Confronting “Death on Wheels”: Making Roads Safe in Europe and Central Asia

This World Bank report is focused on how to improve road safety in the CIS and other developing regions. It is essentially a reminder for a 2004 report by a similar title that came to the conclusion that more funding was needed to improve infrastructure and vehicle and operator regulations. The following posts on this will be the usual chapter breakdowns that have been done for prior reports:

Chapter 1: Introduction

- Transportation sector is highly impacted by spending and decisions of most of the other sectors, especially in terms of planning and zoning.

- Road and noise pollution are serious environmental impacts and contribute to the high external cost of car transportation.

- Road Traffic Injuries (RTI)’s are defined in the report as any death occurring due to a traffic incident within 30 days. There is an increasing risk for RTI’s in developing nations due to a lack of regulation and continual funding infrastructure capacity/maintenance.

- Road safety should be an integral piece in transportation policy, which also includes pedestrian alternatives to car transportation.

- “The Commission for Global Road Safety (200) also notes that while the primary rationale for investing more than US$4 billion each year in road infrastructure is to improve road transport efficiency to spur economic growth, the risk and magnitude of increased societal costs associated with rising RTIs is often overlooked”

- This report was primarily written for an internal audience and to raise awareness of how other sectors can influence transportation.

report link

Thoughts on // Aid for Trade: Making it Effective.

Some of the points that are made are completely valid. The global oversight mechanism seems good in theory, but adding too much oversight can also be a burned. I definitely take some issues with the statement that government and policy reforms are more critical than infrastructure. While trade issues are usually policy based there are huge and costly problems in terms of infrastructure development and maintenance. It’s irrelevant if you don’t have tariffs on coconuts if you can’t get them to market to sell.

Overall the report and methodology seems concise and clear and points to a way forward for developing nations to come into the folds of the multilateral trade and aid system. Hopefully the global review mechanism will be incorporated to some extent since I think that is the most valuable aspect of the report.

Full Report Here

Aid for Trade: Making it Effective //Chapter 7: An Effective Aid for Trade Partnership: Local Accountability and Global Review

- Local accountability is key, and policy and government changes are the best use of financial resources.

- Multinational groups are better at raising money than distributing it.
The global review mechanism is vital in order to provide adequate oversight.

Chapter 7

Aid for Trade: Making it Effective // Chapter 6: Priorities for Improvement

- Three priorities, according to the authors: “(1) establishing a national dialogue to formulate and implement trade policy; (2) mainstreaming trade policy into national economic development and external assistance strategies; and, (3) aligning aid for trade with aid effectiveness principles.”

- Reform is more important than infrastructure in order to integrate into the international trade system.

Chapter 6

Aid for Trade: Making it Effective // Chapter 5: When is Aid Effective?

- “This chapter discusses key theoretical insights on how to ensure that aid can indeed lift the productivity and export competitiveness of recipient countries”.

- Market failures may actually be government and policy failures. Underinvestment in administration oversight and infrastructure can produce market failures.

- Few donors use local institutions and country systems for their programs, this can cause issues and is usually due to under developed local capacities and resources.

Chapter 5

Aid for Trade: Making it Effective // Chapter 4: The Global Aid Context: The Challenges of Scaling-Up

- The challenges of scaling-up include: “(1) maintaining a stable macroeconomic framework…[and] (2) improving public financial management while facing increasing disincentives to mobilize domestic resources”.

- LDC’s need to have a plan to absorb the probably increases in aid and aid for trade flows.

- Good development practices and plans are essentially to a healthy absorption.

- Human capital and infrastructure bottlenecks should be addressed early in order to enhance the absorption and increase scaling-up.

- Dutch Disease Effect happens when ”the expected scaling up of aid has renewed concerns about the potential of aid flows to create a real appreciation of the aid recipients currency and thereby dampen the export competitiveness of a country”

Chapter 4

Aid for Trade: Making it Effective // Chapter 3: Donor Support

- “This chapter provides some more detailed trends in bilateral and multilateral donor support to the different categories of the aid for trade agenda, i.e. TRTA/CB and supple-side constraints (infrastructure and building productive capacity). “

- Support for TRTA/CB has decreased USD 200 million.

