Economy This year the economy is projected to nosedive to between negative 2 to 6 percent growth rate. It makes the worst performance in our economic history. The shrinking fiscal space because of a hefty ‘debt burden’ of Nu.28 billion in the last two years will be a stumbling block …
Read More »Designing Vaccines for People, Not Profits
LONDON – Recent announcements of demonstrated efficacy in COVID-19 vaccine trials have brought hope that a return to normality is in sight. The preliminary data for Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna’s novel mRNA vaccines are highly encouraging, suggesting that their approval for emergency use is forthcoming. And more recent news of effectiveness (albeit …
Read More »The Global South’s Pandemic Path to Self-Reliance
MELBOURNE – COVID-19 continues to have a devastating impact on public health and to rattle the global economy with structural shocks. The pandemic has now killed more than one million people, while the International Monetary Fund estimates that global GDP will shrink by 4.4% in 2020. But, strange as it may seem, the current …
Read More »Vaccine Apartheid
NEW DELHI – The American pharmaceutical company Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech have announced that the COVID-19 vaccine they are jointly developing was more than 90% effective in early clinical trials. The news raised hopes around the world that life may soon return to pre-pandemic normal. Those hopes may not last long. The …
Read More »America’s Alliances After Trump
ATLANTA – America’s allies should be forgiven if they are confused about where American foreign policy is headed. Who isn’t, given the go-it-alone recklessness of Donald Trump’s presidency? Over the past three years, Trump has sowed strategic chaos, and his foreign policy, if one can call it that, brought new …
Read More »Why America Must Lead Again
Rescuing U.S. Foreign Policy After Trump By nearly every measure, the credibility and influence of the United States in the world have diminished since President Barack Obama and I left office on January 20, 2017. President Donald Trump has belittled, undermined, and in some cases abandoned U.S. allies and partners. …
Read More »Post-Pandemic Geopolitics
CAMBRIDGE – There is no single future until it happens, and any effort to envision geopolitics in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic must include a range of possible futures. I suggest five plausible futures in 2030, but obviously others can be imagined. The end of the globalized liberal order. The …
Read More »The Vise Tightens on the Dollar
NEW HAVEN – The US dollar has now entered the early stages of what looks to be a sharp descent. The dollar’s real effective exchange rate (REER) fell 4.3% in the four months ending in August. The decline has been even steeper as measured by other indexes, but the REER is what matters …
Read More »Something is not right with the Multi Level Car Parking project
The Bhutanese paper in numerous stories from 2014 to 2019 has been covering the two multi-parking structures built by KCR under a Public Private Partnership arrangement with the Thimphu Thromde where KCR would build the two Multi Level Car Parking (MLCP) structures and Thromde would provide it on lease for …
Read More »Transforming Africa’s Agriculture
LONDON – Over the next 30 years, Sub-Saharan Africa’s population will double to over two billion, and its economies will industrialize. Africa’s development will therefore be critical to the world’s future stability, prosperity, and health. Given this, the continent should be receiving much more international attention. The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted a …
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The Bhutanese Leading the way.