World Bank [to 5 April 2014]
http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/all

April 4, 2014
Savings of $44 billion: Impacts of the global target of a reduction of remittances cost through effective interventions at the global, country and municipality levels
Challenge -Forcing migrant workers to pay as much as $50 to send $200 is wrong, especially when they are sending salaries they have earned in the hope of supporting their families back home. $200 often is a very significant sum for migrants’ family income. There was little price transparency and no global effort to address this problem until the World Bank helped form a coalition to monitor the process and create a “one-stop shop” information system to help remittance-senders compare services and costs. The high cost of transferring remittances internationally has typically been caused by a combination of obstacles in each local market, both in sending and receiving countries, including a lack of transparency and consumer protection, legal and regulatory obstacles, a lack of payment system infrastructures and access to payment systems, a weak market environment without a proper competition, and weak risk-management and governance practices. These problems were discussed as the World Bank…

April 4, 2014
Innovations to Finance a Sustainable Urban Future
As cities grow, the effect of urban sprawl on pollution, poverty, and shared prosperity is an increasing concern, underscoring the need for long-term planning to ensure urban areas are low-carbon and livable, inclusive, competitive, and resilient in the face of climate change, disasters, and other shocks. How to finance these vast needs in a rapidly urbanizing world will be discussed this week at the World Urban Forum in Medellin, Colombia. If managed well, urbanization has tremendous potential to accelerate poverty reduction and advance many development goals. Financing that growth is a challenge. Over $1 trillion a year is necessary to bridge the infrastructure gap between what is needed and what is being built in developing countries, and that figure is higher for low-carbon infrastructure. Official development assistance (ODA) stands at about $125 billion today, and financing options through municipal governments’ revenues, debt, or national government transfers are not enough…

April 3, 2014
New Funding to Help Poor Countries Manage Debt
BRUSSELS, April 3, 2014 – A successful multi-donor trust fund launched a new phase today with commitments from donors for close to US$20 million. The Debt Management Facility II (DMF II) program builds on previous success in debt-management advisory work and marks the beginning of a new partnership between the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The partnership will be dedicated to strengthening the capacity of developing countries to manage their debt in a manner that is sustainable and encourages economic development. The facility expects to raise $40 million, and the new pot of money will extend the work of the first DMF, a US$22 million trust fund that the World Bank launched in November 2008.The initiative was born out of a recognition that low-income countries graduating from debt-relief programs, such as the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC), might continue to struggle. There was a worry that they might fall into a vicious cycle of debt and assistance..