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Finance Banking Featured News World

Crypto, tokenisation, and the future of payments

The introduction of crypto technology and tokenisation is spurring changes in the financial system. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is taking steps to integrate crypto into traditional finance, most notably the GENIUS Act’s establishment of a regulatory regime for payment stablecoins. This column explores the US’ policy goals concerning digital assets and argues that tokenisation – […]

Banking Business Featured Finance News

Behind the scenes: How we work with creditors on debt transparency

Earlier this year, the World Bank conducted the second round of a Data Sharing Exercise with G-7 and Paris Club creditors. This is the first large-scale effort of its kind to systematically compare creditor- and debtor-reported data at the loan-by-loan level. Since the release of the March 2025 report, the 2025 G-7 Finance Ministers’ Communiqué highlighted the exercise and […]

Agriculture Climate Featured News World

Can everyone afford to eat healthy? New data show progress, but not everywhere

Low-income countries and Sub-Saharan Africa are being left behind in global progress toward affordable healthy diets. Around 2.6 billion people – 32% of the global population – could not afford a healthy diet in 2024 The latest estimates of the Cost and Affordability of a Healthy Diet (CoAHD), published in the 2025 State of Food Security and Nutrition […]

Business Featured News World

Laws, Data, and Empowerment: Insights from UNDP’s Women’s Empowerment Index and World Bank’s Women Business and Law Index

When it comes to improving economic outcomes for women and women’s empowerment, effective action requires reliable data. Yet, data capturing the full scope of women’s lives is often scarce, making it hard to identify what holds women—and entire economies and societies—back. Without solid evidence, the path to women enjoying the same opportunities as men is […]

Development Business Featured World

Measuring what matters for business: The new B-READY data in the World Development Indicators

What makes a country a great place to start and grow a business? Among low-income economies across the world, only 29% have a single centralized website dedicated to providing regulatory information pertaining to international trade. In high-income economies, the same number stands at 67% . The World Bank’s new Business Ready (B-READY) project shines a light on this […]

Economy Featured Lifestyle News World

Stanley Fischer and the Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics: A tribute

Stanley Fischer, the World Bank’s chief economist from January 1988 to August 1990, passed away on May 31, 2025. Stan Fischer’s immense professional contributions to modern macroeconomic and monetary policy, both as faculty at MIT and in the positions he held thereafter—as the first deputy managing director of the IMF (1994-2001), in running the Bank […]

World Business Featured Finance News

Finding the signal in the score: How the World Bank Group is aligning the Scorecard and impact evaluations

For years, the World Bank Group’s systems for measuring results operated in parallel tracks: corporate Scorecards that monitored performance through outcome-level targets, and impact evaluations that investigated what works, for whom, and why. Both were powerful in their own right—but too often disconnected. That is beginning to change. In today’s context of tighter budgets, more […]

Finance Banking Business News World

Building debt transparency and resilience across East Asia and the Pacific

As the world continues to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath, countries face new and unexpected challenges. Elevated debt levels, persistent inflation, and weakened growth prospects have created a perfect storm of financial pressure. For many nations, this has meant shrinking the budgets in vital sectors like health, education, and the environment. In […]

Climate Development Energy Environment Featured

What will it cost to build the cities of the future?

Cities are engines of economic growth and job creation, and their future pathways will shape global development outcomes for decades to come.  But the success of this transformation depends on making the right investments now—investments that strengthen essential infrastructure, unlock new jobs, and build cities that are more sustainable and resilient.  The charts below visualize […]

trade Featured media News World

Missing tariffs: How flawed data turn trade policy analysis into a Herculean task

When the Trump administration pledged to impose “reciprocal tariffs” on countries with “unfair” trade practices, trade economists scrambled to determine what such tariffs might look like. But modelling any tariff-based intervention requires reliable data on what countries actually impose, and this column argues that the tariff data we rely on are incomplete and often wrong. […]