How Smart Solutions to Tax Reform Can Help Develop Infrastructure

Bangladesh's public sector faces serious challenges. Poor infrastructure is one of the main factors that hold back economic growth. Government-funded health clinics struggle to provide the population with quality, specialised services. And beyond primary school, quality public education opportunities are extremely limited. These are just a handful of the challenges, and they are partly due to a stark fact: the country has one of the lowest tax-to-GDP ratios in the world.

Argentina’s ‘Shale Capital’ Suffers from Slowdown

The dizzying growth of Añelo, a town in southwest Argentina, driven by the production of shale oil and gas in the Vaca Muerta geological reserve, has slowed down due to the plunge in global oil prices, which has put a curb on local development and is threatening investment and employment.

Who Guards the Guardhouse?

In a surreal digital theft that befits a high octane movie thriller, we were recently informed of the daring heist at Bangladesh Bank in which nearly a billion dollars were siphoned off last month. As if this was not enough, the theft took place over several days early February through a series of about three dozen electronic fund transfers from the Bank to New York Federal Reserve for a total amount anywhere between eight hundred fifty to eight hundred seventy million dollars. All of the looted amount made through dozens of transfers would have been cashed had it not been due to the now famous spelling error in a twenty million check made to a Sri Lankan NGO. The error prompted the routing bank, Deutsche Bank, to seek clarification from the Bangladesh central bank, which stopped the transaction. But the mystery hackers still managed to swipe $80 million, one of the largest recorded bank thefts in history.

Panama’s Expanded Canal Faces a Challenging Scenario

When the new locks of the expanded Panama Canal begin operations, they will do so amidst numerous challenges, because of the storm clouds hanging over the global economy, especially China. But local authorities and experts are not worried about the possible impact on the expanded canal.

Border Restrictions Violate 1951 Refugee Convention

When the United Nations commemorated “Zero Discrimination Day” on March 1, there was an implicit commitment by the 193 member states to abhor all forms of discrimination – including against women, minorities, indigenous people, gays and lesbians and those suffering from AIDS.

Europe: The Schengen Agreement In Danger

Exclusion of Greece from the European free travel zone established by the Schengen Agreement is pending. The European Commission has ruled that the Athens government has “seriously neglected its obligations to control its own borders,” and if the deficiencies are not corrected within three months, the other member states of the Schengen area may exclude it from the agreement. In 2015, some 850,000 people seeking asylum and work in northern European countries passed through Greece, and the influx is continuing.

Obama in Cuba: the Reasons for His Trip

At this stage of the process that began in December 2014 with the surprise announcement of the opening of relations between the United States and Cuba, hardly anything counts as spectacular news. The detail in the decision by Washington and Havana that made news in the traditional sense (man bites dog) was that the plan to sit down and talk implied that Cuba gave up its prior demand that the embargo be lifted. The United States, for its part, accepted that Cuba did not undertake to make any special changes to its own political system.

Obama and Raúl Castro to Launch New Era with Historic Visit

U.S. President Barack Obama and his Cuban counterpart Raúl Castro will go down in history as two statesmen who managed to overcome more than half a century of hostility to bring back together two neighbouring countries with too many shared interests to remain at loggerheads.

Argentina’s Ties with China: Pragmatism over Politics

Argentina’s new government is reviewing several major projects to be carried out jointly with China. But aside from a few changes in priorities, the administration is not expected to put the brakes on an alliance that Beijing classifies as strategic.

UNDP at 50 Seeks Broad Coalition Targeting Sustainable Development

Fifty years ago, one in every three people around the world was living in poverty. It was against that backdrop that the United Nations Development Programme, UNDP, was founded in 1966. Ever since, UNDP has been a leader in working for a more fair and prosperous world for all. We have worked with governments, civil society, the private sector, and philanthropy to empower people and build resilient nations.

Africa Launches Largest Trading Block with 620 Million Consumers

In Egypt more than 1,500 public and private business delegates and state leaders agreed on 20-21 February to mobilise massive investments for the implementation of Africa's largest trading bloc whichwas created last year by 26 African countries with a total of 620 million consumers and a combined Gross Domestic Product (GDP) nearing 1,2 trillion dollars.

Uneducated Women Entrepreneurs Defeat Poverty

Maryam Yousuf, 50, gently washes her hands under a common tap outside her house in Saida Kadal, a grassy middle-class locale encircled by the famous Dal Lake in Srinagar, Kashmir’s capital. She puts on a Pheran, the traditional long loose gown, and holding a large steel bucket walks towards a dimly-lit cowshed, made up of wooden shingles, in a corner of her home backyard. Nearby, children are playing cricket, flaunting wooden sticks as bats, and a flock of chicken cluck and nibble at left-over vegetables.

Evolving Nature of China’s South-South Cooperation

China’s strength in South-South Cooperation (SSC) lies in its carrying out big-ticket infrastructure projects in diverse developing countries. It is remarkable in terms of project scale, speed and cost-effectiveness and has been playing a positive role in promoting partner’s nation-building, economic development and social progress. However, the swift completion of China’s infrastructure projects also has its sets of problems like little or no paper-work leading to lack of transparency, oversight and post-project monitoring. The backlash against Chinese labourers employed by Chinese companies in developing countries has been routinely highlighted by the international media with allegations of skirmishes with the local population, corruption coupled with resource theft.

TPP’s Threat To Multilateralism

2015 proved challenging for multilateralism, especially in relation to development concerns. July’s Addis Ababa third Financing for Development (FfD) conference delivered little real progress. Nevertheless, the September Sustainable Development Goals summit redeemed hopes with an ambitious and universal Agenda 2030.

Costa Rica, UAE Cement Relations with Energy and Tourism

A visit by United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan to Costa Rica paved the way for closer trade ties between the two countries, especially in the areas of tourism and sustainable energy.

Novel Joint Committee Enhances Relations between the UAE and Panama

The visit by the United Arab Emirates foreign minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, to Panama ended Thursday Feb. 11 with the creation of a novel Joint Cooperation Committee on trade and investment.

Eight Cooperation Accords Strengthen Ties between Colombia and UAE

“I am honoured to be in Colombia at a time when important steps towards peace are being taken,” the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, said after meeting with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos.

Rural Youth Can Be Tomorrow’s Entrepreneurs

Bolstering widespread prosperity in Africa is a key necessity if the world is to achieve its commitments to eradicate poverty and hunger by 2030.

Argentina and United Arab Emirates Open New Stage in Bilateral Relations

With United Arab Emirates’ foreign minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan’s visit to Argentina, the two countries launched a new stage in bilateral relations, kicked off by high-level meetings and a package of accords.

TPP: Lessons from New Zealand

A new paper* on the implications of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement for New Zealand examines key economic issues likely to be impacted by this trade agreement. It is remarkable how little TPP brings to the table. NZ’s gross domestic product will grow by 47 per cent by 2030 without the TPP, or by 47.9 per cent with the TPP. Even that small benefit is an exaggeration, as the modelling makes dubious assumptions, and the real benefits will be even smaller. If the full costs are included, net economic benefits to the NZ economy are doubtful. The gains from tariff reductions are less than a quarter of the projected benefits according to official NZ government modelling. Although most of the projected benefits result from reducing non-tariff barriers (NTBs), the projections rely on inadequate and dubious information that does not even identify the NTBs that would be reduced by the TPP!

United Arab Emirates Strengthens Ties with Argentina’s New Government

The new government of Argentina and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are strengthening the relationship established by the previous administration, at a time when this South American country is seeking to bring in foreign exchange, build up its international reserves and draw investment, in what the authorities describe as a new era of openness to the world.