Download or read book International Agencies and the Reform of Food Subsidies in Egypt After the Revolution of 2011 written by Marie Di Pietrantonio and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abstract: Egypt has a very expensive and extensive food subsidy system representing a heavy burden on the State's public budget. At the same time, however, these subsidies secure the livelihood of the most vulnerable part of the Egyptian population. While this situation is not sustainable in its current form, no agreement on the extent of the reforms needed and how they should be conducted has yet been reached. This research aims to examine the different viewpoints of stakeholders involved in this issue as well as it intends to investigate the position of different international agencies on food subsidies in general, and in Egypt in particular. Furthermore, does this thesis look at how international agencies influence government decisions on food subsidy reforms and it attempts to determine the other factors of importance in this matter. The analysis is being based on publications from these institutions and on interviews conducted with stakeholders involved in food subsidies reforms. This allowed us to conclude that all actors agree on the fact that the Egyptian food subsidy system needs to be reformed due to its high cost and because it is not sufficiently targeted and suffers important leakages. Regarding the changes that should be introduced, two main positions can be identified; the financial institutions advocate for an immediate switch to a less costly cash transfer system, while the UN organizations, although not against cash transfers, argue that those are not sufficient in protecting the livelihood of the poor in Egypt and are rather in favor of keeping and improving the current systems.
Download or read book Subsidy Reform in the Middle East and North Africa written by Mr.Carlo A. Sdralevich and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2014-07-09 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries price subsidies are common, especially on food and fuels. However, these are neither well targeted nor cost effective as a social protection tool, often benefiting mainly the better off instead of the poor and vulnerable. This paper explores the challenges of replacing generalized price subsidies with more equitable social safety net instruments, including the short-term inflationary effects, and describes the features of successful subsidy reforms.
Download or read book The Egyptian Food Subsidy System written by Akhter U. Ahmed and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2001 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Egyptian Food Subsidy System: Structure, Performance, and Options for Reform evaluates the economic, political, and technical feasibility of reducing costs while improving or maintaining the welfare of the poor. The report addresses five questions: (1) How well does the present system target the poor? (2) How much leakage- the pilferage of subsidized foods in the distribution channel-occurs? (3) At what cost does the government transfer income to the needy? (4) How can subsidies be better targeted to the needy? And (5) What are politically feasible options for reform?
Download or read book Inside Inequality in the Arab Republic of Egypt written by Paolo Verme and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2014-04-08 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inside Inequality in the Arab Republic of Egypt: Facts and Perceptions Across People, Time, and Space comprises four papers prepared in the framework of the Egypt inequality study financed by the World Bank. The first paper, by Sherine Al-Shawarby, reviews the studies on inequality in Egypt since the 1950s with the double objective of illustrating the importance attributed to inequality through time and of presenting and compare the main published statistics on inequality. The second paper, by Branko Milanovic, turns to the global and spatial dimensions of inequality. The Egyptian society remains deeply divided across space and in terms of welfare, and this study unveils some of the hidden features of this inequality. The third paper, by Paolo Verme, studies facts and perceptions of inequality during the 2000-2009 period, which preceded the Egyptian revolution. The fourth paper, by Sahar El Tawila, May Gadallah, and Enas Ali A.El-Majeed, assesses the state of poverty and inequality among the poorest villages of Egypt. The paper attempts to explain the level of inequality in an effort to disentangle those factors that derive from household abilities from those factors that derive from local opportunities. Inside Inequality in the Arab Republic of Egypt provides some initial elements that could explain the apparent mismatch between inequality measured with household surveys and inequality aversion measured by values surveys. This is a particularly important and timely topic to address in light of the unfolding developments in the Arab region. The book should be of interest to any observer of the political and economic evolution of the Arab region in the past few years and to poverty and inequality specialists interested in a deeper understanding of the distribution of incomes in Egypt and other countries in the Middle East and North Africa region. World Bank Studies are available individually or on standing order. The World Bank Studies series is also available online through the Open Knowledge Repository (https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/) and the World Bank e-Library (www.worldbank.org/elibrary). Book jacket.
Download or read book Energy Subsidy Reform written by Mr.Benedict J. Clements and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2013-09-13 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Energy subsidies are aimed at protecting consumers, however, subsidies aggravate fiscal imbalances, crowd out priority public spending, and depress private investment, including in the energy sector. This book provides the most comprehensive estimates of energy subsidies currently available for 176 countries and an analysis of “how to do” energy subsidy reform, drawing on insights from 22 country case studies undertaken by the IMF staff and analyses carried out by other institutions.
