Finance & Economics | WPN World People News

Martin Schulz

The Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), the political risk insurance and credit enhancement arm of the World Bank Group, announced that it is providing guarantees to support ongoing lending to the real economy by Raffeisen Bank International’s (RBI) subsidiaries in Albania, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Serbia.

A new report by the World Bank Group compares business regulations affecting domestic firms in Poland and finds that good regulatory practices exist across many of the cities measured. The report highlights that sharing of local good practices among the cities can help improve the overall business climate.

Trading in seal products from hunts hitherto conducted to protect fishing stocks will be banned in the EU in future but the exemption for the trade in products derived from seal hunts carried out by the Inuit community will remain, under the preliminary deal struck by internal market MEPs and the Latvian Presidency of the Council on Thursday.

A new World Bank report documents the widespread practice of avoiding import duties by firms with privileged connections to the regime of former Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. By underreporting the price of imports, Political Connections and Tariff Evasion: Evidence from Tunisia calculates that between 2002 and 2009, these connected firms managed to evade at minimum an estimated US$1.2 billion in tariffs

The €315-billion “Juncker” investment plan, announced by the European Commission last November to encourage the financing of viable investments in Europe, was backed by the European Parliament in a vote on Wednesday. Parliament modified its financing structure, won a say in selecting its leadership and ensured more democratic oversight in negotiations with the Council.

The Agency for Statistics under the President of Tajikistan (TajStat) has launched a new official poverty series and methodological note using a new approach in measuring poverty, marking a significant milestone in Tajikistan’s ability to monitor and strengthen the country’s poverty reduction efforts. The new National Poverty Measurement Methodology for Tajikistan was endorsed in April 2015 by Tajikistan’s Council for Poverty and Middle Class Measurement (Poverty Council) under the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade.

MEPs vote on 24 June on the establishment of the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI), that should help implement the EU’s €315 billion plan to overcome the crisis-induced shortage of investment in the European economy. This ambitious initiative, launched by the European Commission under Jean-Claude Juncker, should entail no extra financial burden for taxpayers.