rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Application of safeguards and
            anti-dumping duties in Colombia
# WPS3608

## **APPLICATION OF SAFEGUARDS AND ANTI-DUMPING DUTIES IN COLOMBIA**

Mauricio Reina and Sandra Zuluaga<sup>1</sup>

## **Abstract**

Colombia's experience in the use of safeguards and anti-dumping duties differs from international trends. On the one hand, the number of investigations conducted is substantially lower than that recorded in most of the hemisphere's large and medium-size countries. On the other, while there is a growing international trend of more frequent use of anti-dumping as opposed to safeguards, in Colombia the safeguard process has been the more used policy instrument. Although several large and medium-size firms are familiar with the application of safeguards and anti-dumping duties, there is still a relative unfamiliarity regarding the instruments in most of the private sector. The institutional arrangements related to the investigations and the decision-making processes have proven to be stable and sound. The trade liberalization process in the country has created awareness of the importance of preserving the competitiveness of production chains to strengthen their insertion in international markets, which has restrained the authorities from restricting access to intermediate goods and raw materials. The evaluation of the Colombian experience also raises concerns about the potential discretional use of these instruments. The relatively intense use of safeguards and anti-dumping measures in some specific periods and sectors, especially in the agricultural sector, shows that the institutional framework itself is not always enough to guarantee a disciplined use of the instruments.

### World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 3608, May 2005

_The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the view of the World Bank, its Executive Directors, or the_

> 1 This document has taken into account some points of view of a number of Colombian Government Officials and private sector representatives. We are grateful for these opinions.

1
Access to financial services: a
            review of the issues and public policy objectives
This paper reviews the evidence on the
            importance of finance for economic well-being, provides data
            on the degree of use of basic financial services by
            households and firms across a sample of countries, assesses
            the desirability of more universal access, and overviews the
            macroeconomic, legal, and regulatory obstacles to access
            using general evidence and case studies. Although access to
            finance can be very beneficial, the data show that universal
            use is far from prevalent in many countries, especially
            developing countries. At the same time, universal access has
            generally not been a public policy objective and is surely
            not easily achievable in most countries. Countries can,
            however, undertake many actions to facilitate access to
            financial services, including through strengthening their
            institutional infrastructures, liberalizing and opening up
            their markets and facilitating greater competition, and
            encouraging innovative use of know-how and technology.
            Government attempts and interventions to directly broaden
            the provision of access to finance, however, are fraught
            with risks and costs, among others, the risk of missing the
            targeted groups. The author concludes with possible global
            actions aimed at improving data on access and use, and areas
            for further analysis to help identify the constraints to
            broadening access.
Access to financial services: a
            review of the issues and public policy objectives
# WPS3589

## Access to Financial Services:

## A Review of the Issues and Public Policy Objectives

by Stijn Claessens Senior Adviser, World Bank Professor, University of Amsterdam

### **Abstract**

This paper reviews the evidence on the importance of finance for economic well-being, provides data on the degree of usage of basic financial services by households and firms across a sample of countries, assesses the desirability of more universal access, and overviews the macro-economic, legal and regulatory obstacles to access using general evidence and case studies. Although access to finance can be very beneficial, the data show that universal usage is far from prevalent in many countries, especially developing countries. At the same time, universal access has generally not been a public policy objective and is surely not easily achievable in most countries. Countries can, however, undertake many actions to facilitate access to financial services, including through strengthening their institutional infrastructures, liberalizing and opening up their markets and facilitating greater competition, and encouraging innovative use of know-how and technology. Government attempts and interventions to directly broaden the provision of access to finance, however, are fraught with risks and costs, among others, the risk of missing the targeted groups. The paper concludes with possible global actions aimed at improving data on access and usage and areas of further analysis to help identify the constraints to broadening access.