Download or read book Scaling Up Nutrition in the Arab Republic of Egypt written by Christopher H. Herbst and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2019-11-26 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Malnutrition is a huge burden on the Arab Republic of Egypt’s economy. Undernutrition—manifested by poor linear growth (stunting), wasting, and micronutrient deficiencies in children and by anemia among women of reproductive age—collectively saps an estimated two percent of Egypt’s annual gross domestic product through forgone productivity and health care costs, representing an economic hemorrhaging of billions of U.S. dollars per year. Adding to this challenge is the co-occurrence of overweight and obesity among children, leading to a malnutrition double burden. Scaling Up Nutrition in the Arab Republic of Egypt aims to inform the development of nutrition policy and guide nutrition investments over the coming years. It reviews Egypt’s nutrition situation, the interventions currently in place, and the opportunities, costs, benefits, and fiscal space implications of scaling up a set of high-impact interventions to address undernutrition. The book, a collaborative effort between the World Bank and UNICEF, is targeted at all those involved in developing and implementing nutrition interventions in Egypt and beyond.
Download or read book The Quest for Subsidy Reforms in the Middle East and North Africa Region written by Paolo Verme and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-04-21 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an analysis of energy and food subsidies in the MENA region between 2010 and 2014. Using the World Bank’s proprietary SUBSIM model, the book studies the distribution of subsidies and the simulation of subsidy reforms across eight countries within in a partial equilibrium framework. The distributional analysis of subsidies provides information on who benefits from existing subsidies, while the simulations of subsidy reforms provide information on the outcomes of the reforms in terms of government budget, household welfare, poverty, inequality, and the trade-offs between these outcomes. This focus provides governments with the essential information they need to make decisions on subsidy reforms and consumers with a clear sense of which programs and reforms are successful. The book highlights the historical roots of subsidies, the real trigger of subsidy reforms, and the complexity of subsidy reforms. It discusses the pros and cons of radical and gradualist approaches to reforms, the use of compensation mechanisms and their implications, the advantages and disadvantages of public information campaigns, the political economy of targeting different economic populations, the political timing of reforms, and whether, overall, the reforms observed in the MENA region have been successful. The first book on subsidies in the MENA region that is based on primary micro data, this book is useful for researchers and graduate students studying political economy and working with microsimulation modelling instruments as well as government officials engaged in subsidies reforms, research institutes and private consulting groups advising governments on subsidy reforms.
Download or read book Phasing out energy subsidies as part of Egypt s economic reform program Impacts and policy implications written by Breisinger, Clemens and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2018-02-21 with total page 37 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In order to address long-standing economic challenges, in 2016 the Government of Egypt (GOE) put in place a major economic reform program to restore macroeconomic stability and to promote inclusive growth. As a result, there are early signs that the economy is rebounding and Egypt’s economic outlook is becoming more favorable. However, it is less clear how the ongoing reform program is affecting households, especially the poor. To shed light on this question, this paper uses an economy-wide model to estimate the distributional impacts of the energy subsidy cuts in 2014, 2016, and 2017, the currency devaluation at the end of 2016, and the expected complete phasing out of energy subsidies over the coming years.
Download or read book Chronicles of the Egyptian Revolution and its Aftermath 2011 2016 written by M. Cherif Bassiouni and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 839 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyses Egypt's 2011 Revolution, highlighting the struggle for freedom, justice, and human dignity in the face of economic and social problems, and an on-going military regime.
Download or read book The Arab Revolts written by David McMurray and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2013-02-22 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of essays examining the underlying causes of 2011’s Arab uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Syria, and Yemen. The 2011 eruptions of popular discontent across the Arab world, popularly dubbed the Arab Spring, were local manifestations of a regional mass movement for democracy, freedom, and human dignity. Authoritarian regimes were either overthrown or put on notice that the old ways of oppressing their subjects would no longer be tolerated. These essays from Middle East Report—the leading source of timely reporting and insightful analysis of the region—cover events in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Syria, and Yemen. Written for a broad audience of students, policymakers, media analysts, and general readers, the collection reveals the underlying causes of the revolts by identifying key trends during the last two decades leading up to the recent insurrections. “This is easily the best volume on the Arab uprisings yet published. The material is very strong and accessibly written, providing rich background on the political and economic contexts in the region prior to the uprisings as well as after the events of 2011 unfolded, based on substantive knowledge. . . . Ideal for students, policymakers, and general readers.” —Jillian Schwedler, University of Massachusetts “For anyone trying to understand the processes of popular revolt and mechanisms of repression, The Arab Revolts is a good place to start.” —Anthropology of Contemporary Middle-East and Central Eurasia “This excellent collection of articles from Middle East Report provides an unusually deep and wide analysis of the phenomena collectively known as the Arab Spring. . . . The articles are well written and accessible to students, as well as to general readers, and hold much interest to specialists in Middle East politics as well.” —Review of Middle East Studies “The editors of this exceptionally well-conceptualized collection have chosen writings that complement each other well. Each section begins with the present-day situation, and the subsequent essays describe the historical background of mass protests. At the end of each section is a writing that connects the historical themes back to the modern protest movements.” —Against the Current
Download or read book Building resilience to conflict through food security policies and programs An overview written by Clemens Breisinger and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on with total page 4 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One and a half billion people still live in fragile, conflict affected areas. People in these countries are about twice as likely to be malnourished and to die during infancy as people in other developing countries.2 This outcome is often a direct consequence of conflict: conflict reduces food availability by destroying agricultural assets and infrastructure.
