Uber generated 4,500c for Bangladesh’s economy in 2021
Uber on Sunday revealed that they helped transform the on-demand economy for riders, driver partners, and the wider community by generating Tk4,500 crore for Bangladesh’s economy in 2021.
Uber’s 2021 Bangladesh Economic Impact Report, researched and compiled by Public First, a UK based policy research firm, dove deep into the factors behind the economic contribution, consumer surplus, how users benefit, and how driver partners gain from flexible work, according to a press release.
As per the report, Tk4,500 crore contribution included both the impact of earnings of driver-partners facilitated by Uber, and the wider indirect and induced multiplier effect created throughout the company’s wider supply chain.
“Bangladesh has been a significant market for Uber and it is committed to growing business in the country with continued and focused market and product innovations that will help Bangladesh move forward, and further accelerate economic growth,” Shiva Shailendran, director of Regional Operations, Uber South Asia told reporters during the launching of the report.
China top legislator to visit Russia, attend eastern economic forum
China’s top legislator Li Zhanshu will attend the seventh Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok this week, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Sunday, becoming the most senior Chinese official to visit Russia since the Ukraine war began.
Li, chairman of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, will pay official visits to Russia, Mongolia, Nepal and South Korea from Wednesday to Sept 17, according to Xinhua.
He will attend the four-day forum, set to begin on Monday, during his stay in Russia, it said.
India beats the UK to claim the 5th largest economy in the world
India overtook the United Kingdom to claim the fifth largest economy in the world in the January-March quarter, reports said quoting Bloomberg research. With this assessment, Britain has slipped to sixth place after the United States, China, Japan, Germany, and India.
Reports further added that the size of the Indian economy in ‘nominal’ cash terms in the March quarter stood at US$854.7 billion while UK’s economy is estimated at US$816 billion. This assessment was done on an adjusted basis using the dollar exchange rate on the last day of the quarter under review.
The report came two days after the government of India announced the gross domestic product (GDP) data for the first quarter of the current fiscal which reported a growth of 13.5 percent on a year-on-year basis. While the government’s GDP growth estimate was lower than the forecast by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) at 16.2 percent, India’s economic growth was the highest among developing countries in that quarter. In the current fiscal, the Indian economy is projected to grow at over 7 percent.
With inflation hitting high, the government is facing an extremely high cost of living in the United Kingdom. Interestingly, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in its recent report estimated the Indian economy to have surpassed that of the UK by US$158 billion to claim the fifth position. According to the IMF assessment report for the calendar year 2022, the Indian economy stood at US$3535 billion as compared to that of the UK at 3376 billion.
A decade ago, India’s rank among the biggest world economies was 11th as against the UK’s 5th spot. But, in the last decade, the Indian economy grew rapidly with favourable government policies which made a conducive environment for foreign direct investment (FDI). Barring a few examples of FDI outflows, overall growth in the Indian economy was staggering.
India set to pip Germany, Japan to become world’s third largest economy by 2029: SBI research
India is likely to become the third largest economy in the world by 2029, a research paper of SBI said on Saturday. India has already overtaken the UK to become the fifth largest economy. The paper said that India has undergone a large structural shift since 2014 and is now the 5th largest economy. It said India had surpassed the UK as the 5th largest economy as early as December 2021 itself and not recently.
The research paper further stated that the share of India’s GDP is now at 3.5 percent, as against 2.6 percent in 2014 and is likely to cross 4 percent in 2027, the current share of Germany in global GDP. The path taken by India since 2014 reveals India is likely to get the tag of 3rd largest economy in 2029, a movement of 7 places upwards since 2014 when India was ranked 10th, it said.
“India should surpass Germany in 2027 and most likely Japan by 2029 at the current rate of growth. This is a remarkable achievement by any standards,” it said.
