By now, regular readers should know that while I generally like India’s long-term macro story, New Delhi’s public finances leave a lot to be desired. After years of budgetary mismanagement, the country is a notable EM outlier in its fiscal/public debt dynamics, and for this reason, the FY2010/11 (April-March) budget, presented last Friday, was so [Read more...]

Most people are well aware that the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) countries are big recipients of foreign direct investment (FDI). But they are also big sources of FDI.

In 2009, for the first time, emerging market outbound mergers and acquisitions (M&A) flows outpaced inbound M&A flows, reaching US$131.8bn, according to Dealogic. Most of these [Read more...]

The US Census Bureau on Tuesday released its latest population projections for 227 countries and territories, but what is grabbing the most attention are their figures for China and India (click here for press release).

In particular, the Bureau sees China’s population shrinking from 2026, a year after which they expect India to become the [Read more...]

Sugar has already been the star performer among agricultural commodities in 2009, but Risk Watchdog believes that the year-long ascent in prices could have further to run. Sugar began the year trading around USc14.00/lb region, but by September, had rallied all the way to USc26.00/lb. Since the summer, prices have edged lower as investors hesitated [Read more...]

Following the hullabaloo of US President Barack Obama’s whistle stop tour of Asia in November – the focus of which was primarily on China, Japan, the Koreas and South East Asia – it might be logical to assume that Washington-New Delhi relations have fallen down the pecking order of America’s list of foreign policy priorities. [Read more...]

Myanmar (Burma) is a country that deserves more attention.

In case you missed it, the US is currently pursuing a diplomatic outreach to Myanmar’s ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) – the military junta headed by Senior General Than Shwe. US State Department officials have just returned from what was the highest-ranking American [Read more...]

In line with the view I have been promoting on Business Monitor Online, spot gold has continued to push higher in recent trading to hit a new high of US$1,095/oz at one point on Wednesday. I see potential for gold to head even higher in the short term as US dollar weakness, weaker equities, and [Read more...]