Latest from the World Bank sees Egypt growing at fastest pace in region next year, but warns on emerging market growth. The World Bank’s latest Global Economic Prospects report sees GDP growth in Egypt clocking in at the fastest pace of any country it covers in MENA next year and the year after. The report sees growth at 4.3% this year accelerating to 5.0% in 2018 and 5.3% in 2019. That’s more than twice the pace it expects of the GCC countries, which it sees growing 1.8% this year and just 2.8% in 2019. Egypt is also set to easily outpace the MENA average of 2.2% this year and 3.2% in 2019.

Check out the landing page for the report(the Egypt forecast is buried there under the box for “Middle East and North Africa) or download the full report (pdf, about 9 MB), where Egypt gets mention in the MENA section starting on page 91.

It’s not all sunshine and puppies: The World Bank is warning that “a slowdown in investment into developing economies has put the brakes on productivity growth in emerging economies, the bank warned. That echoes a trend in the US and other advanced economies where economists have been flummoxed by the issue of stalling productivity growth,” the Financial Times notes. (See graphs below.) The bank’s top economist tells the salmon-colored paper that under-investment in infrastructure — particularly in Africa — is a top concern.

The bank is also warning on EM debt dynamics, where it says that as of the end of 2016, “government debt exceeded its 2007 level by more than 10 percentage points of GDP in more than half” of emerging and developing markets, while the fiscal balance worsened from its 2007 level by more than 5 ppt in a third of EMs surveyed. (Read the debt dynamics piece in pdf)