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The Arab Spring holds the promise of improved living standards and a more prosperous future for the peoples of the Middle East and North Africa region. At the same time, the region is witnessing uncertainty and economic pressures from domestic and external sources, which will likely be exacerbated by the recent worsening of the global economy. The main challenge in the short term will be to manage expectations while maintaining economic stability. To that end, better-targeted subsidies and transfers will help free up resources for investment in infrastructure, education, and health. Policies aimed at fostering inclusive growth will also help cement the longer-term benefits of the ongoing changes in the region. In the Caucasus and Central Asia, the economic outlook is broadly positive. Exports and remittances--key growth drivers in 2010--are continuing to grow solidly, helping the recovery gain firm momentum. At the same time, uncertainties over the robustness of the global recovery constitute a downside risk to the growth outlook. Key challenges facing the region over the medium term are to create jobs and foster high and inclusive growth.

In recent years, the IMF has released a growing number of reports and other documents covering economic and financial developments and trends in member countries.

Rapid urbanization and economic growth, new demographic trends, and climate change are key challenges that developing countries must face as they strive to meet growing energy demand. The main objectives of this study are to offer: (a) a global taxonomy of the economic and financial incentives provided by renewable support schemes and (b) an economic modeling of the sustainability and affordability of such support schemes. In an attempt to contribute to the lively debate, this study provides a global taxonomy of the economic and financial incentives provided by renewable energy (RE) support schemes. It summarizes economic models of the sustainability and affordability of such support schemes, alongside operational advice on how the regulatory design may need to be modified to minimize the impact on the budget and be affordable to the poor, as well as how to identify and fill the financing gap. This analytical framework: (a) differentiates and illustrates tradeoffs among local, regional, and national impacts, in the short and long run; (b) captures distributional impacts (since subsidies to cover the incremental costs of RE may have very different beneficiaries); and (c) captures externalities and compares (where possible) alternative projects based on equivalent output and cost (comparing, for example, RE and energy efficiency projects against those using fossil fuels). The report is organized as follows: chapter one gives introduction. Chapter two presents the analytical framework that underpins the case studies, and provides the background for the principal research hypothesis of this report, which is better attention to the principles of economic analysis and market efficiency leads to more sustainable and effective policies. Chapters three to ten present country case studies for Vietnam, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Tanzania, Egypt, Brazil, and Turkey. The conclusions of the study are presented in chapter eleven.

The wind regime in Colombia has been rated among the best in South America. However, under the current circumstances, and on its own, the interconnected system would not likely promote wind power. This report is targeted to analysts, planners, operators, generators and decision makers in Colombia and other countries in the region and provides a set of policy options to promote the use of wind power. The potential instruments assessed in this study include financial instruments, government fiscal mechanisms, and adjustments to the regulatory system. The single most effective policy instrument to promote wind power in Colombia consists on valuing the firm energy offered by wind, its potential complementarity to the hydrological regime and enabling wind power an access to reliability payments.