This final report is the fifth
deliverable for the World Bank funded project
'operational design for the project development fund
and for the viability gap fund'. Taking into account
feedback and further consideration of issues rose in the
previous Reports, it aims to: provide high level
recommendations on the overall Public Private Partnership
(PPP) framework in Pakistan, recognizing international best

The report analyses the contribution to
date of agricultural water management to poverty reduction
and growth in the in sub-Saharan Africa region, the reasons
for its slow expansion and apparently poor track record, as
well as the ways in which increased investment in
agricultural water management could make a sustainable
contribution to further poverty reduction and growth. The
first chapter places agricultural water management in the

Carbon transactions are defined as purchase contracts or ERPAs (Emission Reductions Purchase Agreements) whereby one party pays another party in return for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions that the buyer can use to meet its compliance or corporate citizenship - objectives vis-a-vis GHG mitigation. Payment is made using one or more of the following forms: cash, equity, debt, or in-kind contributions.

Rwanda established targets for Gross
Domestic Product (GDP) growth and poverty reduction, to be
achieved by the year 2020; these were to (i) raise real per
capita income from $230 to $900; and (ii) reduce the poverty
incidence by half. To reach these targets, the Government
projected in its 2002 Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper
(PRSP) that GDP growth will to be in the range of 6 to 7
percent over the medium term. The PRSP focused on six

Costa Rica's Program of Payments
for Environmental Services (Pago de Servicios Ambientales,
PSA) provides a unique opportunity to evaluate direct
payments as a conservation policy tool. This paper reports
evidence on how much more forest has been conserved in Costa
Rica as a result of PSA contracts with landowners. Such
evidence requires estimating a counterfactual outcome: how
much forest would have been preserved if there had been no

This study on Jharkhand in India
addresses the challenges faced by that new state of India
(founded in November 2000) to surmount adverse initial
conditions of low average income, very high incidence of
poverty, and little social development. In addition, initial
health and education indicators in Jharkhand were also
markedly unfavorable in comparison to both the all-India
average and the major Indian states. The paper points out

The case studies in this book were
developed as part of a year-long learning process initiated
by the World Bank in 2003-4 to examine large scale poverty
reduction programs in a wide range of developing countries
around the world. This volume presents 12 of the case
studies from South Asia. . The last two decades saw
substantial change in the countries of South Asia. All
countries of the subcontinent experienced more rapid growth

This Investment Climate Policy Note
(ICPN) for Sierra Leone evaluates the country's
business environment by: (i) analyzing barriers to private
sector investment and growth and how they vary among
different types of firms; (ii) benchmarking Sierra
Leone's investment climate and firm performance to that
of other countries; and (iii) providing recommendations to
promote and strengthen the private sector. The ICPN is

This note provides an overview of the current property taxation system in the Punjab Province based on the premise that the property tax: 1) is essentially a fiscal tool; 2) is not an instrument of social redistribution; 3) system should be kept simple; and 4) is a technical instrument with strong financial, institutional, and political connotations. This note summarizes the key attributes of the present property taxation system of the Punjab Province and proposes some solutions for improving the property tax system.

The purpose of this book is to
contribute to the debate on how to confront the challenges
that Bolivia faces today. It is composed of a series of
studies on the current reality of Bolivia and has been
developed in conjunction with national and international
public policy experts. The studies present a diagnostic by
sector, a summary of the main challenges, and public policy
recommendations aimed at meeting these challenges. After

Lao PDR economic performance has
continued to improve during 2006. Real GDP grew at 7.0
percent in 2005 and is now expected to be slightly higher at
7.3 percent in 2006. This growth is in large part due to
foreign investment inflows in mining and hydro-power and
growing mineral exports, but the share of non-mining
contributions has increased this year, reaching 4.9 out of
7.3 percent. Agriculture, manufacturing and services sectors

Nonfarm activity plays an increasingly important role in rural household income. Based on data from the Living Standards Measurement Study in the provinces of Hebei and Liaoning, the authors study the distribution of nonfarm income in rural China. First, they assume nonfarm income as an exogenous transfer to total income to decompose the Gini index. Second, they assume nonfarm income as a potential substitute for farm income to take household choices into account and simulate household income.