The contours of the economic, political and humanitarian crises that Sri Lanka currently faces are now well known. With limited economic diversification, it has for long been an open economy that has found it difficult to earn the foreign exchange…
The latest IPCC report makes it clear: the planet is now dangerously close to a tipping point and reliance on fossil fuels has to be drastically curtailed and even fully eliminated soon, to avoid catastrophic climate changes. Obviously, this urgent…
Global inflation, the launch of a monetary tightening cycle in the US with increased interest rates, depreciating exchange rates and the fall out of the war in Ukraine, are forcing many countries to borrow their way out of balance of…
Inflation has become a problem in India once again, well before it emerged globally and in the advanced countries as a major concern. In India, inflation rates of 6 per cent and above were evident even during the pandemic collapse,…
Following Russia’s irrational and devastating invasion of Ukraine, global energy markets have been in turmoil. Russia is the third largest producer of oil in the world and, more importantly, the world’s largest exporter of oil and gas and the second…
It is obvious that the Covid-19 pandemic has had a deep, searing impact on the Indian economy, in terms of both total economic activity and livelihoods. It is true that the economy had been struggling for several years before then,…
In her budget speech 2022, the finance minister claimed that the centre pieces of the budgets for both the current financial year (2021-22) and the next (2022-23) are sharp increases in capital expenditure driven by enhanced public investment. That expenditure…
India is an outlier in terms of low government spending during the pandemic, as we noted last month in an earlier article. Unlike advanced economies and even most developing and emerging market economies, the Indian government did not ramp up…
In recent years, when the economy as a whole performed poorly, reports on how old and new businesspersons accumulated huge volumes of wealth in short timespans have been commonplace. There is also evidence that conspicuous consumption is on the rise.…
Through out the continuing pandemic, the Indian government’s fiscal reticence has made it a significant outlier in the world. Advanced economies have gone all out in terms of expanded public spending. Their governments quickly abandoned the (flawed) arguments about the…
