Argentina Affordable Housing Support The Government of Argentina (GOA) launched in 2016 the first nation-wide demand-side housing supply program for first-home buyers (the Linea Solucion Casa Propia Program, SCP). The World Bank, as part of the Integrated Habitat and Housing Project (P159929), is supporting the SCP. The SCP provides a lump-sum subsidy to eligible households, which,…

Kosovo Study Tour on Migration Policies Emigration from Kosovo is among the highest in the world. Many households in the country have a family member living abroad, a situation caused by a poor economy and the armed conflict of the late 1990s. The remittances from those who have emigrated are vital for their family members in Kosovo, ensuring their wellbeing in a country that has some…

Building successful microfinance in rural areas in the Kyrgyz Republic Up to 60 percent of rural households in the Kyrgyz Republic live in poverty, including 19 percent in extreme poverty.  Rural households spend 74 percent of their incomes on food. At the same time, the Kyrgyz Republic had experienced some of the most severe food price shocks in Central Asia. Food prices increased 48 percent during the global food…

Improving accounting education in Moldova: Learning from the Romanian experience Moldova recognized a need to modernize its accounting and auditing education curriculum and professional development as part of a national effort to improve corporate reporting and macro-economic stability. Moldovan accounting experts participated in an exchange with Romania from whom they learned modern curricula development and teaching…

Restructuring Vietnam’s Financial Sector and State-owned Enterprises To ensure that Vietnam’s macroeconomic and structural policies could contribute to sustainable economic growth in the wake of the 2008-2009 global economic crisis, government officials participated in an exchange with Indonesia, Mexico, and Chile. Vietnamese officials learned how to institute practical reforms leading to better assessment of…

Supporting Female Entrepreneurship in Ethiopia What was the objective of the South-South exchange? : The Development Bank of Ethiopia (DBE) sought to learn from India how to implement and sustain a credit facility dedicated to women’s economic empowerment leveraging microfinance institutions, as part of the World Bank’s funded Women Entrepreneurship Development Project (WEDP) in Ethiopia.…

Capacity Building for Creditworthiness of the City of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia The city of Ulaanbaatar (UB) had reached a secure budgetary position to fulfill its goal for obtaining creditworthiness and issuing municipal bonds to mobilize financial resources. But it lacked the knowledge and experience to move forward. Finding the cities with the necessary experience to share, UB engaged Johannesburg and Tshwane (Pretoria) in…

Improving Capacity for Migration Management in Europe and Central Asia Every year, approximately 10 million migrant workers from the lower-income Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) head to Russia and other middle-income CIS countries to seek employment and provide a livelihood for their families.1 Many migrant laborers remit funds to their home countries to support their extended families. Migration in the…

Moldova Builds Capacity to Align with EU Corporate Financial Reporting Standards The government of Moldova has been pursuing reforms to strengthen corporate financial reporting (CFR) since the mid-1990s, but by mid 2009 the system still had shortcomings.  The GOM did not have a clear understanding of key sections of the Country Action Plan (CAP) for reforming corporate financial reporting that the World Bank had helped create…