Ever since the coronavirus pandemic hit Bangladesh in March 2020, the poverty rate doubled, household income declined, and the health and education sectors suffered. The country is in the midst of the third wave of Covid-19, which makes the national budget for fiscal year (FY2022) the most challenging to date. This article will look at...Read More

The unveiling of Japan’s US$490 billion fiscal stimulus package in November coincided with the announcement by the UK Department of International Trade of a new export strategy. This is committed to boosting exports to an annual £1 trillion ($1.35 trillion) by 2030, from the current yearly £600 billion. While the two policy measures were wholly separate events, their...Read More

Several decades ago, East Asia became the epicentre of superpower rivalry during the Cold War. Following a stalemate war in Northeast Asia’s Korean peninsula, in the early 1950s, military and ideological rivalry shifted to the Indochina peninsula and broader Southeast Asia in the 1960s. READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE: SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST.Read More

The UK’s successful rolling out of its vaccination programme, the attendant government and media hype, not least with respect to how our ‘world beating’ science, technology and enterprise culture ‘beat the virus’, should not be allowed to gloss over the UK’s extremely high Covid death rate and the extent to which this reflects the government’s...Read More

The AUKUS (Australia-UK-US) alliance announced on 14 September 2021 will facilitate Australia building at least eight nuclear powered, but not nuclear armed submarines, collaboration and technology sharing on AI, cyber warfare,. With overall closer alignment of regional security policies. While there was no mention of China in the announcement, AUKUS is without doubt the latest...Read More

China energy’s crisis has been making global headlines these last few weeks with many Chinese regions, suffering energy deficits. Soaring demand in the aftermath of the global pandemic for energy, from the country’s giant industrial sector and higher-spending households, has collided with tight supplies of imports due to ongoing coronavirus restrictions amid government efforts to...Read More

Although the EU has not yet provided details of the sources of finance for its Global Gateway program, nonetheless, EU Commissioner Ursula von der Leyen has said stated, in general terms, that the EU will look to develop these sources to “connect institutions and investment, banks and the business community”.  In practical terms this is...Read More

The rollout of China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) across the northern half of the Mediterranean Sea is typically portrayed in strikingly polar opposite terms depending on the political source. Western think-tanks and Washington/Brussels-centric media regularly depict the BRI as a plot by the Chinese Communist Party to ‘undermine European unity’, ‘divide the transatlantic alliance’,...Read More

In the last couple of decades, the growing importance of new technologies for business, media, health and public services has stimulated the development of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure in Bangladesh. Automation has allowed the ICT sector to move away from primarily being a hardware vendor industry and focus more on applications, engineering,...Read More

Since leaving the European Union, the government of the United Kingdom has pivoted toward Southeast Asia and its regional bloc, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), recognizing it as one of the key dynamic economic regions of the world. The U.K.’s new partnership with ASEAN fosters an environment supportive of increased trade flows, secure...Read More