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Peter Dirou, PSDI’s Financing Growth Team Leader, was keynote speaker at a high-level, private sector development roundtable in Timor-Leste on May 27. The meeting sought to deepen dialogue between the Timor-Leste Government and the private sector to identify, and address, challenges to market-based growth. It was welcomed by PSDI, which recommends such an initiative in its soon-to-be-published Timor-Leste private sector assessment, ‘Growing the Non-Oil Economy’. Peter 1 for web PSDI Financing Growth...
SOEs continue to play an important role in many Pacific island countries. Many absorb large amounts of scarce capital on which they provide very low returns. While some provide essential public services, many others operate as purely commercial ventures and crowd out the private sector. Reforming SOEs and implementing public-private partnerships (PPPs) creates opportunities for private investment, reduces the costs of doing business and improves basic services by introducing private sector discipline...
Under-investment in women, who represent 40% of the world’s labour force but hold just 1% of its wealth, is now widely recognized as an opportunity cost for economic growth and business performance. Women in the Pacific are an enormous potential economic resource who have the capacity to greatly enhance prosperity. Gender equality is recognised as one of the drivers of change in ADB’s Strategy 2020. Since PSDI’s inception in 2007, gender...
“Competition policy” encompasses the range of policies, laws, regulations, decisions, and government actions that aim to promote competitive behavior between business undertakings and rationally address any circumstances in which competition might not be efficient or might conflict with other important social objectives. As such, competition policy forms an important part of national economic policy. Competition policy is an increasingly important theme in PSDI and is now a focus area for activity...
The Solomon Islands is leading the Pacific region in its successful reform of state-owned enterprises (SOEs), according to a PSDI report presented in Honiara today. The report, Finding Balance 2014: Benchmarking the Performance of State Owned Enterprises in Island Countries[http://bit.ly/1tbIY0V], shows that in the last 5 years the Government of the Solomon Islands has overseen a 21% turnaround in return on equity from SOEs, turning an average loss of 11% between 2002-2009 into...
PSDI is deepening its re-engagement with Fiji, partnering with the government to improve access to credit and to secure a stronger financial sector through secured transactions reform. Following meetings in January with Fiji’s Attorney-General and Minister for Finance Mr. Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, PSDI will assist the new Secured Transactions Reform Taskforce which held its inaugural meeting here today. The taskforce, which PSDI will assist, brings together representatives from banks, credit unions, microfinance...