- Trade Policy and Regulations increased about USD 50 million. Trade development funding increased from USD 240 million to about USD 1.8 billion. Donor contributions to other multilateral funds and programs increased 70% from 2001 to 2003 but remained stable FY 2003 to 2004.

- Funding for trade related infrastructure has been on the rise, mostly due to some large reconstruction programs in the Middle East.

- Aid for trade (except in the case of infrastructure) requires less financing by grants than education and health projects.

Chapter 3

Aid for Trade: Making it Effective // Chapter 2: The Scope of the Aid for Trade Agenda

- This chapter deals with Traditionally Trade Related Technical Assistance and Capacity Building (TRTA/CB) as it relates to developing trade and economic growth.

- Two categories are made to classify the activities: trade policy and regulations and trade development.

- Adjustment is (as always) a sore point, especially when adjustment costs are tied up in TRTA/CB and infrastructure.

- This paper limits the data to “only ODA targeted towards trade related technical assistance and capacity building, economic infrastructure and building productive capacity”.

Chapter 2

Aid for Trade: Making it Effective // Chapter 1: The Origins

Main Points from Chapter 1

Uruguay Round was groundbreaking for multilateral trade system for developing nations.

Many policies and agreements have been made by the WTO and between other member states

Aid for Trade should not be a substitute for the benefits that the conclusion of the Doha Development Rounds

Report: Aid for Trade: Making it Effective

The Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development released this 90 page report on Aid For Trade. After looking for more information on the Doha Development Rounds (DDR) I came across this study. “Aid for Trade: Making it Effective” is available in a PDF through google books as well as any online book retailer.

Some background on Doha and the report:
The Doha Rounds started in 2001 with the WTO trying to place more interest and money into pulling developing nations into the multilateral trading system. Issues in human resources, institutions, and supply-side capacity needs became part of the rounds, and in 2005, the Hong Kong WTO Ministerial Declaration created a task force to help make Aid for Trade a more interactive policy. The WTO asked the OECD to help with the task force and to grapple with three issues:

1.How much do donors already provide in support of trade
2.How effective are these programs
3.How to make Aid for Trade an effective tool for helping developing nations (specifically LDC) to fully benefit from trade liberalization and WTO agreements

Executive Summary Recap:“This paper argues that most of the activities necessary to address adjustment…are already included in the three categories proposed other adjustment-related expenditure such as social safety nets, balance of payments support or compensation for potential costs from multilateral liberalization... Rather, it notes that international financial institutions, such as the World Bank and the IMP have been supporting developing countries’ adjustment effects from a host of factors…and will continue to do so…In this regard, countries experiencing…severe preference erosion may require special attention.”
There’s been a significant amount of money invested in related programs, but building trade systems takes time and is country specific. This report seems to also advocate for local ownership as well as a way to review government effectiveness. The author comes up with a good graph of this (figure 3) which shows how local accountability pacts and the creation of a Global Review Mechanism would serve to help with oversight.

Policy: Closure of the Doha Rounds?

The Doha Development Round is potentially coming to a close with a new working paper “Conclude Doha, It Matters!” . Most of Doha deals with trade regulations and tariffs, but it touched a little on infrastructure too.

“According to the working paper, developing countries will benefit from a Doha deal as a result of reductions in high “peak” tariffs that constrain their exports. They also have much to gain from actions to reduce the costs of moving goods through borders and from taking advantage of the Aid for Trade initiative, which seeks to improve infrastructure, trade institutions and policies to help countries to exploit trade opportunities.” WB Press Release

The Aid for Trade initiative basically promotes policy and financial incentives for improving means for trade (which includes infrastructure). “Conclude Doha” is also a continuation of the World Bank’s series on the global economic crisis and looks to trade and the WTO in order to alleviate some of the pressure. It lobbies hard for multilateral trade agreements, calling regional trade organizations (think the EU) as “imperfect solutions”.

