Gold Chain

 The outcome of recently held 12th Ministerial Conference of World Trade Organisation  in Geneva is worth discussing. Unlike the World Bank or IMF WTO does not delegate power to Board of Directors or Organisational Chief. Instead all decisions of the WTO  are taken collectively through consensus. Ministerial Conference is the highest policy making body of WTO which normally meets once in every two years and take decisions on all matters related to multilateral trade issues and agreements. Representatives of 164 countries who took part in the meeting could make some breakthrough in matters relating to Covid19  vaccines, fishing, food security and e-commerce.  12th Ministerial Conference decided to permit developing  countries with the capacity to manufacture and export Covid19 vaccines without patent holders consent.But the flexibilities comes with lots of conditions. The resolution in TRIPS  restricts the waiver in patents to Covid19 vaccines only for ...

Stagflation is a situation where growth of the economy in terms of output of goods and services slows down drastically and the levels of inflation, price level and unemployment shoots  up at the same time. In the early 1970s when OPEC  (Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries) a cartel  like organisation, cut oil production and increased it's prices several fold world faced an unprecedented crisis constraining the productive capacity of most economies that were heavily dependent on oil imports hampering their economic growth. On the other hand the oil price spike also led to inflation and push in costs and prices of commodities and services , leading to stagflation.  In recent years combined effects of Covid19 and Russian  invasion of Ukraine has accelerated the slow down in global economy which is already suffering from the phase of protracted feeble growth and elevated inflation. According to World Bank this raises the risk of stagflation with potentiall...

 When global institutions like World Bank  slashed India's GDP growth projection from 8.5% to 7.5% for 2022-23,OECD projected 6.9% and Reserve Bank of India estimated it to be 7.2% mainly due to inflationary pressures and global economic conditions.After recording the strongest GDP output  growth among  the G 20 nations in 2021-22, the Indian economy is progressively losing momentum as inflationary  expectations remain elevated due to rising global energy,food and commodity prices,monetary policy normalisation and emerging geo political tensions due to Russia Ukraine war.According to RBI estimate assuming normal monsoons and crude oil price of India basket of $105 per barrel inflation based on consumer price index was projected above tolerance limit in 2022-23 at 6.7%, with in Q1 at 7.5% ,Q2 at 7.4% ,Q3 at 6.2% and Q4 at 5.8% with risks evenly balanced.About 75% of the increase in inflation projections could be attributed to the food group.The recent spike in to...

 The provisional estimate of India's GDP(sum total of value of goods and services produced annually) growth released by NSO for the year 2021-22 showed that GDP has grown by 8.7%.Quarter wise estimate showed that Quarter one Q1 recorded highest 20.1%,followed by Q2 8.4%,Q3 5.4%,and Q4 4.1%.Globally country wise estimate indicated that India is the fastest growing major economy of the world relegating China to a backward position. Sector wise growth in India showed that agriculture sector which performed 3.3% growth in 2020-21 maintained 3% in 2021-22,whereas industrial sector which witnessed negative growth of-3.3% in 2020-21 recorded 10.6% growth in 2021-22 by virtue of base effect.Similarly service sector which also experienced negative growth rate of-7.8% in 2020-21 achieved 8.4% in 2021-22.But it may be noted here that India's growth rate declined to a four quarter low of 4.1%in January March 2022 period due to Russia Ukraine war that inflated prices of fuels, food,and othe...