While the neoliberal focus has been on attempts to “shrink the state” on the grounds of corruption and inefficiency, sensible people have long recognised that high levels of public employment tend to be associated with better quality of life for…
With India’s development strategy relying increasingly on private investors across industrial and infrastructural categories, the question of how private investment would be financed has moved to centre stage. This question has gained in significance not merely because areas earlier reserved…
Facebook has launched a process that would lead to the creation of a new cryptocurrency, “Libra”, in the first half of 2020. Named after a unit of weight used in ancient Rome, Facebook hopes Libra would become the dominant measure…
India’s financial sector is in the midst of a second crisis, even as the first in the form of a humungous mass of non-performing assets on the books of commercial banks remains unresolved. This time the problem is not of…
In the past decade, talk of “currency manipulation” has become a frequent trope in discussions of international trade. Much of this stems from the US government’s aggressive position on the bilateral trade deficits the US has with several countries, and…
The tariff war with China unleashed more than a year back by the Trump administration threatens to turn into full-fledged economic war. The US claims that China is engaging in unfair trade practices and adopting coercive measures against US firms,…
World trade is in deceleration mode. After having recovered smartly from 2.3 and 1.6 per cent in 2015 and 2016 to 4.6 per cent in 2017, the growth in the volume of world merchandise trade slowed to 3.0 per cent…
As if all the bad news from the domestic economy were not enough, foreign trade data suggest worrisome trends on the external front as well. The latest report of monthly trade data from the Ministry of Commerce and Industry indicates…
With China having successfully convened the second Belt and Road Forum in Beijing late April, discussions on the significance, impact and sustainability of this ill-defined, even if tangible, effort at economic diplomacy have revived. That effort is the Belt and…
On May 2, the Trump administration brought to an end the waiver the US had granted eight countries, including India, of sanctions on imports of oil from Iran. Having pulled out of the 2015 multi-country agreement with Iran to limit…
