Kosovo Human Development Report 2010 - UNDP Kosovo - United ...

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have been compounded by the ongoing poor performance of the energy sector. Business cannot thrive in a climate of frequent and unpredictable power outages. The business environment also continues to suffer from many weaknesses of policy and regulatory practices. In the World Bank Doing Business Report 2009 Kosovo was ranked as the 113 th country out of 183 countries. The report emphasized Kosovo’s problems in dealing with the post-registration phase of starting a business, which includes operational licensing and a variety of permits (ranking 164 th ), construction permits (ranking 176 th ), and contract enforcement (ranking 157 th ). 53 Low productivity in agriculture sector: the agriculture sector, which along with food processing, is considered to have a comparative advantage and growth potential, remains disorganized and is characterised by average small land plots, inefficient production practices, low factor productivity, and limited income generation. As a result, many smallholder farmers remain mired in poverty. The average farm size utilized in Kosovo is about 1.4 hectares normally spread over multiple plots. This farm structure leads to subsistence farming and prevents the sector from meeting its production potential. Agricultural productivity and yields are low in small farming. Combined with the low access to technical assistance and lack of credit, agricultural farming is performed with inadequate use of inputs as well as outdated farming and management practices. Inadequate and untargeted social protection: the current social protection system in Kosovo consists of 40 | KOSOVO HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2010 a narrowly targeted social assistance benefit and a network of social work centres that provide counselling and referral services to individuals and families at risk (young offenders, orphans, victims of domestic violence, etc.), as well as a three-pillar pension system comprising a flat-rate basic pension, a mandatory advance funded scheme and a voluntary enterprise-based scheme. The pension system is complemented by special schemes for war invalids, early retirement to support restructuring in the mining sector and a recently introduced disability pension. In Kosovo, the social protection system is far from fulfilling its main function which is protection against deprivation. The World Bank calculates that in the absence of the social assistance, poverty would be higher by about 2 percentage points; whereas in the absence of pensions poverty would be higher by about 4 percentage points. 54 This is largely because the current social protection system is characterised by very limited benefits, and low coverage of the poor. The current policy defines two categories eligible for social assistance: Category One households are those without any member of the family capable of working, and Category Two households are those with only one member capable of working who is registered as unemployed with the Public Employment Service (PES) and is actively seeking work, and with at least one child under the age of 5 or an orphan under the age of 15. The pension system in Kosovo is also far from adequate – seen as a symbolic gesture to Kosovo’s 138,900 elderly. As a flatrate system, it makes very limited distinction between length and amount of contribution. A household with
more than half of its members who are elderly faces a poverty risk of 62.3 percent higher than all other household categories. The cash benefits provided to social assistance beneficiaries are insufficient to bring them out of poverty. The minimum social assistance is 35 EUR for one family member and 75 EUR for families with seven or more members (see table 2.6), while the average salary in Kosovo is about 250 EUR. Overall, the average amount of money poor families receive per month in Kosovo is approximately 60 EUR (14 EUR per member of the family). A person living on social assistance in Kosovo has in average 0.46 EUR per day to live on. This scheme was introduced in 2003 and has not changed despite social stagnation and persistent poverty. The low benefits provided to social assistance beneficiaries are a result of limited funds dedicated for this segment. Kosovo’s public expenditure on social protection as a percentage of GDP is the lowest in the region, with only 3.7 percent of the GDP or 12.7 percent of total institutional expenditures allocated for social protection. Furthermore, the current social protection system is characterised by low coverage of the poor. The social protection system does not reach over 75 percent of the poor and has reinforced dependency and the status quo. Only 34 percent of those who are being reached by social protection transfers are extremely poor. Targeting in the social assistance system is relatively weak and currently about a third of social assistance recipients are non-poor. Social protection is focused at the level of household, where the employment status of family members is the main factor deter- mining their eligibility and amounts of social assistance. Such a narrow set of criteria does not do justice to people in need of government support. Table 2.6 Levels of social assistance Family size Social assistance in EUR One member 35 Two members 50 Three members 55 Four members 60 Five members 65 Six members 70 Seven and more 75 Source: Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare 2.3 Who is affected by economic and labour market exclusion? (i) Groups excluded from all factor markets (by location, education, ethnicity and gender). Exclusion from all factor markets is a largely urban phenomenon. The excluded are mainly concentrated in urban areas, specifically in secondary towns. Education levels correspond inversely to levels of exclusion. Kosovo-RAE groups are also associated with higher-than-average exclusion rates. There are major gender disparities in exclusion from all market factors, with women much more likely to be excluded from employment and business ownership. Location: the residents of all towns except for the capital Prishtinë/Priština have higher incidence of exclusion from factor markets than the overall Kosovo rate. This can be explained by the fact that the majority of households living in villages own arable land, while households in the capital Prishtinë/Priština have better access to labour markets. ECONOMIC AND LABOUR MARKET EXCLUSION | 41
Page 1: The views expressed in this report
Page 4 and 5: VI specific difficulties that group
Page 7 and 8: Abbreviations ALMP Active Labour Ma
Page 9 and 10: The UN’s Human Development Report
Page 11 and 12: agents without any true sense of ow
Page 13: Contents Foreword .................
Page 16 and 17: to its society. A dramatic effort t
Page 18 and 19: entated basis for examination of so
Page 20 and 21: services. The chapter examines spec
Page 22 and 23: Table 1.1 Low income and the launch
Page 24 and 25: Ineffective institutional support m
Page 26 and 27: 1 2 3 4 “The basic purpose of dev
Page 28 and 29: Table Human Development Index (HDI)
Page 31 and 32: CHAPTER 2 Economic and labour marke
Page 33 and 34: managed to increase its public expe
Page 35 and 36: absence of material well-being and
Page 37: not protect from exclusion from goo
Page 41 and 42: FIGURe 75 percent of male youth age
Page 43 and 44: Education: the probability of exclu
Page 45 and 46: lower access to services than urban
Page 47 and 48: contract enforcement and privatizat
Page 49 and 50: produce a high risk of social exclu
Page 51 and 52: 3.1 Access to education and exclusi
Page 53 and 54: ns of exclusion as well the composi
Page 55 and 56: sive education depends on deep coop
Page 57 and 58: point these groups more precisely,
Page 59 and 60: FIGURe 3.2 2004/05 2006/07 Grade 1
Page 61 and 62: Kosova Education Centre (KEC) was i
Page 63 and 64: learning in its legislative framewo
Page 65 and 66: 4.1 CHAPTER 4 Health care services
Page 67 and 68: ported deaths. However, Kosovo face
Page 69 and 70: the same levels of difficulties as
Page 71 and 72: to healthcare. For many, it is simp
Page 73 and 74: 4.4 Promoting inclusion in healthca
Page 75 and 76: 5.1 Political participation and exc
Page 77 and 78: for all Kosovans, the level of publ
Page 79 and 80: the Department for Registration and
Page 81 and 82: were women. 188 In minority communi
Page 83 and 84: with the mayor and his job, two thi
Page 85 and 86: Table 5.6 % of respondents attendin
Page 87: public meetings are not always the
Page 90 and 91:
• and created Human Development S
Page 92 and 93:
tion against certain ethnic groups
Page 94 and 95:
passes poor health and education va
Page 96 and 97:
and cross-ministerial collaboration
Page 98 and 99:
to the success of this scheme, by,
Page 100 and 101:
The under-five infant mortality rat
Page 103 and 104:
Human Development Index according t
Page 105 and 106:
Introduction 1 Preparing for a futu
Page 107 and 108:
65 USAID and Swiss Cooperation Offi
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gagement.pdf. 156 See Civic Capacit
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