Download or read book Democracy s Fourth Wave written by Philip N. Howard and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-29 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Did digital media really "cause" the Arab Spring, or is it an important factor of the story behind what might become democracy's fourth wave? An unlikely network of citizens used digital media to start a cascade of social protest that ultimately toppled four of the world's most entrenched dictators. Howard and Hussain find that the complex causal recipe includes several economic, political and cultural factors, but that digital media is consistently one of the most important sufficient and necessary conditions for explaining both the fragility of regimes and the success of social movements. This book looks at not only the unexpected evolution of events during the Arab Spring, but the deeper history of creative digital activism throughout the region.
Download or read book HOW TO BUILD RESILIENCE TO CONFLICT written by Breisinger, Clemens and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2014-09-30 with total page 46 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Food Policy Report explains why there is a need to place even higher priority on food security-related policies and programs in conflict-prone countries, and offers insights for policymakers regarding how to do so. To understand the relationship between conflict and food security, this report builds a new conceptual framework of food security and applies it to four case studies on Egypt, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. It argues that food security-related policies and programs build resilience to conflict insofar as they are expected not only to help countries and people cope with and recover from conflict but also to contribute to preventing conflicts and support economic development more broadly: by helping countries and people become even better off.
Download or read book Shock Waves written by Stephane Hallegatte and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2015-11-23 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ending poverty and stabilizing climate change will be two unprecedented global achievements and two major steps toward sustainable development. But the two objectives cannot be considered in isolation: they need to be jointly tackled through an integrated strategy. This report brings together those two objectives and explores how they can more easily be achieved if considered together. It examines the potential impact of climate change and climate policies on poverty reduction. It also provides guidance on how to create a “win-win†? situation so that climate change policies contribute to poverty reduction and poverty-reduction policies contribute to climate change mitigation and resilience building. The key finding of the report is that climate change represents a significant obstacle to the sustained eradication of poverty, but future impacts on poverty are determined by policy choices: rapid, inclusive, and climate-informed development can prevent most short-term impacts whereas immediate pro-poor, emissions-reduction policies can drastically limit long-term ones.
Download or read book World Protests written by Isabel Ortiz and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-11-03 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an open access book. The start of the 21st century has seen the world shaken by protests, from the Arab Spring to the Yellow Vests, from the Occupy movement to the social uprisings in Latin America. There are periods in history when large numbers of people have rebelled against the way things are, demanding change, such as in 1848, 1917, and 1968. Today we are living in another time of outrage and discontent, a time that has already produced some of the largest protests in world history. This book analyzes almost three thousand protests that occurred between 2006 and 2020 in 101 countries covering over 93 per cent of the world population. The study focuses on the major demands driving world protests, such as those for real democracy, jobs, public services, social protection, civil rights, global justice, and those against austerity and corruption. It also analyzes who was demonstrating in each protest; what protest methods they used; who the protestors opposed; what was achieved; whether protests were repressed; and trends such as inequality and the rise of women’s and radical right protests. The book concludes that the demands of protestors in most of the protests surveyed are in full accordance with human rights and internationally agreed-upon UN development goals. The book calls for policy-makers to listen and act on these demands.
Download or read book World Development Report 2019 written by World Bank and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2018-10-31 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Work is constantly reshaped by technological progress. New ways of production are adopted, markets expand, and societies evolve. But some changes provoke more attention than others, in part due to the vast uncertainty involved in making predictions about the future. The 2019 World Development Report will study how the nature of work is changing as a result of advances in technology today. Technological progress disrupts existing systems. A new social contract is needed to smooth the transition and guard against rising inequality. Significant investments in human capital throughout a person’s lifecycle are vital to this effort. If workers are to stay competitive against machines they need to train or retool existing skills. A social protection system that includes a minimum basic level of protection for workers and citizens can complement new forms of employment. Improved private sector policies to encourage startup activity and competition can help countries compete in the digital age. Governments also need to ensure that firms pay their fair share of taxes, in part to fund this new social contract. The 2019 World Development Report presents an analysis of these issues based upon the available evidence.
Download or read book The State of Food and Agriculture 2013 written by Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and published by Fao. This book was released on 2013-07-30 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Malnutrition -- in the form of undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies, and overweight and obesity -- imposes unacceptably high economic and social costs on countries at all income levels. The causes of malnutrition are complex, yet all forms of malnutrition share one common feature: nutritionally inappropriate diets. The State of Food and Agriculture 2013 makes the case that healthy diets and good nutrition begin with food and agriculture.
