Partnering on legal & regulatory reforms to drive economic growth and jobs

Investors don’t walk away from opportunity. They walk away from uncertainty. In many developing economies, unclear regulations, unpredictable enforcement, and legal risk can stop investment before it starts — and when investment stalls, so do jobs. Jobs are the surest path out of poverty, which is why job creation is the centerpiece of the World Bank Group’s development strategy.

The challenge is more urgent than ever: In the coming decade, 1.2 billion young people will reach working age in developing countries—but fewer than half that number of jobs are projected to be created. Closing that gap requires private sector investment to support the private firms and entrepreneurs that create nearly 90 percent of all jobs. Above all else, it requires investor confidence.

Investors look for four things: market opportunity, rules they can understand, institutions they can trust, and risks they can manage. When those conditions are missing — or simply in doubt — capital goes elsewhere and so do jobs. Shaping a business environment that promotes investment is therefore an indispensable pillar of job creation. At the center of this is the legal system — the rules, institutions, and processes that enact, implement, and apply laws and regulations fairly, efficiently, predictably, transparently, ethically and with accountability. When these work well, investment follows. When they don’t, even strong market opportunities go untapped. It is critical, then, for emerging economies to create legal and regulatory environments that boost investor confidence with clear rules and predictable outcomes, managed by government institutions — administrative, regulatory, and judicial — with competence and integrity.

Our Indispensable Partners: Ministers of Justice and Attorneys General

As we advance our Jobs agenda, the World Bank Group (WBG) collaborates with a wide range of key partners to help shape better policy dialogue, strategies, plans, and outcomes. No partners are more important to this work than Ministers of Justice, Attorneys General, and other senior legal leadership in our member countries.

As the chief legal officers in their governments, Ministers of Justice and Attorneys General (MOJs/AGs) lead their countries’ legal and regulatory regimes and many of the systems and processes of their application and enforcement. They advise their governments on policies and regulations generally, and on projects specifically. They are responsible for drafting national laws and implementing regulatory frameworks. Their responsibilities and decisions affect everything from business registrations and licensing to contract enforcement and dispute resolution — and ultimately the administration of justice that underpins public and investor trust. Equally importantly, they bring the accumulated institutional knowledge and leadership needed to put policy and reform commitments into practice.

Building on the successful gathering of MOJs/AGs at our Law, Justice and Development Week 2025, the WBG’s Legal Department is proud to launch the Attorneys General Public/Private Partnerships Accelerating Collaboration & Transformation (PACT) Forum. This new series of regional engagements will convene MOJs/AGs to discuss and identify specific collaborative engagements aimed at creating business-enabling environments in countries and the sectors identified by their countries as development priorities.

Our first PACT forum takes place May 5-7, 2026, in Kigali, Rwanda, co-hosted with the Ministry of Justice and Office of the Attorney General for the Republic of Rwanda, under the leadership of the Hon. Emmanuel Ugirashebuja.

Aligned to Support Job Creation

The PACT initiative is well-aligned with the WBG’s three-pillar jobs strategy:

1. Investing in the foundational physical and human infrastructure that is so critical to job creation — from roads, ports, electricity, and digital access to healthcare, nutrition, education, and skilling.
2. Supporting policy and regulatory reforms that establish an enabling environment — including a favorable legal ecosystem that underpins investor confidence and encourages business creation, investment, and expansion.
3. Mobilizing private investment at scale by providing capital, equity, guarantees, and political risk insurance.

Anchored on these pillars, the WBG is drawing on expertise and input from a wide range of partners. We engage our member countries in policy dialogue to inform their development priorities to achieve their objectives — our country-led approach to development. We then support those priorities with knowledge, data analytics, financing, and investment, advice, and capacity-building.

Leveraging Knowledge and Advisory Services for the Legal Last Mile

This work draws on expertise across the WBG, combining country knowledge, private sector insight, and data-driven analysis.

• Country-based teams that foster close relationships with client countries and market participants and are repositories for on-the-ground knowledge and expertise of sectors, prospects, practices, and opportunities.
• IFC and MIGA, the WBG’s private sector arms, who understand clients’ demands, market prospects, financing and investment structures and risk assessment.
• Economists and specialists throughout the WBG in the key sectors that generate the most jobs: energy, transport, agriculture, tourism, value-added manufacturing, healthcare, and education.
• Data and analytics from our Knowledge Bank and knowledge resources throughout the institutions of the WBG, including a wide array of WBG knowledge, diagnostic, and knowledge reports — such as the Business Ready Report (B-Ready) — that provide data-driven insights and direction.

The WBG’s Legal Teams also regularly engage with stakeholders and peers from other Multilateral Development Banks, nongovernmental organizations, United Nations agencies, academic institutions, and civil society to draw from global experiences and perspectives and to coordinate on approaches, harness collective resources, and enhance our capacities for efficient delivery. Newly launched private sector advisory councils comprised of market participants also provide on-the-ground insights into investment opportunities, challenges, and solutions.

Based on these knowledge resources and engagements, our legal teams are developing diagnostic tools to help countries identify the legal and regulatory barriers that discourage investment, the specific reforms most likely to address them, the actual impact of those reforms, if implemented, and the likelihood of success in achieving them.

Advancing the Way Forward Together

Legal reform rarely makes headlines. But its effects do: in businesses that open, in contracts that get honored, in investors who invest, and in jobs that are created. None of this happens without the Ministers of Justice and Attorneys General who set the rules, drive their application, and drive reform and results from the inside. Their partnership — and their ownership of this agenda — is indispensable to our shared mission, and will largely determine the success of our goal of ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity on a livable planet.

Source: blogs.worldbank.org