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.
Sri Lanka has made it a priority to attract investments instead of borrowing from foreign nations in its development efforts, said President Gotabaya Rajapaksa when he met the newly appointed Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China to Sri Lanka Qi Zhenhong at the President’s House on Thursday (19)
China is always prepared to offer its help to the Maldives in times of need, Chinese Ambassador to the Maldives Zhang Lizhong has stated
Ecogreen, a Chinese company that has been collecting door-to-door waste in Gurugram, Haryana since 2017, is now in big trouble as Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) councillors have demanded cancellation of the waste management company's contract
Twitter on Wednesday apologised to a parliamentary panel in a letter, stating that it will fix the issue of geo-tagging Ladakh as part of China by the end of this month and Ladakh will be added as a region administered by India as a union territory
The United States backs the right of the Tibetan Buddhists to select the next Dalai Lama and the Chinese Communist Party does not have the authority, according to a US official dealing with international religious matters
A day before the expected Secretariat meeting of the ruling Nepal Communist Party (NCP), China’s Ambassador to Nepal Hou Yanqi met Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli on Tuesday
Easy flow of Chinese weapons illegally into Myanmar and India is posing threats to regional security and stability, intelligence agencies have flagged to the Indian government. From the northeastern states of India, a total of 423 illegal weapons, including AK-47s, M-16s, Chinese pistols and Lathodes, have been recovered so far this year
Pakistan on Friday decided to seek $2.7 billion in loan from China for the construction of package-I of the Mainline-1 project of China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) amid the Ministry of Finance’s emphasis on making the project bankable to address debt sustainability concerns
A Chinese company will set up the country's first large-scale waste-to-energy plant for Dhaka North City Corporation areas
There is a burning smell in the air as the Imran Khan government backed by the Pakistani Army is holding elections to annex Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) region located in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK), as the fifth province of Pakistan
Four Chinese nationals working in a construction site in Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo and two locals have been confirmed with Coronavirus, the Chinese embassy said
Moving forward to resolve the border dispute, a three-step disengagement proposal including restoration of status quo ante as of April this year in Eastern Ladakh is under consideration between India and China
Amid border tension with China along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), Indian Army Chief General Manoj Mukund Naravane is on a two-day visit to force formations in Uttarakhand to review the security situation and operational preparedness
The Pakistan government on Tuesday told a parliamentary panel that there was no chairman of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) Authority at present as members of the National Assembly had challenged the legal status of the defunct agency and the functioning of its top management
The Pakistan-China Institute (PCI), the Centre for Chinese Legal Studies and the Lahore University for Medical Sciences (LUMS) co-hosted a virtual conference on “Poverty Alleviation, COVID-19, and CPEC” as part of PCI’s ‘Friends of Silk Road’ Initiative
