On 23 June 2019 Mr Qu Dongyu of China was elected as the new Director General of the Food and Agriculture Organization. FAO is one of the largest UN specialized agencies with a budget for 2018-19 of US$2.5 billion, offices in over 130 countries and more than 11,000 employees.
As China rapidly replaces Europe and the USA as the key player in developing countries, the Western press is full of articles about the dangers of dealing with the Chinese.
As China has moved from a poor isolated country to a major player in the world economic and political sphere, developing countries need to learn how to engage.
Fifty years ago China was a poor country with little influence in the international sphere and without even a seat at the United Nations. Since then rapid economic growth in China has made it an economic powerhouse that increasingly plays a leading role on the world stage as a trade partners as well as a source of investment.
The Rohingya are a minority community living in Rakhine State in Myanmar. The Muslim Rohingya are considered intruders into Buddhist Myanmar - illegal immigrants from bordering Bangladesh. They have been always discriminated against, looked down upon, ostracized, and denied any civil and judicial rights.
Robert W. Fogel, the 1993 Nobel Prize Laureate for Economics, through his work on “efficiency wages”, pointed out that hungry and undernourished workers are not as productive as well fed and healthy workers. At the level of an individual firm, it would thus make sense for an employer to pay wages that are high enough to allow workers access to food and other necessities –
even if such wages are higher than the going market rate.
The new government in Pakistan has now been in office for over 100 days and has started work on its reform and socio-economic agenda. There is a growing realization that being in government is far more difficult than it first appeared, and that in order to move forward there is an urgent need to build national and international partnerships.
Despite the fact that Pakistan’s industrial and services sector continue to grow in importance, what happens in the agriculture sector remains critical to the performance of Pakistan’s economy and the wellbeing of its people.