|
|
|
|
Public Finance and Banking
|
|
|
|
Finance is a key area of interest for policy makers in developing countries. There are two main reasons why finance is of interest to DDVE. First, public finance decisions can have large distributional impacts, for example through the benefit incidence of public spending and taxation, and they also have have implications for the modes of financing used by various service providers, including faith-based organizations. Second, faith affects development patterns among others through the type of financial instruments that can be used. A clear example of the role of faith in the area of finance is that of Islamic finance. In both of these areas, DDVE aims to play a role in making material for capacity development and training available to constituencies such as faith-based organizations. Currently, DDVE is working on four main initiatives related to finance.
- Public finance and service delivery: As part of its work on Service Delivery, DDVE is aiming to document alternative modes of financing used by faith-based organizations to provide services to the poor. The objective is not only to assess how FBOs get funded, but also the impact of alternative contractual agreements and performance contracts on performance. For example, work is underway in Rwanda by the Africa Region Human development staff to try to measure the impact of contractual agreements on a wide range of health outcomes.
- Training materials on public finance: Available training materials include a recent book coedited by DDVE staff and staff from the World Bank’s Poverty Reduction and Economic Management network on “Public Finance for Poverty Reduction: Concepts and Case Studies from Africa and Latin America”. The book is available as DDVE Study 2008-1. It covers four areas: debt sustainability, taxation, benefit and tax incidence analysis, and public expenditure tracking surveys. Additional material in French is being put together on the relationship between budgets and poverty reduction strategies, with examples from West and Central Africa.
- Training materials on Islamic finance: Available training materials include a recent book edited by World Bank staff on “Risk Analysis for Islamic Banks” (DDVE Study 2008-4) and a paper on islamic micro-finance (DDVE Working Paper 2009-7) The DDVE team is also working on preparing a list of relevant and freely available publications that deal with the issue of Islamic finance.
- Socially efficient tax reform and subsidies: Work is on-going on the distributional aspects of tax reforms, with a range of applications including import and VAT taxes on consumption goods, export taxes, taxes on production inputs, etc. Some of this work is related to the DDVE project on the Africa economic crisis. Work is also underway on the affordability of basic education and health services, as well as on subsidies provided for water and electricity (see Infrastructure Services – Access and affordability).
|
|
|
|
|
RSS