#### World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 3589, May 2005

_The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the view of the World Bank, its Executive Directors, or the countries they represent. Policy Research Working Papers are available online at http://econ.worldbank.org._ Paper presented at the Fifth Services Experts Meeting on Universal Access, Paris, February 3-4, 2005, organized by the OECD and the World Bank. The paper draws on material of Stephen Peachey and Alan Roe, and presentations by Priya Basu, Thorsten Beck, Patrick Honohan, Anjali Kumar, Tova Solo and others at the World Bank working on access to financial services. I would like to thank Asli DemirgucKunt, Aaditya Mattoo and meeting participants for very useful comments and Ying Lin for his research assistance. Contact: Stijn Claessens, Senior Adviser, Operations and Policy Department, Financial Sector Vice-Presidency, World Bank, 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20433, phone 1- 202-473-3484, secretary 1- 202-473-3722, fax 1-202-522-2031, Email sclaessens@worldbank.org.
Which inequality matters Growth
            evidence based on small area welfare estimates in Uganda
Existing empirical studies on the
            relation between inequality and growth have been criticized
            for their focus on income inequality and their use of
            cross-country data sets. Schipper and Hoogeveen use two sets
            of small area welfare estimates-often referred to as poverty
            maps-to estimate a model of rural per capita expenditure
            growth for Uganda between 1992 and 1999. They estimate the
            growth effects of expenditure and education inequality while
            controlling for other factors, such as initial levels of
            expenditure and human capital, family characteristics, and
            unobserved spatial heterogeneity. The authors correct
            standard errors to reflect the uncertainty due to the fact
            that they use estimates rather than observations. They find
            that per capita expenditure growth in rural Uganda is
            affected positively by the level of education as well as by
            the degree of education inequality. Expenditure inequality
            does not have a significant impact on growth.
Democratization and clientelism: why
            are young democracies badly governed
This paper identifies systematic
            performance differences between younger and older
            democracies: younger democracies are more corrupt; exhibit
            less rule of law, lower levels of bureaucratic quality, and
            lower secondary school enrollments; and spend more on public
            investment and government workers. Only one theory explains
            the effects of democratic age on the wide range of policy
            outcomes examined here-the inability of political
            competitors in younger democracies to make credible promises
            to citizens. This explanation, first advanced in Keefer and
            Vlaicu (2004), offers a concrete interpretation of what
            political institutionalization might mean, and why it is
            that young democracies frequently fail to become older and
            well-performing democracies. A variety of tests support this
            explanation against alternatives. The effect of democratic
            age remains large even after controlling for the
            possibilities that voters are less well-informed in young
            democracies, that young democracies have systematically
            different political and electoral institutions, or that
            young democracies exhibit more polarized societies.
The impact of regulation on growth
            and informality - cross-country evidence
The authors study the effects of
            regulation on economic growth and the relative size of the
            informal sector in a large sample of industrial and
            developing countries. Along with firm dynamics, informality
            is an important channel through which regulation affects
            macroeconomic performance and economic growth in particular.
            The authors conclude that a heavier regulatory
            burden-particularly in product and labor markets-reduces
            growth and induces informality. These effects are, however,
            mitigated as the overall institutional framework improves.
Finances of Egyptian listed firms
The author presents an analysis of the
            finances of Egyptian listed companies evaluating recent
            trends in growth and profitability during the 1995-2001
            period. The data from financial statements reveal the effect
            of the economic slowing of the past few years, especially in
            the construction and real estate sectors and especially in
            smaller companies. She finds that smaller firms appear to be
            less profitable and experience lower growth, likely because
            of being particularly adversely affected by many of the
            sources of the high costs of doing business in Egypt. While
            the Egyptian firms are not very highly leveraged on average,
            she finds that smaller firms have significantly less access
            to bank finance than larger firms do. This confirms the
            widely held view that there is a need to improve the
            availability of credit for small enterprises.
Finances of Egyptian listed firms
WPS3639

# **FINANCES OF EGYPTIAN LISTED FIRMS**

## **Inessa Love**<sup>**1**</sup>

### **Abstract**

This paper presents an analysis of the finances of Egyptian listed companies evaluating recent trends in growth and profitability during the 1995-2001 period. The data from financial statements reveal the effect of the economic slowing of the past few years, especially in the construction and real estate sectors and especially in smaller companies. We find that smaller firms appear to be less profitable and enjoy lower growth, likely because of being particularly adversely affected by many of the sources of the high costs of doing business in Egypt. While the Egyptian firms are not very highly leveraged on average, we find that smaller firms have significantly less access to bank finance than larger firms do. This confirms the widely held view that there is a need to improve the availability of credit for small enterprises.

