Reports

This report compiles comparable tax revenue statistics over the period 1990-2022 for 27 Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries. It provides harmonised data on the level and structure of tax revenues based on the OECD classification of taxes, thereby enabling comparison of national tax systems on a consistent basis, both across the region and with other economies globally. The report includes two special features: one examines fiscal revenues from non-renewable natural resources in the LAC region in 2022 and 2023, while the second calculates equivalent fiscal pressure in the LAC region. The publication is jointly undertaken by the OECD Centre for Tax Policy and Administration, the OECD Development Centre, the Inter-American Center of Tax Administrations (CIAT), the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (UN-ECLAC), and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

The Economic Outlook for Southeast Asia, China and India is a regular publication on regional economic growth and development in Emerging Asia – Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Viet Nam, as well as China and India. It comprises three parts: a regional economic monitor, a thematic chapter addressing a major issue facing the region, and a series of country notes. The 2024 edition discusses the region’s macroeconomic challenges such as external headwinds, impacts of El Niño and elevated levels of private debt. The thematic chapter focuses on strategies to cope with more frequent disasters. Emerging Asia is among the world’s most disaster-prone regions, and the threat of disasters, such as floods, storms, earthquakes and droughts, is increasing. The report explores how countries can reduce disaster risks and improve resilience by developing a comprehensive approach involving policy measures such as improving governance and institutional capacity, ensuring adequate budgets and broadening financing options, strengthening disaster-related education, improving land planning, investing in disaster-resilient infrastructure and disaster-related technology, improving health responses, and facilitating the role of the private sector.

In an era defined by the urgent climate crisis, unpredictable weather patterns and increasingly frequent natural disasters, ensuring infrastructure resilience to such events is paramount. This report discusses ways of enhancing government capacities to prevent, react and rebuild, thereby minimising the impact of natural disasters on infrastructure assets and operations. It identifies data, collaboration and technologies as drivers of resilience, and highlights financial resources, technical skills and regulatory frameworks as key enablers. The report presents seven actionable principles to ensure infrastructure resilience, drawing from global good practices and in-depth analyses of infrastructure projects in Colombia, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mozambique and the United States.

This report provides an overview of the impacts of climate change on infrastructure , and key policy areas to be considered to render infrastructure more resilient. It discusses advances and persisting gaps in planning and developing infrastructure across its lifecycle to build in climate resilience and how this can be fostered by place-based approach. The report explores how climate risk awareness and understanding can be strengthened and become a norm for all financing and investment decisions, through standards and financial instruments that integrate climate adaptation and resilience. It includes a spotlight on nature-based solutions and offers insights on how nature can be harnessed as a cost-effective measure to build climate resilience. The report also recognises the specific needs of developing countries as requiring global attention for economic development and through strengthened international partnerships and support. Key policy insights are provided and advocate for national and subnational policy-makers to adopt a multi-level governance approach to resilience, working with infrastructure owners and operators to support decision-making.

This paper examines the role of mobilising political will in establishing the conditions necessary for economic and social inclusion of refugees, internally displaced persons, and formerly displaced persons who achieve durable solutions such as voluntary return. It investigates the role and conditions to mobilise political will for more comprehensive and inclusive policies that can lead to long-term local development in contexts of forced displacement in low- and middle-income countries (LICs and MICs). Case studies from Bangladesh, Cameroon, Ecuador, Iraq and Lebanon illustrate the ways in which political will, or its absence, can shape the approach to supporting the forcibly displaced and hosting communities. The paper also proposes a conceptual model for mobilising political will to facilitate sustainable development support in contexts of forced displacement.

Countries in Asia and the Pacific face a heightened risk of flooding as disasters increase worldwide due to climate change. Yet these countries often lack the infrastructure necessary to prepare for and respond to floods effectively. When flood protection measures exist, they generally rely only on grey, hard-engineered infrastructure, which has been increasingly challenged in recent years. Nature-based solutions (NbS) offer a new approach for flood management, with several co-benefits beyond the reduction of risks. This approach has gained recognition from policy makers in the region, but they are confronted with a number of challenges, including the lack of a clear, common definition and guidelines, as well as financing issues. The growing imperatives of climate adaptation call for complementary, innovative and forward-looking solutions, such as a combined approach incorporating both NbS and grey infrastructure.

What are the structural barriers to women's empowerment and inclusive development in Southeast Asia? Building on data from the fifth edition of the SIGI, the SIGI 2024 Regional Report for Southeast Asia: Time to Care provides new evidence-based analysis on the progress and setbacks in eliminating the root causes of gender inequality in 11 countries of the region. It underscores how multiple personal status laws perpetuate gender-based legal discrimination. The analysis also shows that social norms governing gender roles and responsibilities worsened between 2014 and 2022, particularly affecting women’s educational and economic rights. The report explores a critical policy area for the region, the care economy. Stressing the gendered, informal, and unpaid dimensions of care, it draws on social, demographic, educational and economic evidence to forecast a growing demand for care services in Southeast Asian countries. The report advocates for the strategic development of formal care systems as a unique opportunity to accelerate women's economic empowerment, build inclusive societies and strengthen the region's resilience to external shocks – including those induced by climate change. To dismantle the barriers that prevent the emergence and expansion of such a formal care economy, it provides concrete recommendations to policy makers and other stakeholders.

Over 100 million workers in Southeast Asia have jobs that are directly or closely linked to the environment, making them vulnerable to climate change impacts. These same workers likely earn at least 20% lower than the national average and are largely in informal employment. The region’s necessary transition towards greener growth could affect them in several ways: some sectors will create jobs and others will lose jobs or disappear altogether. Understanding the effects of both climate change and green growth policies on jobs and people is thus essential for making the transition in Southeast Asia an inclusive one. The study explores these issues, with emphasis on the potential effects on labour of an energy transition in Indonesia, and of a transition in the region’s agricultural sector, illustrated by a simulated conversion from conventional to organic rice farming.

As climate change increases exposure to natural disasters, countries need new solutions to mitigate risks of natural hazards. For many in Asia and the Pacific, mobilising existing resources is not enough: they need to consider a grand design of disaster risk financing strategies. Catastrophe bonds (CAT bonds) can be an effective, market-based financing tool for the region. While the global CAT bond market has grown steadily since the 1990s, it remains weakly developed in Asia and the Pacific. Its successful development there requires robust purpose-built legal frameworks; developed general bond markets, especially in local currency; appropriate capacity building; and data-driven pricing models. This report explores each of these conditions along with policy suggestions for fostering them, and discusses the development of multi-country CAT bonds in Asia and the Pacific.

This report adds two perspectives on informality. First, it disassembles the mechanics of the deleterious links between informal employment, low-paying work and low skills. It shows that informal employment is highly persistent, and that the vulnerability of informal workers is passed on to their children in the absence of adequate education, skills and social protection policy. Second, the report underscores the double burden of informality and low-paying work that a large share of workers in developing and emerging economies carry, and as such calls for policy solutions that go beyond the formalisation agenda and embrace the goal of social justice.