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This report provides a review of the Armenian mining sector, and assesses its potential to contribute to sustainable economic growth and development. Based on the findings, it provides recommendations for initiatives and actions for the future development of the sector. The report was produced in the period October 2015 to April 2016. It was commissioned by the World Bank with the aim to assist the Armenian government to gain a better understanding of key social and environmental challenges and future opportunities for the Armenian Mining Sector; and to support the development of a minerals strategy which is line with international good practices and which contributes to sustainable development. The findings are based on: desktop reviews of existing documents; a large number of meetings and interviews with affected and interested stakeholders; field work performed in the main mining districts of Armenia; stakeholder workshops. Comments, suggestions and corrections on a draft version of this report has been provided by representatives of the GoA, and the World Bank. Further, oversight and feedback was continuously provided by representatives of the World Bank.

Land rights and the systems that administer them can vary significantly across the world and within countries (World Bank 2003). For a number of reasons, land rights may be unclear or insecure. Securing land rights plays an important role in driving economic growth and poverty reduction. In recent years there has been increasing awareness of the relevance of land tenure issues to food security, climate change, rapid urbanization, informality, and indigenous peoples’ rights. The World Bank Group has a long history of developing and implementing projects aimed at securing land rights through a variety of interventions. This note synthesizes cross-cutting findings from 14 Independent Evaluation Group assessments of land administration projects that the World Bank has supported from 1998 to 2014. The project-level assessments reviewed for this report contain a wealth of information about how the Bank Group approached different problems related to strengthening land administration systems in diverse environments. This information is relevant to both land administration specialists and experts in other fields whose work is impacted by land tenure issues.

Ethiopia has many advantages as a destination for mining investment. These include promising geology, a well-designed fiscal regime, stable government and a growing domestic market. Additionally, it has a well-managed and successful artisanal and small scale mining sector. Under the second phase of Ethiopia’s Growth and Transformation Plan, Ethiopia has the ambitious target for the mining sector to contribute 10% of GDP by 2025. Ethiopia must overcome significant challenges to achieve this target. These challenges range across simplifying the licensing regime, developing its investment promotion efforts and clarifying institutional responsibilities for social and environmental management to enhancing stakeholder engagement in the governance of the sector.

This report provides a baseline institutional and regulatory assessment of the oil and gas, mining (including jade and gemstones) and the hydropower sectors in Myanmar. As such the report is an input to Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) in Myanmar. However, it is not exhaustive with respect to all the sectors that may be considered under a scoping study for EITI .This report is the first in-depth study of the context within which EITI will be implemented in Myanmar, and can inform broader efforts to improve natural resource governance. This includes support for developing natural resource policy, law and regulations, fiscal regime design, tax administration (including support to the Large Tax Payers Office on the extractive industries sector), license management and cadaster systems, community development agreements, strategic environmental and social mitigation and management, training needs assessments and capacity building. The follow-up to this baseline assessment is a scoping study, which will determine which companies should be included within the first MEITI report and what payment flows they will need to report on.