### World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 3639, June 2005

_The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the view of the World Bank, its Executive Directors, or the countries they represent. Policy Research Working Papers are available online at http://econ.worldbank.org._

> 1 Inessa Love is with the World Bank, DECRG.  I thank Patrick Honohan for extremely helpful discussions and advice,  Sahar Nasr and the Capital Market Authority for assistance,  Abdel Meguid (CMA) for providing the data and Victor Sulla for excellent research assistance.
Growth spillover effects and
            regional development patterns : the case of Chinese provinces
The author discusses regional
            development patterns in China and examines effective ways of
            using development aid to attain regional balanced growth
            through optimizing growth spillover effects. Based on
            provincial panel data from 1978-99 she constructs an
            indicator "neighborhood performance" to measure
            the geographic spillover effects of aggregate growth from
            and to different provinces according to their relative
            richness and geographic position. Analysis of a Solow-type
            growth model suggests that positive spillover effects
            dominate negative shadow effects at the national level as
            well as the regional level, and some coastal provinces
            provide growth pull and growth push forces for their
            neighbors and serve as locomotives. The results show that
            the rapid takeoff of the coastal provinces has the largest
            spillover effects on the Chinese economy, but at the expense
            of a widening regional gap. A policy of encouraging the
            growth of the non-coastal regional hubs would have strong
            forward and backward linkages with the inland and western
            regions and thus reduce the regional development gap without
            sacrificing much aggregate growth. The author offers support
            for the policy of developing inland hubs, and argues that
            directing development aid to Hubei and Sichuan would
            optimize the growth spillover impacts on inland regions.
Governance in the gullies :
            democratic responsiveness and leadership in Delhi's slums
The authors use detailed ethnographic
            evidence to design and interpret a broad representative
            survey of 800 households in Delhi's slums, examining
            the processes by which residents gain access to formal
            government and develop their own informal modes of
            leadership. While ethnically homogeneous slums transplant
            rural institutions to the city, newer and ethnically diverse
            slums depend on informal leaders who gain their authority
            through political connections, education, and network
            entrepreneurship. Education and political affiliation are
            more important than seniority in determining a leader's
            influence. Informal leaders are accessible to all slum
            dwellers, but formal government figures are most accessed by
            the wealthy and the well-connected.
The Doha Round, poverty, and
            regional inequality in Brazil
This paper addresses the potential
            effects of the Doha round of trade negotiations on poverty
            and income distribution in Brazil, using an applied general
            equilibrium (AGE) and micro-simulation model of Brazil
            tailored for income distribution and poverty analysis. Of
            particular importance is the fact that the representative
            household hypothesis is replaced by a detailed
            representation of households. The model distinguishes 10
            different labor types and has 270 different household
            expenditure patterns. Income can originate from 41 different
            production activities (which produce 52 commodities),
            located in 27 different regions in the country. The AGE
            model communicates to a micro-simulation model that has
            112,055 Brazilian households and 263,938 adults. Poverty and
            income distribution indices are computed over the entire
            sample of households and persons, before and after the
            policy shocks. Model results show that even important trade
            policy shocks, such as those applied in this study, do not
            generate dramatic changes in the structure of poverty and
            income distribution in the Brazilian economy. The simulated
            effects on poverty and income distribution are positive, but
            rather small. The benefits are concentrated in the poorest households.
Key issues in trade facilitation :
            summary of World Bank/European Union workshops in Dhaka and
            Shanghai in 2004
Trade facilitation is the ability of
            countries to deliver goods and services on time at the
            lowest possible cost. It has emerged as an important issue
            in unilateral, bilateral, and multilateral trade
            liberalization. Most countries have embarked on heroic
            reforms aimed at reducing transaction costs of trade. Thus,
            among the four new Singapore issues, there was least
