Afternoon with IPCRI: Palestinian State building - Mariam Sherman, World Bank

This event was supported by the Embassy of the Kingdom of Netherlands.

Ms. Mariam Sherman, World Bank Country Director for West Bank and Gaza, speaking at an event organized by IPCRI discussed the findings of the recent released World Bank Report on Palestinian state building. The report examines the progress of Palestinian state building through the Palestinian Authority's ambitious two-year program "Palestine: Ending the Occupation, Establishing the State". The report focuses on institution-building as this is the most important issue to measure state-building. The World Bank report is based on a four-area framework where government effectiveness matters most: (1) security and justice; (2) revenue and expenditure management; (3) economic development and (4) service delivery. This lecture focused on the last three areas.

In the area of revenue and expenditure management, the PA is constrained in collecting custom tax revenues; more cooperation with Israel is required. However, the PA managed to book progress in data collection, tax administration, growth of private sector and net lending. They also established a Ministry of Finance authority. More priority must be given to budget preparation, transparency of the budget, prioritization of spending to resolve budget deficits and, most importantly, management of the wage bill.

In the second area of economic development, more needs to be done. Especially the environment for private investment needs to be developed in order to boost economic growth. The private sector is still dominated by small family businesses. The good news is that corruption declined according to 59% of the people.

In the area of service delivery results are generally positive especially in comparison to other Middle Eastern countries. Yet, in the human development area and health care sector, improvements are to be made. All in all, significant progress has been made and Palestinian public institutions compare favorably to other countries in the region.

At the same event Professor Awartani was also speaking:

http://youtu.be/2sdZExZ_Anw

Category:

News & Politics

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• IPCRI
• Mariam Sherman
• 2011
• State building
• future
• Palestinian state
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• World Bank State Of Palestine
• Hisham Awartani
• afternoons with IPCRI
• private sector
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• Establishing the State