A majority of trade-restrictive measures taken by countries in response to the Covid-19 pandemic have been rolled back as at May 2021, according to the latest ‘Trade Policy Review’ by the WTO Director General. This is a revealing insight at a time when Sri Lanka continues with trade-restrictive measures undertaken since March last year. Since … Continue reading Trade Tip ...
Tight container capacity and hikes in long-haul freight rates are becoming a defining feature of trade in 2021 so far. While earlier it seemed to be more concentrated on the East Asia-US routes, it is now beginning to pinch in South Asia too, according to latest insights. Hapag-Lloyd has announced a General Rate Increase (GRI) … Continue reading TRADE TIP ...
A new index by Moody’s Analytics and CNN provide a quick and useful snapshot of the economic recovery in the US – one of the most important economies for Sri Lanka from an export market perspective. The index, called the ‘Back to Normal Index’ measures the recovery in economic activity today, from a baseline of … Continue reading TRADE TIP ...
I’ve been looking for alternative data points that signal economic recovery and activity normalization in key advanced markets, especially those that matter for Sri Lanka (US, UK, EU). One such data source is from OpenTable, an online platform for restaurant reservations. They have a great ‘state of the industry’ data set, which tracks seated dining … Continue reading TRADE TIP ...
While a low interest rate regime helps MSMEs get cheaper credit to weather the Covid crisis, it also drives higher income folks looking for better investment options to invest in the property market. The latest CBSL condominium survey provides some interesting insights on one part of the property market – apartments/condominiums. In Q1 2021, a … Continue reading Low Interest ...
In 2019 I was invited by the German FNF to attend a visiting program on ‘Digital Transformation and ICT-centric Innovation’ with other South Asians in Berlin and Munich. I recently came across some notes from the visit, and thought of sharing some extracts of these on the blog. There are challenges faced in German society … Continue reading European Approaches ...
– With the expansion in economic activity, Asia’s exports to the US and Western Europe have soared in recent months, with countries across ASEAN like Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines seeing strong export growth in electronics, consumer, and other non-oil sectors. Vietnam grew its exports by 30% YoY during Jan-Apr, – This has also created bottlenecks … Continue reading TRADE TIP ...
Sri Lanka has had 3 successive years of economic shocks – the Easter Sunday attacks in April 2019, nearly exactly a year later the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, and then a year after that the outbreak of the deadly third wave of Covid-19. It is not surprising that the economic impacts on households and … Continue reading Impacts of ...
With economic prospects recovering in major industrialized economies and large EMEs like China, coupled with continued fiscal and monetary stimulus, global commodity prices have been on the rise with rising demand. A snapshot of rising commodity prices is given in the chart below from the World Bank, where the last three columns on the right … Continue reading Trade Tip ...
China has becomes the top source of imports to the UK, ousting Germany, for the first time. According to the UK Office of National Statistics, goods imported from China rose 66% from the start of 2018 to £16.9bn ($24bn) in the first quarter of this year, while imports from Germany fell by 25% to £12.5bn … Continue reading Trade Tip ...
Last week marked 100 days since President Biden assumed office, and in that time, he has not moved to roll back the tough trade stance on China that his predecessor commenced. His Commerce Secretary and US Trade Representative have both indicated unwillingness to yank the tariffs back but have hinted at room for negotiation. In … Continue reading Did Sri ...
Marking Global Entrepreneurship Week 2020 in SriLanka, the Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN) Sri Lanka organized a webinar on ‘Navigating the Pandemic: Survival and Success through Entrepreneurship’ last week. There were some incredibly insightful panelists, speaking on topics ranging from managing through crisis, to strengthening the ecosystem. I was invited to share thoughts on policy approaches … Continue reading Global Entrepreneurship ...
In May this year, the Institute of Town Planners (Sri Lanka) invited me to speak at an international forum organized on the theme ‘Planning for the New Normal: Learning from Other Perspectives’, and provide an economist’s perspective of what COVID-19 would mean for cities and urban development. Other Sri Lankan researchers have done a lot … Continue reading COVID-19, Cities ...
In this latest post on The Curionomist, we feature an interview with Lena Zezulin, an international regulatory and labour expert with the International Development Group LLC. Q. Lena, as someone who’s very familiar with labour reform efforts in many countries, what is your take on why countries embark on reforming their labour laws, despite it … Continue reading Is there ...
The Centre for Sustainable Development and Economic Sustainability (CDES) of Monash University recently hosted a webinar with legendary economists François Bourguignon and Branko Milanovic on the implications for inequality of the Covid-19 pandemic. They shared some revealing datapoints that are worth recapping here: Studies of the impacts of previous pandemics suggest that inequality (measured by … Continue reading Covid-19 and ...
Here are some useful resources on economic growth and COVID-19 (assessments, reviews, ;policy recommendations), following from my previous post containing articles and op-eds: IMF policy responses: https://www.imf.org/en/Topics/imf-and-covid19/Policy-Responses-to-COVID-19 IMF PFM Blog COVID-19 Related Posts: https://blog-pfm.imf.org/pfmblog/useful-pfm-links-other-links.html WB East Asia and Pacific Response Recommendations: https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2020/03/30/east-asia-and-pacific-cou
Updating this earlier list that accompanied my article with an additional list of the latest articles on the economic impacts of the novel coronavirus outbreak and COVID-19 disease. They range from articles by prominent thought-leaders about the macroeconomic challenges, including trade, fiscal and monetary policy to articles about impacts in specific economies like China and … Continue reading Latest Articles ...
In this episode of the Curionomist Podcast, I take a brief look at some of the economic relief measures that different countries have announced. In the previous edition of the COVID-19 special series, I talked about the macro-level economics impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak for the world economy. I briefly touched on the fact that … Continue reading The Curionomist ...
It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these. With current curfew and work from home, I thought it’s a great time to get back into it. It is a COVID-19 special podcast, one of several I will publish over the next few days and weeks. In this first episode, I take a look … Continue reading The Curionomist Podcasts | COVID-19 Special Series: Episode 1
The economic fallout of COVID-19 is unlike anything the world has seen in a century. Disruptions to supply chains, collapse in demand, international trade, and travel, along with lockdowns and collapsing stock prices, resulting from the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) have dealt a heavy blow to the global economy. The impact is likely to … Continue reading COVID-19: Current ...