Economy

Few sectors of the economy have so much bearing on people's lives as the textiles and apparel industry has. It touches as many lives as the food sector does – for no one stops eating, or for that matter wearing clothes; yet, it goes on up on food considering the sheer spread of the sector and its long-drawn supply chain that has an over-arching effect on innumerable other sectors of the economy. The scale of the industry is so enormous and overlapping with other sectors, and its supply-chain so...

If a Union Budget is supposed to be not just a document of numbers, but a precursor to the shape of policy initiatives to come, then the 2015-16 Budget presented by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley needs to be seen as a recipe for unmitigated disaster. There is nothing wrong with a government that calls for economic growth; after all, everyone wants to have a better life. But when policy initiatives pave the way for a flagrant and unrepentant exploitation of natural resources and turns a Nelson’s...

If the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government was still looking for obvious signs of a slowdown, it cannot get find another better than this one. India's new car sales in October fell the most in more than a decade in the face of rising fuel costs, expensive loans, and prolonged inflationary pressures. Sales of passenger cars were down 23.8 per cent, while production dropped 28.1 per cent when compared to the same period last year, according to the Society of Indian Automobile...

Food prices in India continue to rise when when international prices are stable because of the failure of domestic food management, wherein temporary shortages have led to price spikes, the Interntional Labour Organization (ILO) has said. Over the past two years wholesale food prices have increased by 40 per cent much more than during the mid-1990s and 2004, and the retail food prices have increased faster, the ILO said at the release of World of Work Report 2011: Making markets work for jobs...

As much as 227 million hectares – an area the size of Western Europe – have been sold, leased or licensed in largescale land deals in the developing world since 2001, mostly by international investors. This modern-day land rush follows a drive to produce enough food for people overseas, meet damaging biofuels targets or speculate on land to make an easy profit, an Oxfam International study ‘Land and Power: The growing scandal surrounding the new wave of investments in land’ has warned. Most of...

The Indian government has commissioned an in-depth study to estimate unaccounted income and wealth being held within and outside India. This study, engaging three institutions, aims to bring out the nature of activities that encourage money laundering and its ramifications on national security. The study has already been in progress since March this year, and is expected to be completed within a period of 18 months. The study, according to an official release, is being undertaken by the National...

Critics of the Indian government's liberation policies and globalisation watchword now have some more numbers to nail the government with. India lost $104 billion in illicit financial flows between 2000 and 2008, according to a groundbreaking report which used World Bank and IMF data to estimate the quantity and patterns of illicit financial flows coming out of developing countries. The figures are from Global Financial Integrity (GFI)'s Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries 2000...

In a country where corruption is commonplace, quantifying it in terms of numbers is anybody's guess. There can be many indicators; one ofthem being the illegal outflow of capital. A US-based organisation has just done that. Tax evasion, crime, and corruption, it says, removed gross illicit assets from India worth US $462 billion between 1948 and 2002. The Drivers and Dynamics of Illicit Financial Flows from India: 1948-2008 report released Wednesday by nonprofit Global Financial Integrity (GFI)...

The world is today a much wealthier place than it was 10 years ago. The Global Wealth Report says the global wealth currently held by 4.4 billion adults has increased 72 percent since 2000 to reach $195 trillion. The inaugural report by the Credit Suisse Research Institute, launched in Zurich on Friday, global wealth will grow 61 per cent to reach $315 trillion in another five years. The report defines wealth as the value of financial assets and non-financial assets (mainly real estate), minus...

The amount of deals in the international arms market has dropped drastically in the aftermath of the financial crisis. A new report has concluded that the value of worldwide arms deals in 2009 was $57.5 billion, a drop of 8.5 percent from 2008. The major arms suppliers worldwide are the US, Russia and Germany, the three countries alone accounting for close to 60 percent of all deliveries. The figures come from a recent report of the Congressional Research Service (CRS), a division of the Library...