One of the most striking features of South Asian trade is how little the region trades internally. Intra-regional trade within South Asia remains among the lowest in the world relative to geographic proximity. Political tensions — especially between India and Pakistan — have prevented the emergence of a deeply integrated regional production system comparable to ASEAN or the European Union. This is a major missed opportunity.
Scarcity of cooking fuel is pushing people, particularly across South Asia, toward hunger. Livelihoods have been lost among the large unorganised labour force while thousands of self-employed street vendors, smaller restaurants and eateries are being forced to close shop, facing a scary, insecure future. For middle class households across India, everyday snacks like the samosa or dosa have become scarce because of shortage and high prices of cooking gas cylinders.
India is one of the world’s largest suppliers of generic medicines and APIs to Europe. If the EU begins favouring “Made in EU” pharmaceutical production through procurement preferences, subsidies or state aid, Indian drug manufacturers could face reduced access to EU public procurement contracts and tougher supply-chain resilience requirements.
India’s pharma export market has been affected as India supplies medicines to more than 200 countries. Supply chain interruption not only hurts Indian producers but also creates medicine scarcity in the US, UK, and African markets that highly depend on Indian generics. From the logistics end, re-routing of cargo away from conflict-ridden corridors such as the Red Sea and Strait of Hormuz has increased freight insurance premiums, distressing Indian exporters who function on lean cost structures.
China is making last-minute efforts to make emergency procurements of high-altitude gear and clothing for its troops as they were caught unaware with India's readiness for the harsh winter atop the Eastern Ladkah heights that has been the bone of contention between the two Asian majors, Indian military intelligence officials say
Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fanghe visited Pakistan on Monday and met with Pakistan’s Army Chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa
In an effort to boost tourist arrivals from China, the Maldives launched two major promotional campaigns in China, Sun news reported
Nepal Airlines has submitted four options to the Ministry of Tourism to get rid of the six inefficient Chinese aircraft in its fleet, five months after its board of directors unanimously decided to stop flying them as they were worsening its losses
Residents of several settlements in the northern parts of Sankhuwasabha and Taplejung districts are having a tough time managing essential commodities and finding markets for their products due to the protracted closure of the Nepal-China border amid coronavirus threat
Health experts in India have refuted a claim made by Chinese scientists in a preprint paper that suggests that the Indian subcontinent might be the place where the earliest human-to-human SARS-CoV-2 transmission occurred
Chinese Defence Minister Gen Wei Fenghe has suspended his visit to Dhaka that was scheduled for this week
Just days after Indian Foreign Secretary Harsh V Shringla visited Nepal, the Chinese state councilor and defense minister Wei Fanghe hurridly paid a one day visit to Nepal on Sunday, The Himalayan Times reported
Chinese State Councillor and Defence Minister Wei Fenghe on Sunday landed in Kathmandu for a daylong stopover during which he held a whirlwind of meetings with Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli, also the defence minister, President Bidya Devi Bhandari and Nepal Army Chief Purna Chandra Thapa before flying straight to Pakistan in the evening
China’s Minister of National Defence and the first-ranked State Councillor, Wei Fenghe, is paying a one-day working visit to Nepal on Sunday
A team of researchers from China’s Shanghai Institute for Biological Sciences have claimed that the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus existed in India and Bangladesh long before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Wuhan in December last year
Considering that Indian armed forces are presently preparing for war, the last quarter of 2020 has been quite eventful for the Indian Navy
Pakistan’s improved transshipment policy had resulted in the beginning of international transit activities on its ports, particularly Gwadar Port
Upset by India's latest ban on 43 Chinese mobile applications, China on Wednesday urged the government to restore the trade relations for mutual benefit
An AI-based Mandarin-English speech recognition and translation system is helping Indian forces decode their Chinese adversaries in cross-border intelligence gathering, interceptions and other communication