This working paper is pretty interesting and makes some good arguments for trade liberalization and multilateral relationships. The closure of the Doha Round will become more likely as the impacts of the global economic uncertainty come into play.

Turmoil at Twenty: Part 3

Part 3 of the series culling through the Turmoil at Twenty bank report. Here are the main points, well mostly. This is dense, there's a lot of graphs and numbers, and I probably should have had another cup of coffee before reading this.

How Much Adjustment? How Much Financing?
Two main issues in financially less stable ECA nations: external debt is maturing and new money to finance current deficits may not happen.

- High inflation and other adjustments are happening
- Decrease in imports from western Europe and the US coupled with credit tightening are increasing the problem
- Sharp decline in the price of oil impacting Russia and Kazakhstan
- This chapter compares the current crisis with the one in the mid to late 90’s when there was a considerable about of finance and adjusting going on.
- Middle and lower income nations have less budget fluctuation due to financing being for direct official sources and not FDI, however poverty is increasing and other humanitarian issues are becoming more prevalent.
- There’s a lot of info about bank and parent-host relationships between donating countries and recipient countries. As always, not all type of aid is considered equal.

News: World Bank and Road Safety

Straight from the report:

WASHINGTON, November 11, 2009 – Seven Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) today issued a joint statement outlining a broad package of measures that each would implement in order to reduce an anticipated and alarming rise in the number of road fatalities and casualties in developing countries.

The participating MDBs are the African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, European Investment Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, Islamic Development Bank, and the World Bank.

The MDBs said the joint initiatives are important steps in a growing program of work they will undertake as international development partners.

The measures to be carried out fall into four broad categories:
· Strengthening road safety management capacity;
· Implementing safety approaches in the planning, design, construction, operation, and maintenance of road infrastructure projects;
· Improving safety performance measures; and
· Mobilizing more and new resources for road safety.

Read the Full Report and Info Here

NEWS: Op-Ed from NYT Pushes for Alternative Road Uses

One of the Op-Ed's out of the New York Times this morning, Revolutionary Road is basically advocating for making the roads serve a different use. I actually have a couple of huge issues with her suggestions.

"The most obvious use for the Interstate’s corridors is rail transportation. If we are going to spend billions rehabbing the highways, shouldn’t we, at the same time, invest in adjacent rail lines like the 800-mile high-speed rail system voters approved last year in California"

> The author clearly doesn't realize that building adjacent rail is expensive due to having to procure right of way. Living in LA, a lot of residential properties back up to the freeway, so essentially you're going to be dislocating families to build? The other option is building the rail into the existing right of way. Also problematic for transit-planning reasons. Some have suggested to build a lightrail in between the north-south/east-west bound lanes in the center. Maybe plausible, but excess right of way is still going to be needed for the pedestrian connections necessary for getting over the freeway. Probably through someone's backyard.

"The corridors are also perfectly suited for the transportation of energy. Power generated from rural wind farms and solar plants could run through lines buried under the highways to big cities where electricity is needed. The plug-in hybrid vehicles that will someday use the highways could charge up from this grid. And when left idling, these cars would also be able to supply power back to the grid at times of peak demand, while their owners work or shop by the roadside. "

> Wait. What? I can't tell if Jacobs wants to repave the freeways with a magical solar surface that would allow for the cards to supply power back to the grid and self-charge or if she wants to burry the lines and repave the freeway. Putting utilities under roads is not a new idea and is currently how water/sewer/gas lines are hooked up. Exisiting use. Try again.

The realities of infrastructure developement are challenging and complex. They do encourage sprawl (growth) but ultimately it is up to zoning codes and cities to control how much sprawl they have. A freeway will encourage development outside a major city, but it does not dictate whether there will be single family homes or mixed use projects.

What a disappointing article.

IEG Report: Annual Review of Development Effectiveness, Part II

Part II: Achieving Sustainable Development

This is the second part of the IEG: Annual Review of Development Effectiveness for the World Bank. Here are the main points from the report, which is focused on sustainable development in the second half:

- The World Bank ahs a critical role to play in assisting nations in addressing environmental challenges and promoting sustainable practices.

