EBRD, EIB and World Bank report on impediments to the private sector in MENA
What’s holding back the private sector in MENA? The European Bank of Reconstruction and Development, the European Investment Bank and the World Bank launched yesterday from Cairo their joint report ‘What’s holding back the private sector in MENA?’ The report is based on their MENA Enterprise Survey, conducted from 2013 to 2014, covering 6,083 firms in the manufacturing and services sector in eight countries: Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, West Bank and Gaza, Yemen and Djibouti. The report highlights four main areas of concern, as identified by the CEOs of the firms surveyed: political instability, corruption, unreliable electrical supply and inadequate access to finance. The report also includes broad policy recommendations to help address some of these concerns, and its chapters cover productivity and the business environment; access to finance; jobs and skills in the formal private sector and competitiveness in the MENA region.
Download the full 146-page report here (pdf), skip ahead to the seven-page executive summary here, and read the two-page section devoted to Egypt here.