Trade Therapy Bank, World; World Trade Organization, World Bank; World
2022, 8-18-2022
eBook, Book
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The COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic has exposed the upsides and downsides of international trade in medical goods and services. Open trade can increase access to medical services and goods—and the ...critical inputs needed to manufacture them—improve quality and variety, and reduce costs. However, excessive concentration of production, restrictive trade policies, supply chain disruptions, and regulatory divergence can jeopardize the ability of public health systems to respond to pandemics and other health crises. Trade Therapy: Deepening Cooperation to Strengthen Pandemic Defenses, coordinated by Nadia Rocha and Michele Ruta at the World Bank and Marc Bacchetta and Joscelyn Magdeleine at the World Trade Organization, provides new data on trade in medical goods and services and medical value chains, surveys the evolving policy landscape before and during the pandemic, and proposes an action plan to improve trade policies and deepen international cooperation to deal with future pandemics.
As the COVID-19 pandemic lingers, the focus of policy action is on the response, which includes actions aimed at removing bottlenecks and providing government support to promote equitable access to vaccines. As the emergency subsides, the focus should shift to prevention and preparedness. Steps to close information gaps—building on the Multilateral Leaders Task Force on COVID-19, the ACT-Accelerator, and the open markets, for example—by negotiating tariff reductions on medical goods and greater market access in services should take priority. Also important are measures to improve the efficiency of markets, which include harmonizing regulation through mutual recognition or equivalence of standards and creating international standards for essential medical goods, inputs, and production processes. Agreement on a crisis rulebook to be deployed during an emergency—including clear and agreed limits on export policy flexibility and shared rules on intellectual property flexibilities—would provide a more solid policy foundation to address future challenges.
With some six billion mobile subscriptions now in use worldwide, around three-quarters of the worlds inhabitants now have access to a mobile phone. Mobiles are arguably the most ubiquitous modern ...technology in some developing countries, more people have access to a mobile phone than to clean water, a bank account or even electricity. Mobile communications now offer major opportunities to advance human development from providing basic access to education or health information to making cash payments and stimulating citizen involvement in democratic processes. This 2012 edition of the World Banks Information and Communications for Development Report analyzes the growth and evolution of mobile telephony, and the rise of data-based services delivered to handheld devices, including apps or smartphone applications. The report explores the consequences for development of the emerging app economy. It summarizes current thinking and seeks to inform the debate on the use of mobile phones for development. This report looks, in particular, at key ecosystem-based applications in agriculture, health, financial services, employment and government, with chapters devoted to each. Its no longer about the phone itself, but about how it is used, and the content and applications that mobile phones open up. Mobile applications not only empower individual users, they enrich their lifestyles and livelihoods, and boost the economy as a whole. Mobile apps make phones immensely powerful as portals to the online world. A new wave of apps and "mash-ups" of services, driven by high-speed networks, social networking, online crowdsourcing and innovation, is helping mobile phones transform the lives of people in developed and developing countries alike. The report finds that mobile applications not only empower individuals, but have important cascade effects
stimulating growth, entrepreneurship and productivity throughout the economy as a whole. Mobile communications promise to do more than just give the developing world a voice they unlock the genie in the phone, empowering people to make their own choices and decisions.
Sixteenth in a series of annual reports comparing business regulation in 190 economies, Doing Business 2019 measures aspects of regulation affecting 10 areas of everyday business activity: • Starting ...a business • Dealing with construction permits • Getting electricity • Registering property • Getting credit • Protecting minority investors • Paying taxes • Trading across borders • Enforcing contracts • Resolving insolvency These areas are included in the distance to frontier score and ease of doing business ranking. Doing Business also measures features of labor market regulation, which is not included in these two measures. This edition also presents the findings of the pilot indicator entitled 'Contracting with the Government,' which aims at benchmarking the efficiency, quality and transparency of public procurement systems worldwide. The report updates all indicators as of May 1, 2018, ranks economies on their overall 'ease of doing business', and analyzes reforms to business regulation -- identifying which economies are strengthening their business environment the most. Doing Business illustrates how reforms in business regulations are being used to analyze economic outcomes for domestic entrepreneurs and for the wider economy. It is a flagship product produced in partnership by the World Bank Group that garners worldwide attention on regulatory barriers to entrepreneurship. Almost 140 economies have used the Doing Business indicators to shape reform agendas and monitor improvements on the ground.