- Sustainable development, poverty reduction, and economic growth are not mutually exclusive.

-The World Bank has evolved over the years with how they handle environmental issues, but need to do more promoting sustainable development for poverty reduction.

- Environmental issues are also quality of life issues

- The process of “mainstreaming” environmental sustainability for development projects and projects in other sectors is not as good as hoped, it is up to The Bank to lead the way and encourage better/smarter practices.

- Most of the funding for sustainable development is going into Africa.

- Bank awareness of biodiversity and other environmental issues is pretty good, and there’s been a large increase in funding for these types of projects in the last decade.

- Global and international environmental policies and sustainable development practices need to be developed.

I see the validity in encouraging sustainable development. On a note outside the report, I do want to point out that building roads isn’t necessarily an unsustainable practice. There has been a large push to mass transit in the west as an effective way of moving people, but in many emerging economies pollution issues have more to do with industry and factories than building roads. Steel for rail has to come from some rendering process, and even solar panels require a lot of chemicals. No one really considers what to do with unused sustainable energy products since that hasn’t become an issue yet, but what’s going to happen when the solar panels in the farms need to be replaced? Can they be reused or are we creating waste that is more difficult to deal with? Roads require maintenance, but so does all types of infrastructure. Traffic impacts and pollution from cars is another regulatory mechanism completely.

News: Fall of the Berlin Wall

There is a lot of coverage happening stateside about the fall of the Berlin wall. The New York Times has quite a few articles on this, and the more interesting one is how the meaning of the fall is still contested.

While 1989 was a very important year, a lot of changes are still taking place. Some argue that it's the beginning of the end of the Cold War, and others point to the policy changes and political actions in 1990 and 1991. Regardless, Germany was once half a country in transition and the East still partially is.

Although this isn't directly CIS related, the question begs to be asked: Would the transition states of the CIS have done better in the last 20 years if they were truely able to depend on an more democratic and economically stable second half? Since this isn't the reality it's hard to say, but I can only imagine that the economic reforms that the World Bank has done (they claim it's successful) would have taken quicker and been more effective if there was some local understanding and knowledge in that field.

At any rate the wall fell, Germany reunited, and the dissolution of the USSR would take place in the years to follow.

World Bank: Turmoil at Twenty Part II

So since the introduction was actually covered in the post prior, I'm going to sum up chapter one of the Turmoil at Twenty report.

There's a lot of data and it mostly points to restructuring being the cause of development. This is the most interesting graph out of the chapter:

World Bank Report: Turmoil at Twenty

For those who don’t have time to slog through 276 pages of World Bank Reports, here are the main points from the introduction of the report:

> The nature of the transitional economy made the impacts of the current financial crisis more severe due to not as strong financial policy and banking oversight. Avoiding a humanitarian crisis is critical.

>Utility infrastructure is important, but only if it’s going to be open to private enterprise and make revenues to attract foreign investment.

>The high growth (up to 7%) in the last decade has created capacity constraints in terms of an educated work force and infrastructure.

>The economy will recover and development will surpass where it was in about 20 years.

While the World Bank is talking mostly about electricity infrastructure the reality is that electricity is only good if you have other public goods as well. Water, electricity, telecommunication, and transportation infrastructure are all important to development. The reason electricity is coming up (and sometimes natural gas) is because there is a potential for foreign direct investment and a potential for profit. It’s probably a good time for a large utility company to come in and buy the land or surface easements for their future power lines. But it’s harder to plan for utilities when you don’t have enough transportation infrastructure to facilitate centralized development along the corridors.

IEG: Annual Review of Development Effectiveness Part 1 Review

Some interesting things from Part I of the IEG Report:

>New data standards and an associated website should be coming soon in order to help ensure that data associated with development is measured the same way in all countries. The Bank is a co chair on the PARIS 21 (Partnership in Statistics for Development in the 21st Century) and the Development Assistance Committee of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is the agency releasing a web-based tool for standardization of measurements.

