“Reducing corruption stands at the heart of the recently established Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).” The World Bank made this statement in its November 2016 brief on anti-corruption, and the concept doesn’t necessarily come as a surprise. Corruption, inefficiency, and lack of transparency often hurt vulnerable groups the most, putting up barriers and distorting access to…
Modern secured transaction laws increase the availability of credit and reduce its cost, by ensuring that lenders can collect debt and enforce their rights in movable property collateral through a timely and inexpensive process. From a global perspective, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is significantly behind in pursuing and operationalizing reforms to…
From June 2008 to August 2013, the principal objective of the USAID West Bank/Gaza Trade Facilitation Project was to facilitate the flow of goods and people in a manner that satisfied the principles and benchmarks of the 2005 Agreement on Movement and Access. At the start of the project, TFP focused on three key components,…
Anne Spahr is the chief of party of the USAID-funded Asia and Middle East Economic Growth (AMEG) Best Practices Project. She is a micro, small, and medium enterprise (MSME) finance and business development specialist with more than 10 years of experience working with farmers, fishers, and small business owners in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and…
The Sustainable Development Goals established an agenda for transforming the world in which we live. SDG1 sets for the ultimate objective for the global community: to end poverty in all of its forms by 2030. The remaining 16 SDGs identify critically interlinked objectives which are both necessary and sufficient to achieve this objective. They clearly…
The Moldova Business Regulatory, Investment, and Trade Environment (BRITE) program was funded by USAID/Moldova and implemented by Chemonics International in partnership with United States-based small business European Integration Forum. BRITE’s principal task was to demonstrate to Moldovan policymakers that reforms would yield large-scale financial returns in the short and long run, following the theory of…
You’ve said that you believe public financial management is the foundation of sustainable development in southeastern European countries. How does this belief translate into the work you’re doing on AKT? I am fully confident that in any part of the globe, including southeast Europe, public financial management is the basis for sustainable development. I apply…
Melissa Scudo is the team leader for the Tunisia Tax and Customs Reform Activity (TCP)—a two-year initiative to help the government of Tunisia bolster economic growth through tax and customs reform. TCP is part of Chemonics’ Asia and Middle East Economic Growth Best Practices (AMEG) project. Regional turmoil makes this a challenging time to implement…
The International Consortium on Governmental Financial Management (ICGFM) is convening this week in Miami, Florida, with the shared interest of improving public financial management in their respective countries. To kick off the conference, Lead Financial Management Specialist Svetlana Klimenko from the World Bank highlighted the importance of public financial management within the larger context of…