Peru

Informal employment, defined through the lack of employment-based social protection, constitutes the bulk of employment in developing countries, and entails a level of vulnerability to poverty and other risks that are borne by all who are dependent on informal work income. Results from the Key Indicators of Informality based on Individuals and their Households database (KIIbIH) show that a disproportionately large number of middle‑class informal economy workers receive remittances. Such results confirm that risk management strategies, such as migration, play a part in minimising the potential risks of informal work for middle‑class informal households who may not be eligible to social assistance. They further suggest that middle‑class informal workers may have a solvent demand for social insurance so that, if informality-robust social insurance schemes were made available to them, remittances could potentially be channelled to finance the extension of social insurance to the informal economy.

This paper explores how innovation in low and middle-income countries is enhancing their local and national responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper also analyses how innovation could further address locally relevant development challenges by mobilising resources, improving processes and catalysing collaboration. Lastly it examines how international development organisations can improve their support for local and national innovation efforts.

While COVID 19 has hit Peru particularly hard, with about 1.4 million cases as of March 2021, the pandemic further emphasised the importance of water and sanitation for health, the environment and the economy. The country is not yet on track to meet the targets of SDG 6 'Clean water and sanitation' by 2030, with 3 million Peruvians (9.2% of the population) lacking access to water services and 8.2 million Peruvians (25.2%) lacking access to sewerage services, and a large urban rural divide. In addition, between 2000 and 2020, floods affected an estimated 4.43 million people, while inadequate management of solid waste and some economic activities are amongst the causes of water pollution, leading to severe public health issues, and social conflicts. In the face of climate change and demographic growth, strengthening water governance in Peru is key for long term water security improvements. The report provides an analysis of water governance in the country and policy recommendations to: strengthen the multi sectoral approach to water; improve the use of economic instruments to protect and sustainably use water resources, its sources and related ecosystem services; and strengthen regulatory conditions to improved access to safe drinking water and sanitation in urban and rural areas.

This paper presents a stocktaking of standalone chapters in trade agreements dedicated to good regulatory practices and international regulatory co-operation. While standalone regulatory policy chapters in trade agreements remain a new development, they signal countries’ increasing interest in elevating the visibility and ambition of regulatory policy, in line with their commitments in the 2012 OECD Recommendation of the Council on Regulatory Policy and Governance and the 2005 APEC-OECD Integrated Checklist on Regulatory Reform. Still, the level of ambition of these chapters varies widely depending on the state of play of regulatory policy in trading partners. By comparing the main substantive and structural features of these chapters, this stocktaking aims to inform the development of similar chapters in future trade agreements.

The COVID-19 crisis has had a profound impact on SME access to finance. In particular, the sudden drop in revenues created acute liquidity shortages, threatening the survival of many viable businesses. The report documents an increase in demand for bank lending in the first half of 2020, and a steady supply of credit thanks to government interventions. On the other hand, other sources of finance declined, in particular early-stage equity. This paper, a special edition of Financing SMEs and Entrepreneurs, focuses on the impacts of COVID-19 on SME access to finance, along with government policy responses. It reveals that the pre-crisis financing environment was broadly favourable for SMEs and entrepreneurs, who benefited from low interest rates, loose credit standards and an increasingly diverse offer of financing instruments. It documents the unprecedented scope and scale of the policy responses undertaken by governments world-wide, and details their key characteristics, and outlines the principal issues and policy challenges for the next phases of the pandemic, such as the over-indebtedness of SMEs and the need to continue to foster a diverse range of financing instruments for SMEs.

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.