Economy

A series of impact studies showed that microfinance had mixed results. Charging affordable interest rates and offering training as well as loans simply wasn’t profitable – and profitable microfinance did not have the full effect of economic gains that was intended. A course correction was needed.  

COVID-19 has constrained many of the ongoing SDG-readying support provided to the Government of Afghanistan and may have major implications for judicious and long-term development policymaking and programming that are needed to achieve the priority SDG targets in Afghanistan.

According to the OECD’s latest Global Outlook on Financing for Sustainable Development, developing countries are facing a shortfall of USD 1.7 trillion in the financing they would need this year to keep them on track for the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as governments and investors grapple with the health, economic and social impacts of the COVID-19 crisis.

 The report, Human Mobility, Shared Opportunities: A Review of the 2009 Human Development Report and the Way Ahead, looks back at the last decade and assesses how future policy responses could facilitate safe, orderly, and regular migration.

If the government takes serious actions to promote local and community entrepreneurship, this will not only diversify and uplift Nepal’s overall economy, but also provide enormous employment opportunities to Nepal’s jobless youths who have very few options for employment at the moment–apart from lying up in manpower agencies and heading for ill-paid foreign employment in the Gulf countries.

Thirty-two of the world’s largest companies stand to see their profits jump by $109 billion more in 2020 as the Covid-19 pandemic lays bare an economic model that delivers profits for the wealthiest on the back of the poorest, according to a new Oxfam report released this week.

The goal of the buddy system is not the artificial redistribution of wealth from the wealthier to the poorer countries. The goal is to facilitate interaction and exchange between the buddy countries on different levels, from administration to citizen initiatives.

Pharmaceutical and tech companies and wealthy white Americans benefit from dramatic pandemic profits, further exacerbating inequality.

Despite a number of attempts from different sectors, poverty in Nepal is still a rampant phenomenon and the country remains one of the poorest countries in the world.

By Harris Zargar

Despite various efforts, child labour in India is still a common practice. Poverty forces children to seek jobs in undisclosed service sector and many are forced into prostitution, while many other become victims of human trafficking.