Reports

The sale of publicly-owned oil, gas and minerals can have a significant impact on the development trajectory of resource-rich developing and emerging economies due to the large volume of commodities sold and the amount of money involved. Therefore, getting the buyer selection process right is a crucial step to prevent potential public revenue losses that can arise through sub-optimal allocation and corruption. This Guidance is intended to strengthen state-owned enterprises (SOEs)’ capacity to market commodities and optimise the value of resources sold. It explains how SOEs can set up transparent and competitive buyer selection procedures that reduce discretion, close opportunities for favouritism and corruption, ultimately leading to increased revenues for improved development outcomes. Based on the review of existing selection and procurement processes, the Guidance provides recommendations for countering key corruption challenges at each step of the buyer selection process, and identifies examples of best practices. This Guidance complements the work of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) on recommended disclosures of buyer selection procedures by SOEs.

This study examines reforms to civil service pension arrangements in a number of developing countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America. These arrangements are a significant component of public-sector remuneration in many developing countries and they can carry substantial risks, not only financial but also political and social. This study takes a long-term and systemic approach to civil service pensions, charting their evolution as part of a country’s social protection provision and with reference to public-sector remuneration as well as broader institutional developments. It demonstrates the short- and long-term costs of these arrangements against spending on other social protection interventions, notably poverty-targeted social assistance. Through a series of case studies, it examines the motivation behind countries’ decision to reform their civil service schemes, as well as the challenges they faced when undertaking these reforms and their overall impact. The study is intended to support countries planning to reform their civil service pension schemes by identifying key principles and specific policies they might consider in this process; it can also support governments not planning such reforms to better understand the financial dynamics of their civil service schemes.

This paper studies the potential drivers of governments’ approval rates in 18 Latin American countries using Internet search query data from Google Trends and traditional data sources. It employs monthly panel data between January 2006 and December 2015. The analysis tests several specifications including traditional explanatory variables of governments’ approval rates – i.e. inflation, unemployment rate, GDP growth, output gap – and subjective explanatory variables – e.g. perception of corruption and insecurity. For the latter, it uses Internet search query data to proxy citizens’ main social concerns, which are expected to drive governments’ approval rates. The results show that the perception of corruption and insecurity, and complaints about public services have a statistically significant association with governments’ approval rates. This paper also discusses the potential of Internet search query data as a tool for policy makers to understand better citizens’ perceptions, since it provides highly anonymous and high-frequency series in real-time.

Since 2009, the OECD Development Centre has been publishing the Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI), a cross-country measure of gender-based discrimination in social institutions (formal and informal laws, social norms and practices). This working paper presents the conceptual and methodological framework of the fourth edition of the SIGI, published in 2019. The SIGI 2019 methodology establishes a criterion for the computation of measures of gender-based discrimination –where zero denotes no discrimination and 100 denotes full discrimination – for 27 categorical and continuous variables combined into 16 indicators and 4 dimensions: discrimination in the family, restricted physical integrity, restricted access to productive and financial resources, and restricted civil liberties. The SIGI 2019 is then calculated as a translation-invariant generalised mean of these discrimination measures. The result is an indicator that measures aggregate level of discrimination in the social institutions of 180 countries and territories.

Water-related infrastructure could contribute significantly to the development of the Mekong region. At the same time, poor water infrastructure could lead to development challenges for the countries in the region. Innovation for Water Infrastructure Development in the Mekong Region discusses the challenges facing the region as well as the possible innovative policy options, including those used in Emerging Asian countries, and with reference to the experiences of OECD member countries. It provides analysis and recommendations for the region’s policy makers to consider in their efforts to improve water infrastructure. The report first provides an overview of the socio-economic contributions and environmental challenges of the Mekong River. It then presents some potential new financing options for the development of water infrastructure, using digital tools such as Fintech and blockchain. It also examines the potential of using the spillover effect of tax revenues to attract private finance. It then goes on to discuss the importance of strengthening water infrastructure resilience against natural disasters, including the current COVID-19 pandemic, and finally analyses the challenges of water regulations in the Mekong region.

The Dominican Republic, though the fastest-growing economy in Latin America and the Caribbean since 2010, cannot afford complacency. The COVID-19 crisis may accelerate existing global trends that created the need for reforms addressing structural weaknesses that lurked beneath the surface well before the pandemic. The current situation demands an unpreceded policy effort to ensure a prompt and effective health response, and to guarantee short-term support for workers and firms. The enduring challenge will be updating the country’s development model through targeted reforms. The Production Transformation Policy Review (PTPR) of the Dominican Republic identifies priority reforms to update the national strategy, with perspectives on agro-food and nearshoring. It benefitted from peer review from the United States Reshoring Institute and the Ministry of Agriculture of Brazil.

Revenue Statistics in Asian and Pacific Economies is jointly produced by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)’s Centre for Tax Policy and Administration (CTP) and the OECD Development Centre (DEV) with the co-operation of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Pacific Island Tax Administrators Association (PITAA), and the Pacific Community (SPC) and the financial support from the governments of Ireland, Japan, Luxembourg, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom. This edition includes a special feature on the tax policy and administration responses to COVID-19 in Asian and Pacific Economies. It compiles comparable tax revenue statistics for Australia, Bhutan, People’s Republic of China, Cook Islands, Fiji, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Korea, Malaysia, Mongolia, Nauru, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Samoa, Singapore, Solomon Islands, Thailand, Tokelau and Vanuatu ; and comparable non-tax revenue statistics for Bhutan, the Cook Islands, Fiji, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Nauru, Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Thailand, Tokelau and Vanuatu. The model is the OECD Revenue Statistics database which is a fundamental reference, backed by a well-established methodology, for OECD member countries. Extending the OECD methodology to Asian and Pacific economies enables comparisons about tax levels and tax structures on a consistent basis, both among Asian and Pacific economies and with OECD, Latin American and Caribbean and African averages.

Gender equality and women’s empowerment can only be achieved if countries take action to tackle and eliminate discrimination in their legal frameworks, social norms and practices. The SIGI 2020 Regional Report for Latin America and the Caribbean provides new evidence-based analysis on the setbacks and progress in achieving gender equality between 2014 and 2019. The report uncovers discrimination in social institutions faced by Latin American and Caribbean women in various dimensions; within the family and household context, in relation to physical integrity and access to productive and financial resources, as well within the political and civil spheres. It also explores various development perspectives such as the cost of discriminatory social institutions for Latin American and Caribbean countries and the socio-economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic for women and girls. Building on the regional and sub-regional analysis of how discriminatory social institutions continue to hinder efforts toward SDG 5, the report provides a set of policy recommendations to reshape gender norms, promote women’s empowerment and build a truly inclusive society.