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In this report, the authors investigate state-owned enterprise (SOE) listings as a solution to promote local capital markets development. Thus, SOE listings can offer governments an enormous opportunity to kick-start the development of their local capital markets while achieving other divestment objectives, such as harnessing the SOE's value and raising fiscal revenue. In this report, the authors aim to shed light on this question by investigating emerging and developing economies (EMDE's) experience with SOE listings over the past 30 years. The authors combine a thorough literature review with a case study analysis of 14 frontier and emerging markets, including interviews with key stakeholders from the public and private sector. In particular, the authors aim to answer the following three questions: (1) what has been the impact of SOE listings on local capital markets development in EMDEs?; (2) what have been the pre-conditions to successfully list a SOE?; and (3) once listed, what have been the drivers for creating a positive impact on capital markets development? Because listings have significant effects on the broader economy and potentially harness the value of SOEs in a different way, this report also attempts to evaluate the impact of SOE listings on other key economic variables - in particular firm performance, the quality of public service delivery, employment, wealth distribution, and fiscal revenue. The sole objective is to provide policymakers with sufficient information to make an educated decision on whether or not SOE listings are a suitable solution for their respective country.

Capital Markets --- Capital Markets and Capital Flows --- Emerging Markets --- Finance and Financial Sector Development --- Private Sector Development --- Public Sector Development --- State-Owned Enterprises

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Low- and middle-income country governments are increasingly tapping the global debt capital markets. This is increasing the amount of finance available for development, but at a considerably higher cost than traditional external borrowing on concessional terms. Using a novel methodology based on estimating sovereign credit ratings using the Moody's scorecard, and examining the associations between these ratings and the World Bank's Country Policy and Institutional Assessment scores, this paper examines how making improvements in the quality of economic policies and institutions can help lower governments' financing costs. This method aims to overcome the small-sample problem due to the number of rated developing country sovereigns still being relatively limited (although growing). Better economic governance Country Policy and Institutional Assessment scores are associated with better estimated ratings and materially lower financing costs; on average, improvements that are sufficient to increase the Country Policy and Institutional Assessment economic governance indicator score by one point are associated with interest costs that are lower by about 40 basis points, even setting aside the direct impact on ratings of better governance indicators. There are many reasons why improving governance is a good thing. Among them is the potential payoff to the public purse savings of USD 40 million or more on a standard USD 1 billion, 10-year bond.

Capital Markets --- Capital Markets and Capital Flows --- Country Policy --- Debt Management --- Debt Markets --- Finance and Financial Sector Development --- Financing Costs --- Governance --- Institutional Assessment --- Public Debt --- Public Financial Management --- Public Sector Development --- Sovereign Bond Market --- Sovereign Credit Rating --- Sovereign Debt

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A joint IMF and World Bank team conducted virtual missions to Georgia during January-February 2021 and May-June 2021, to update the findings of the Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP) conducted in 2014. This report summarizes the main findings of the mission, identifies key financial sector vulnerabilities and developmental issues, and provides policy recommendations.

Access To Finance --- Capital Markets and Capital Flows --- E-Finance and E-Security --- Finance and Financial Sector Development --- Financial Regulation and Supervision --- Financial Stability --- Financial Structures --- Macroprudential Policy --- Risk Assessment

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Higher insurance penetration and smaller infrastructure investment gaps has been correlated even after accounting for gross domestic product (GDP) levels, which indicates the insurance industry may have made some contributions to this development. Insurers have been promoting infrastructure investments as both asset owners and asset managers because this asset class makes sense from an asset liability management (ALM) viewpoint and they can leverage their asset management function. The stable and long-term cash flows of infrastructure assets naturally align with liabilities of insurers, particularly life insurers. Creating an ecosystem around infrastructure finance and different types of market players is of high importance. In a developing country where banks are already dominant in infrastructure financing and a risk-based framework for the banking sector constrains them from providing long-tenor financing, the roll-over model can work. Finally, governments and national supervisors can support infrastructure investments in several ways, including establishing a clear definition for infrastructure and compiling data, lowering capital charges on infrastructure investments (if their different treatment is evidence-based), facilitating credit enhancement mechanism and the increase of investible infrastructure projects, et cetera In some cases, more clarity may be required on capital charges between infrastructure and securitized assets. Restrictions on direct investments to infrastructure can also be lifted under appropriate risk-based supervision in place unless being harmful to the interests of policyholders.

Capital Markets and Capital Flows --- Finance and Development --- Finance and Financial Sector Development --- Financial Regulation --- Financial Regulation and Supervision --- Infrastructure Economics and Finance --- Infrastructure Finance --- Infrastructure Investment --- Insurance --- Insurance and Risk Mitigation

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Malawi has a large infrastructure gap, which is beyond what the government can afford. Over the period of two decades (1998-2017), the total public investment in Malawi averaged 4.18 percent of GDP per year while in the energy and water and sanitation sectors alone, a similar level of investment, about 4 percent of GDP annually, will be required to meet the growing infrastructure demand. At the same time, the fiscal space has been decreasing as evidenced by the growing public debt, total public debt increased from 28 percent of GDP in 2007 to 63 percent of GDP in 2019. In this context, Malawi needs to make well though-out choices in prioritizing its investment program, improve the efficiency of infrastructure planning and implementation, and crowd-in financing from both foreign and domestic private investors. The report argues that the preconditions for enabling the needed transformation exist. Improvements in the macro-economic environment in the past five years makes private investment more possible, although in the short-term, the COVID-19 pandemic will have a negative impact as risk aversion increases. The regulatory framework for public-private partnerships (PPPs) is in place and further evolving, and a large PPP in the energy sector (about USD 1 billion) is currently under development. Domestic long-term investors (pension funds and life insurance companies) have been rapidly accumulating long-term funds in the past few years (especially after regulatory reforms to introduce a mandatory pension system) and are looking for long-term investment opportunities. The report proposes that the Government of Malawi (GoM) undertakes reforms to improve the fiscal space and in turn increase infrastructure investments through its own resources and encourage the role of the private sector in the financing of infrastructure. More specifically, the GoM can (a) improve the efficiency of the public investment management framework and integrate it with the PPP framework, (b) improve the efficiency of infrastructure delivering state-owned enterprises, (c) advance the PPP program by allocating resources to develop the needed capacity, and (d) deepen the domestic long-term finance market by availing long-term liquidity facilities to catalyze bank lending to infrastructure, issuing regulations to expand the range of long-term finance instruments and vehicles, and introducing a program of transaction testing, piloting, and market sounding to systematically link supply and demand side of the infrastructure finance, among others.

Access To Finance --- Business Environment --- Capital Markets and Capital Flows --- Coronavirus --- COVID-19 --- Finance and Financial Sector Development --- Infrastructure Economics --- Infrastructure Economics and Finance --- Infrastructure Finance --- Infrastructure Investment --- Private Participation in Infrastructure --- Public-Private Partnerships --- State-Owned Enterprises