>A large portion of this report deals with the gathering of base-line data for both development measures and environmental impacts. In Agriculture, Europe and Central Asia had base-line data for 71% of their projects, East Asia and the Pacific had 80% and the Middle East and North Africa had 50%. If there weren’t base-lines established before development, they are establishing them now with new projects. This is good news for those trying to examine trends in data.

>Finished projects are usually rated lower than projects at midpoint. This is likely because (according to the report) bad information is revealed toward the end of projects.

>IEG Report suggest continued resources be put into monitoring and evaluation of projects to ensure their success.

>There has been a decline in cost-benefit analysis/economic rate of return reporting for projects that are in the feasibility study stage and are later approved. Some areas (like the CIS) tend to have these studies done more than other areas and that’s likely because there other agencies and investors involved. Especially with energy and water infrastructure, most companies are going to run the financial analysis before committing to work with The Bank.

Full Report Here

NEWS: IDA Funds for Roads in Kyrgz Republic

"WASHINGTON, November 3, 2009 - The World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors today approved the following project:

Kyrgyz Republic: National Road Rehabilitation Project

IDA Credit: US$13.75 million equivalent
Terms: Maturity = 40 years; Grace Period = 10 years
IDA Grant: US$11.25 million equivalent
Project ID: P107608

Project Description: The National Road Rehabilitation (Osh-Isfana) Project for the Kyrgyz Republic aims to contribute to the reduction of transport costs and travel time along the Osh-Batken-Isfana road corridor; and to improve road safety planning. There are three components to the project: 1) rehabilitation of a section of the Osh-Batken-Isfana road corridor; 2) road safety planning improvement; and 3) project management and implementation."
More Information/Source

Finally a new project! This is part of the National Road Rehabilitation Project and is supposed to build approximately 30 km of new roads in addition to fixing some other ones. It's also expected to provide a positive impact for 18% of the population. The report documents associated with the project explain that 60% of the roads are gravel or unpaved which is a large problem for the effectiveness and upkeep of transportation infrastructure.

Coding Guide Part I

Formulas will be provided in Part II, but for now here is the google document link to the coding: CIS Infrastructure Coding Guide

World Bank: ECA 20 Years After the Fall of the Berlin Wall

Lots of publications coming out of the World Bank this week on ECA (Europe and Central Asia) which includes memberstates of the CIS too. The summary of the report on 20 years after the fall is linked here.

It looks like a pretty mixed bag of successes and failures, but transportation infrastrucre seems to have improved. In general, World Bank project ratings have improved. These ratings are from the report linked earlier today from the IEG.

Here's an interesting footnote though on how countries are classified:

The International Monetary Fund’s World Economic Outlook (October 2009) projects GDP in Centraland Eastern Europe and in the Commonwealth of Independent States (the former Soviet Union excluding the Baltic States) to contract by 5 percent and 6.7 percent, respectively, in 2009. In this book, Central and Eastern Europe comprises Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, FYR Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania,
Serbia, the Slovak Republic and Slovenia. Turkey is part of the World Bank’s ECA region but is not a transition country; thus, it is added selectively to the discussion. The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) includes Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Moldova,
the Russian Federation, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. Georgia is not part of the CIS but is included in the group because its economy shares many features of the other countries.

Looks like I'll have to add the IMF's outlook from last month to my reading list.

World Bank Performance Review 2009

The Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) just came out with the 2009 report for World Bank project performance. Here's some info on the IEG from the introduction of the report:

"The Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) is an independent, three-part unit within the World Bank Group. IEG-World Bank is charged with evaluating the activities of the IBRD (The World Bank) and IDA, IEG-IFC focuses on assessment of IFC’s work toward private sector development, and IEG-MIGA evaluates the contributions of MIGA
guarantee projects and services. IEG reports directly to the Bank’s Board of Directors through the Director-General, Evaluation."

Once I get through this 179 page report I'll be writing about it. For now, here is the direct link to the full report