Lee Bok Sun is planning to close her 28-year-old fruit store in Seoul for good. Many of her customers have switched to a new hypermarket owned by one of South Korea’s chaebol, the family-controlled business groups that dominate the economy. “My baby brother gave me the money to start this shop to thank me for […]
The global economy is facing its third major brake on expansion in five years as emerging markets slow from China to Brazil, provoking debate about how much policy makers should respond. Three years after industrializing nations led the world out of the U.S. mortgage meltdown-induced recession, the reliability of the power source is waning as […]
The directors of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank return to Tokyo this week for their annual meetings after a gap of 48 years. It’s a different Japan. The ageing of the host nation, the rise of China, the “shift” of the epicentre of global growth to mainland Asia, in more ways than […]
China isn’t very good at foreign policy; that is the only way to make sense of the apparent decision by a number of large Chinese banks to boycott the annual meeting of the World Bank and the IMF scheduled for Tokyo next week. As the WSJ tells us, the decision comes as a result of the latest flare […]
On Wednesday, tens of thousands of landless farmers lined up in Gwalior, a city in northern India, and started a very long walk. Under a flapping canopy of green-and-white flags, demonstrators from several Indian states vowed to spend the next three weeks marching over 320 km from this fort town to New Delhi. They are […]
Critics often assert — now more than ever — that money spent on international development is money that is wasted. They argue that it’s squandered on bad projects, that it bypasses the neediest or is spent in countries with governments that don’t serve their people. But not all foreign aid is guaranteed — and nor […]
The United Nations, aid agencies and the British Government have lined up to attack the world’s largest commodities trading company, Glencore, after it described the current global food crisis and soaring world prices as a “good” business opportunity. Read Here – The Independent
looking beyond borders 