries, including Tanzania, South Africa, Afghanistan, India, Romania, Albania, etc. Dr. Kim talks about the importance of encouraging entrepreneurship and creating business environments for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), which would lead to job creation. This is so true. Steady, secure jobs can make a huge difference in people’s lives.      

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PODCAST: The time to fight climate change is now

Podcast by: UNICEF Podcasts Duration: 4:15

Did you know about the Children’s Climate Forum, organized during COP15? It reminds me of the cards I made in Class IV at a UNICEF-organized event on protecting the environment. To hear about the realities faced by kids (deforestation,mosquito-borne diseases, rising temperatures threatening water sources, migration for food and water, kids missing school to search for food and water) in the Maldives, Kenya, Haiti and South Africa, listen to this. They offer solutions such as using public transport, an important investment to reduce carbon emissions from private vehicles.  

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VIDEO: Protecting Death Row’s Most Vulnerable in Pakistan

One of the interesting things this video brings up is the importance of birth registration for legal purposes. Those who aren’t registered at birth have no proof of age when tried in criminal courts. Thus, juveniles may be tried as adults. I’d be curious to learn more about organizations that do similar work in Bangladesh as Justice Project Pakistan. 

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PODCAST: Triple punch tests disaster preparedness in Asia-Pacific region

Podcast by: UNICEF Podcasts Duration: 3:38

In 2009, the Sumatra earthquake in Indonesia led to not only rise in injuries, but also increases in ARIs and diarrhoeal diseases especially among children. The need for access to clean water is critical post-disasters. UNICEF supported the Indonesian government on WASH issues, providing hygiene kits, encouraging breastfeeding (since the lack of clean water means formula milk is especially risky), trying to get kids back to school, distributing recreational kits, etc. Here’s an old interview with Lely Djuhari who works in Communications in UNICEF and a recent article that tells more about their work in post-quake Indonesia in 2016-17.

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PODCAST: Hans Rosling’s Favorite Number? Zero!

Podcast by: The World Bank Duration: 4:07

You might have heard of Hans Rosling through his famous TEDTalks, showing groovy data visualizations about health and development. In this podcast, he talks with the World Bank’s Pabsy Pabalan, expressing his appreciation for the Bank’s open data principle, talking about the need for uniform data collection from both developing and developed countries and how the number zero makes a big difference. Listening to him feels like being in a cool stats class!