Referring to recent GDP growth number which was 13.5 percent, the paper said that India is likely to be the fastest growing economy in the current fiscal. “Interestingly, even as estimates of India’s GDP growth rate for FY23 currently range from 6.7 percent to 7.7 percent, we firmly believe that it is immaterial. In a world that is ravaged by uncertainties, we believe 6-6.5 percent growth is the new normal,” the paper said.
| Powerhouse – Economic size of countries (US$ million) | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Country | IMF | United Nations | World Bank | |||
| Estimate | Year | Estimate | Year | Estimate | Year | |
| United States | 25,346,805 | 2022 | 20,893,746 | 2020 | 22,996,100 | 2021 |
| China | 19,911,593 | 2022 | 14,722,801 | 2020 | 17,734,063 | 2021 |
| Japan | 4,912,147 | 2022 | 5,057,759 | 2020 | 4,937,422 | 2021 |
| Germany | 4,256,540 | 2022 | 3,846,414 | 2020 | 4,223,116 | 2021 |
| India | 3,534,743 | 2022 | 2,664,749 | 2020 | 3,173,398 | 2021 |
| United Kingdom | 3,376,003 | 2022 | 2,764,198 | 2020 | 3,186,860 | 2021 |
PTC India to set up plant in Nepal; to supply power to India, Bangladesh
State-owned PTC India will set up a power trading company in Nepal, which will supply electricity to India and Bangladesh, the firm’s CMD Rajib K Mishra told Livemint. This will first for an Indian power firm to set up in Nepal and the move will boost the Centre’s aim to build a South Asia-focused energy security architecture.
PTC, in the future, may also sell power beyond India and Bangladesh, to Myanmar and Vietnam, if the required infrastructure is set up, Mishra told Livemint. In contrast to PTC’s mandate of trading power to and from India, it would act as an aggregator and trade power on multiple fronts, stated the report.
“(PTC India) board has given us an approval for starting a new trading company in Nepal. So, that’s something we have not done outside the country. We have done a lot of business with Bhutan, Bangladesh and Nepal as a trading company in India, sourcing the power from them. For the first time, we will try to have a company there in Nepal,” PTC’s CMD told Livemint.
PTC has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with NHPC for the sale of power from the upcoming West Seti and Seti River-6 hydro power projects in Nepal.
Will an IMF deal help Sri Lankans?
We have seen people fight for food at our meal drives, it is very difficult to watch”, the co-founder of a charity organisation which provides regular meals to the poor in the country, tells Al Jazeera.
“Parents from the schools we provide meals to have asked us to increase the number of meals provided during the week as the children don’t get proper meals when they are at home during the weekend”, Community Meal Share Trust’s Nadeeka Jayasinghe says.
On Thursday, Sri Lanka and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reached a staff-level agreement on a 48-month, $2.9bn Extended Fund Facility which will also help it secure short-term funds from other donors. But, even as the country has taken the first steps in getting financial aid from the IMF, the day when residents can resume a normal life is still not in sight.
A recent assessment by the World Food Programme Sri Lanka found that nearly 30 percent of the country’s 22 million population were now food insecure, with one in every four people regularly skipping meals to be able to afford to eat. This is the plight of many poor and ‘newly poor’ Sri Lankans who have been battered by high inflation rates, shortages, and job and income losses.
“The data seems to suggest that by the end of the year, half the population could slip below the new poverty line,” Indrajit Coomaraswamy, a former governor of the Sri Lanka Central Bank, told Indian news portal The Wire in July.
Inflation at the end of July was measured at 66.7 percent while national food inflation hit a whopping 82.5 percent in the same period. The government recently approved electricity tariff hikes, as the state-owned Ceylon Electricity Board faces increased costs of power generation amid severe debt levels.
Economic reforms, trade openness secret of Vietnam’s development: Ambassador Phong
Ambassador of Vietnam to Pakistan, Nguyen Tien Phong on Thursday said that economic reforms and trade openness are the secret of Vietnam’s modern development.
For the sake of the country’s survival, the Vietnam’ communist party and its Leaders adopted economic reform namely “DoiMoi” (shifting from a planned and centralized economy to a market economy with socialist orientation), the Ambassador of Vietnam to Pakistan told APP here on the occasion of 77th independence day of Vietnam.
The Ambassador said that from a country faced with perpetual food shortages, Vietnam became the world’s second largest rice exporter in 1986-1989.
He informed that after the country was completely reunified, the people of Vietnam have been joining hands to the national construction from the ash of wars.
Replying to a question, he said that Viet Nam had officially signed 15 Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), including 14 that have already taken effect and also negotiating two other FTAs.