Economics & Development

Human capital - people’s knowledge, skills, and health - drives productivity and growth. The Human Capital Index Plus (HCI+) measures the human capital a child born today can expect to accumulate over their working life, extending the original HCI by incorporating tertiary education and work experience. This brief summarizes Ecuador’s HCI+ score and its performance in building human capital.

Human capital - people’s knowledge, skills, and health - drives productivity and growth. The Human Capital Index Plus (HCI+) measures the human capital a child born today can expect to accumulate over their working life, extending the original HCI by incorporating tertiary education and work experience. This brief summarizes Brazil HCI+ score and its performance in building human capital.

Ratings of the STP Power Sector Recovery Project for Sao Tome and Principe were as follows: outcome was moderately unsatisfactory, Bank performance was moderately unsatisfactory, and monitoring and evaluation quality was modest. Key lessons and recommendations are as follows. First, project implementation arrangements must be calibrated to institutional capacity; in small island developing states (SIDS) this calls for empowered project implementation units (PIUs) with decision-making autonomy and competitively recruited experts, particularly when delivering complex, priority infrastructure, to avoid bottlenecks from layered clearances. Second, procurement strategies should explicitly address shallow contractor markets typical of SIDS by conducting market sounding before Board approval, benchmarking costs to island conditions, planning for single-bid contingencies, and considering scope disaggregation, regional procurement, or private sector participation to foster competition. Third, where parallel co-financing is central to the project development objectives, joint supervision must be formalized through a co-financing coordination protocol that specifies minimum mission frequency, shared reporting, and escalation procedures. Fourth, early and objective restructuring is preferable to repeated closing date extensions; scope, targets, and implementation arrangements should be recalibrated promptly when delays or cost shifts emerge, including timely transfer of activities to successor operations when appropriate. Fifth, demand-side management provides early, visible gains and should be embedded in SIDS energy operations; replacing inefficient lamps with light emitting diode (LED) bulbs demonstrated measurable peak load reductions and consumer savings while longer-term supply-side investments faced delays. Sixth, the binding constraint in SIDS energy reform is often institutional and political capacity rather than planning; reforms should be anchored in legislation or regulatory instruments, disbursements sequenced to verifiable policy actions, and institutional arrangements such as independent PIUs or ring-fenced regulators designed to outlast political transitions, with physical investments sequenced after institutional preconditions for sustainability are in place. Seventh, results frameworks should be rigorously reviewed at preparation, mid-term, and each restructuring to ensure outcome-focused indicators, clear beneficiary methodologies, and intermediate milestones that capture foundational contributions when end targets may materialize across project cycles, thereby enabling credible monitoring and course correction.

Human capital - people’s knowledge, skills, and health - drives productivity and growth. The Human Capital Index Plus (HCI+) measures the human capital a child born today can expect to accumulate over their working life, extending the original HCI by incorporating tertiary education and work experience. This brief summarizes Nicaragua’s HCI+ score and its performance in building human capital.

This report evaluates the service delivery chain of Ukraine’s State Employment Service (SES), focusing on business processes and client experience from outreach through monitoring and evaluation. Using interviews, field visits, and policy reviews, the analysis examines five stages: outreach, registration, needs assessment, service provision, and performance monitoring. While the SES demonstrates key strengths as a major provider, several systemic challenges limit its effectiveness, including limited outreach to vulnerable populations, weakened employer engagement without a national strategy, absence of structured case management, underdeveloped performance management systems, and insufficient automation of core processes, all of which constrain service quality, efficiency, and overall responsiveness.

Human capital - people’s knowledge, skills, and health - drives productivity and growth. The Human Capital Index Plus (HCI+) measures the human capital a child born today can expect to accumulate over their working life, extending the original HCI by incorporating tertiary education and work experience. This brief summarizes Peru’s HCI+ score and its performance in building human capital.

Human capital - people’s knowledge, skills, and health - drives productivity and growth. The Human Capital Index Plus (HCI+) measures the human capital a child born today can expect to accumulate over their working life, extending the original HCI by incorporating tertiary education and work experience. This brief summarizes Grenada’s HCI+ score and its performance in building human capital.

Human capital - people’s knowledge, skills, and health - drives productivity and growth. The Human Capital Index Plus (HCI+) measures the human capital a child born today can expect to accumulate over their working life, extending the original HCI by incorporating tertiary education and work experience. This brief summarizes Latvia’s HCI+ score and its performance in building human capital.

Human capital - people’s knowledge, skills, and health - drives productivity and growth. The Human Capital Index Plus (HCI+) measures the human capital a child born today can expect to accumulate over their working life, extending the original HCI by incorporating tertiary education and work experience. This brief summarizes Kyrgyz Republic’s HCI+ score and its performance in building human capital.

Human capital - people’s knowledge, skills, and health - drives productivity and growth. The Human Capital Index Plus (HCI+) measures the human capital a child born today can expect to accumulate over their working life, extending the original HCI by incorporating tertiary education and work experience. This brief summarizes Ireland’s HCI+ score and its performance in building human capital.