India's civil service retirement benefit system, based on a defined benefit scheme, imposed an annual expenditure of over $30 billion on the central and state governments. In an effort to truncate the unfunded scheme, which covers 30 million central and state government employees, the Government of India in 2004 decided to replace the traditional defined benefit scheme with a defined contributory scheme known as the New Pension Scheme. This ...
The Pacific Approach of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) places good governance at the heart of the development agenda and identifies public sector management as an important driver of change. This study, prepared as a background for the Pacific Approach, reviews recent literature and analysis on the state’s role in the development of Pacific developing member countries, and suggests priorities for future support by ADB and its development partn ...
Income insecurity in old age is likely to be one key cause of increased poverty in South Asia, and setting up systems to avert this crisis should be a central public policy goal of each country. Several countries in the region are therefore beginning to evaluate a range of policy options for pension reforms. Given the remarkable similarity of each country in terms of demography, labor markets, and political structures, lessons from both success ...
The rising number of older persons in Asia has accentuated the importance of strengthening the systems of social protection in the region. This book examines the effectiveness and relevance of noncontributory or social pensions in supporting older persons in Asia. It discusses the political economy and financial sustainability of social pension reform, implications for gender equity and social rights, and design and implementation challenges. Ca ...
Conditional cash transfer (CCT), which was initiated in 2007, is becoming a centerpiece of the social protection system in the Philippines. This note reviews economic rationales for transferring a cash grant to the poor contingent on their certain behavior, major challenges in designing a CCT program, targeting methodologies, and impact evaluation designs, to show how the Philippines’ CCT program is designed to resolve major difficulties in its ...
Local financial institutions represent the best choices in the financial system for small and medium-sized enterprises and farming households. Government agencies in the People's Republic of China (PRC) have proposed policies that would relax market entry criteria and allow the creation of diversified rural financial institutions. These measures will help improve PRC's financial market structure, promote better rural financial services ...
In December 2004, a seaquake shook the Indian Ocean, producing a powerful tsunami. The greatest damage occurred in Indonesia, nearest the quake's epicenter. The Asian Development Bank responded with a $290 million grant under the Earthquake and Tsunami Emergency Support Project. Housing accounted for more of this grant than any other sector. While this book focuses on housing, more broadly it is about how implementing post-disaster projects ...
This report aims to summarize the current state of poverty in Sri Lanka by tracing its causes and recommending policies. Special attention is paid to human development issues in the conflict-affected areas. The ongoing conflict in the north and east remains both the principal cause for poverty and the most binding constraint to human development in Sri Lanka. ...
Population aging poses two major challenges for Asian policy makers: (i) sustaining rapid economic growth in the face of less favorable demographic conditions; and (ii) providing affordable, adequate, sustainable old-age income support for a large and growing elderly population. This book explores the second issue by examining the pension systems of eight countries in East and Southeast Asia: the People's Republic of China, Indonesia, the R ...
