The United States (US) has called for creation of an Indo-Pacific corridor linking India, Bangladesh and Southeast Asia for greater trade and cooperation in the region and for a long-term multilateral and bilateral partnership.

In Nepal, money supply and interest rate, which are the basic tools of monetary policy, do not seem to have been able to slow down inflation. Since a few years, Nepal has experienced a rapidly rising inflationary trend. These gearing-up dynamics of inflationary trend have rudely shocked different cross-sections of the intelligentsia. This year also, Nepalis have to endure a high inflation of 10.2 per cent.

NEW DELHI, May 31, (AFP): India’s economy grew by 5.0 percent in 2012/2013, its slowest annual rate in a decade, data showed Friday in another blow to the corruption-hit government ahead of national elections due by next year.

As China and India expand trade corridors, Pakistan could use both to its advantage. After the visit of Chinese Premier Li Keqiang to India and Pakistan, the analysts have tended to exaggerate the scope of what transpired according to their biases. In India, what Li said was more or less ignored and what China did not say in Pakistan was focused on. In Pakistan, the length of the China-India joint statement was ignored, compared to the skimpiness of the one issued from Islamabad.

United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), in cooperation with Ministry of Counter Narcotics, Afghanistan released their Afghanistan opium risk assessment for 2013. Expectedly, the risk assessment paints a bleak prospect for 2013 writes Gaurav Kumar

Between political timidity and regulatory logjams, India has done a 'good' job of spawning its own monsters. Joblessness is one of the biggest. India`s industrial performance now nears the lows of 1991-92, suggesting that reforms of similar magnitude as were unleashed back then are necessary.

Demand weaknesses from growth slowdown in Western traditional markets require us to look for compensating growth opportunities from increased trade and investment within our own sub-region. South Asian economies have accordingly acted to lower tariff and non-tariff barriers to intraregional trade and investment flows as much as feasible in specific country contexts. Additionally, Bangladesh also opted to open up her inland transport routes to commodity transit traffic of neighbouring India, Nepal and Bhutan.

Emerging as the world’s second largest exporter of textiles and garments, next only to China, and beating competition from India, the Philippines and others, Bangladesh apparel industrey should have been a grand success story for Bangladesh, one of the least developed nations writes Mahendra Ved