Upcoming

14 July 2009, 10:00 AM EDT Carbon Finance Joëlle Chassard World Bank You can pre-submit a question. The World Bank’s State and Trends of the Carbon Market Report 2009 reveals the market doubled to $126 billion, as we wrote in a recent feature on carbon finance, Carbon Finance Key Part of Future Climate Change Fight. Not as welcome is the news that the value of transactions financing actual project-based emission reductions fell 12 percent to an estimated $6.5 billion in 2008. The drop was the result of a complex set of factors related to difficulty obtaining financing for climate-friendly projects during the financial crisis, regulatory delays and uncertainty surrounding the future of the market under a new global climate change agreement expected to take effect in 2012. “Innovative financing in the fight against climate change is needed now, more than ever, if we are to confront what has emerged as the major threat to the development priorities of the poorest countries and communities,” says Joëlle Chassard, manager of the World Bank’s Carbon Finance Unit. Chassard will be online July 14 at 10 a.m. EDT to answer questions on carbon finance. You can submit your questions now.

28 July 2009, 11:00 AM EDT Information Communications Technology for Development Christine Zhen-Wei Qiang You can pre-submit a question. Connectivity—whether the Internet or mobile phones—is increasingly bringing market information, financial services, health services—to remote areas, and is helping to change people’s lives in unprecedented ways. New information and communications technologies (ICT), in particular high-speed internet, are changing the way companies do business, transforming public service delivery and democratizing innovation. With 10 percent increase in high speed Internet connections, economic growth increases by 1.3 percent. “The mobile platform is emerging as the single most powerful way to extend economic opportunities and key services to millions of people,” says Christine Zhen-Wei Qiang, World Bank economist and editor of a new Bank Group report on information technology and development, Information and Communications for Development 2009: Extending Reach and Increasing Impact. Zhen-Wei Qiang will be online Tuesday, July 28 at 11 a.m. EDT to answer questions on information communications technologies. You can submit your questions now.

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Archived

• East Asia and Pacific Update, April 2009
  16 Apr 2009 | Ivailo Izvorski, Vikram Nehru
• Remittances
  8 Apr 2009 | Dilip Ratha
  Remittances will fall more than originally expected this year—from $305 billion last year to an amount closer to $290 billion in 2009, according to the latest World Bank research. But even with drop, remittances will still outstrip private capital flows, expected to fall by half in 2009, and official development aid, typically around $100 billion. Remittances are "resilient" because many migrants are unlikely to leave their adopted countries and will continue to send money home, says economist Dilip Ratha, who leads the World Bank’s Migration and Remittances team.

  World Bank remittances expert Dilip Ratha answered your questions in a live online discussion on Wednesday, April 8.

• China Quarterly Update, March 2009
  26 Mar 2009 | David Dollar, Louis Kuijs

  While China’s real economy has been hit hard by the global crisis, it is still holding up, according to the World Bank’s latest China Quarterly Update. The Update finds that China’s banks have been largely unscathed by the international financial turmoil and that the economy still has plenty of space to implement forceful stimulus measures. However, as the global crisis has intensified, China’s exports have been hit badly and the World Bank is adjusting its projection for China’s GDP growth downward to 6.5 percent in 2009. This also follows the recent downgrading of the World Bank’s projections for global GDP growth and imports in 2009.

  Report authors David Dollar, Country Director, and Louis Kuijs, Senior Economist, will answer your questions in a live online discussion on Thursday, March 26 at 9:30 a.m. U.S. Eastern Time (13:30 GMT, 9:30 p.m. Beijing time).

  Please submit your questions in advance!

• China Quarterly Update, December 2008
  1 Dec 2008 | David Dollar, Louis Kuijs
• Financial Crisis
  24 Nov 2008 | Danny Leipziger
• Helping Fragile States
  25 Sep 2008 | Alastair McKechnie
• Making Aid Work on the Ground; Farm Project in Uganda
  3 Sep 2008 | Christine Cornelius
• Food Crisis
  7 Jul 2008 | Will Martin
• China Quarterly Update
  1 Jul 2008 | David Dollar, Louis Kuijs
• East Asia Update: Testing Times Ahead
  8 Apr 2008 | Vikram Nehru
• China Quarterly Update, February 2008
  19 Feb 2008 | David Dollar, Louis Kuijs
• World Development Report 2008
  18 Dec 2007 | Derek Byerlee
• East Asia Update
  7 May 2007 | Dan Biller, Milan Brahmbhatt
• Opportunities for Indigenous Peoples in Latin America
  8 Mar 2007 | Emmanuel Skoufias, Harry Anthony Patrinos
• Fraud and Corruption
  22 Feb 2007 | Suzanne Folsom
• Climate Change Call for Action
  20 Nov 2006 | Bob Watson
• Development Impact of Remittances in Latin America
  7 Nov 2006 | Humberto Lopez, Pablo Fajnzylber
• World Development Report 2007
  17 Oct 2006 | Emmanuel Jimenez, François Bourguignon
• East Asian Renaissance: Ideas for Growth
  5 Oct 2006 | Homi Kharas
• Animal Diseases: Emerging Global Threat
  14 Jun 2006 | François Le Gall
• Controlling Malaria in Africa
  27 Apr 2006 | Suprotik Basu
• Monitoring the Millennium Development Goals
  25 Apr 2006 | Brian Levy, Mark Sundberg
• Absent Teachers and Medical Workers in Developing Countries
  27 Mar 2006 | F. Halsey Rogers, Nazmul Chaudhury
• A Funding Call for Malnutrition
  7 Mar 2006 | Meera Shekar
• Latin America, Poverty, and Economic Growth
  21 Feb 2006 | Humberto Lopez, William Maloney
• Afghanistan - Aid Effectiveness, Fiscal Outlook Need Further Attention
  31 Jan 2006 | Stephane Guimbert, William Byrd
• Avian Flu
  5 Dec 2005 | Milan Brahmbhatt
• Indigenous Peoples, Poverty and Human Development in Latin America
  31 May 2005 | Gillette Hall, Harry Anthony Patrinos
• Peace and Poverty: Ten Years at the Bank
  25 May 2005 | James D. Wolfensohn
• Beyond the City: the Rural Contribution to Development
  24 Feb 2005 | Daniel Lederman
• Pensions
  8 Feb 2005 | Robert Holzmann
• Global Economic Prospects 2005: Trade, Regionalism, and Development
  23 Nov 2004 | Richard Newfarmer
• Monitoring the Millennium Development Goals
  26 Oct 2004 | Zia Qureshi
• Climate Change
  23 Jun 2004 | Bob Watson
• Debt - Is it the disease or the symptom of a larger problem?
  18 May 2004 | Vikram Nehru
• Social Dimensions of Development Effectiveness
  11 May 2004 | Steen Jorgensen
• Corruption - Can It Ever Be Controlled?
  13 Apr 2004 | Daniel Kaufmann
• World Development Report 2004: Making Services Work for Poor People
  6 Apr 2004 | Ritva Reinikka
• Diverting Disaster - Helping the Poor Elude Nature's Wrath
  16 Mar 2004 | Margaret Arnold
• Making Globalization Work for the Poor
  2 Feb 2004 | David Dollar
• Can Small Projects Make a Big Difference? Dev't Marketplace 2003
  17 Dec 2003 | John Wilton
• HIVAIDS and Development
  1 Dec 2003 | Debrework Zewdie