            resistance from World Trade Organization (WTO) member
            countries to include trade facilitation in the Doha Round
            discussions. However, all countries are not equally placed
            in initiating reforms in the complex areas of customs
            procedures, transport and port logistics, harmonization of
            standards, and simplification of procedures. Trade
            facilitation reforms require a large volume of technical
            assistance for national capacity building. To facilitate
            what these reforms entail and what can be learned from
            cross-country experiences, the EU and the World Bank
            organized two workshops in Dhaka (South Asian countries) and
            Shanghai (East Asian countries) in 2004. Jointly they
            succeeded in bringing together renowned experts from
            multilateral organizations, selected bilateral donor
            community, the private sector, ex civil servants, and
            scholars. The participants were largely drawn from the
            relevant government departments and chambers of commerce and
            industry. This paper summarizes the main presentations in
            the workshops. It also indicates the areas that need more
            focus in future events. The paper should serve as a
            reference document for national policymakers and for future
            seminars and workshops on trade facilitation. It has also
            linked the presentations to the ongoing research work on
            trade facilitation.
Services in a development round :
            three goals and three proposals
The benefits of services trade reform
            are huge but services negotiations in the World Trade
            Organization (WTO) are making little progress. A proximate
            cause is the current negotiating process, based on an
            inertial request-and-offer approach rather than a set of
            goals that would give direction and momentum to the
            negotiations. The paper suggests that WTO members should
            consider: (1) locking in the current openness of
            cross-border trade for a wide range of services; (2)
            eliminating barriers to foreign investment either
            immediately or in a phased manner where regulatory
            inadequacies need to be remedied; and (3) allowing greater
            freedom of international movement at least for
            intra-corporate transferees and for service providers to
            fulfill specific services contracts. A deeper problem is
            that WTO members have sought to negotiate market access in
            services without adequately addressing concerns that the
            General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) commitments
            limit regulatory freedom unduly and unpredictably, that
            regulatory institutions in many countries are too weak to
            cope with liberalized markets, and that there is no
            provision for the regulatory cooperation that is necessary
            for successful liberalization, particularly of temporary
            labor mobility. Three types of actions are needed: (1) at
            the current stage of its development, the GATS must focus
            primarily on disciplines for measures that discriminate
            against foreign services and providers, rather than on
            politically sensitive and legally complex rules for
            nondiscriminatory measures; (2) a credible assistance
            mechanism must be established to help developing countries
            make the regulatory improvements needed for successful
            liberalization; and (3) where necessary, WTO members should
            make access commitments on labor mobility conditional on the
            fulfillment of specific conditions by source countries-to
            screen services providers, accept and facilitate their
            return, and combat illegal migration.
International cooperation and the
            reform of public procurement policies
The decision not to launch negotiations
            in the World Trade Organization (WTO) on three of the
            Singapore Issues in the so-called July 2004 package provides
            an opportunity to revisit the knowledge base on which
            proposals for further international collective action may be
            drawn. This paper examines the available evidence on public
            procurement practices in developing countries that could be
            relevant to further multilateral rule making on state
            purchasing. Although there is considerable agreement on ends
            (efficient, non-corrupt, and transparent public purchasing
            systems), little information is available on means and, in
            particular, on the effective and replicable strategies that
            developing countries can adopt to improve their public
            procurement systems. A concerted effort to substantially add
            to the knowledge base on public procurement reforms in
            developing countries, through targeted research and
            international exchange of information on implemented
            procurement policies and outcomes, is critical to
            identifying areas where further binding multilateral
            disciplines may be beneficial.