By Biswajit Dhar | Briefing Paper # 29 | October 11, 2019
The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is a proposed mega-regional trade pact being negotiated between ASEAN and their six FTA partner-countries (India, Australia, China, Japan, South Korea, and New Zealand) since 2012. It covers a wide range of issues, including trade in goods, trade in services, investment, intellectual property rights, competition policy, dispute settlement, and economic and technical cooperation.
This briefing paper begins by summarizing the negotiating mandate of the RCEP and shows how major participating countries have pushed the…
By Prachi Agarwal | Guest Blog | September 23, 2019
On September 1, 2019, Argentine President Mauricio Macri imposed capital controls on the foreign exchange market to help control the depreciating peso and counter the rapid decline in foreign exchange reserves. This move comes at a time when the country is gearing up for its elections in October 2019. Is this an attempt to boost the economy that is already struggling with recessionary tendencies and is it, therefore, an attempt by President Macri to improve his public image?
By Kavaljit Singh | Briefing Paper # 28 | September 4, 2019
On September 1, the Argentine government led by President Mauricio Macri imposed capital controls in a bid to stem the fall in the foreign exchange reserves and the peso currency. This unexpected move was initiated soon after the authorities spent nearly $3 billion of forex reserves to repay short-term debt and to protect the value of the peso.
The announcement followed the Macri government’s unilateral decision taken on August 28 to delay repayment of short-term debt instruments (denominated in both…
By Howard Mann and Martin Dietrich Brauch | Guest Blog | August 30, 2019
Over the past 18 months, multiple Columbia FDI Perspectives have argued for the WTO to initiate negotiations on investment facilitation. A common foundation has been the view that trade and investment are just two sides of the same coin; hence drafting an investment-facilitation agreement is just a matter of replicating its close sibling on trade facilitation. This simplistic view ignores many realities. Trade happens in an instant and generally implicates a limited number of actors and domestic laws….
By Kavaljit Singh | Briefing Paper # 27 | August 28, 2019
The ongoing liquidity crisis in India’s shadow banking sector is intensifying. The troubles that started with defaults by Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Limited (IL&FS) last year are far from over as the sector continues to face a severe liquidity crisis. If tight liquidity conditions persist over the next three quarters, it may turn into a solvency issue for several shadow banks.
After the IL&FS collapse, the entire sector is facing a crisis of confidence as investors are shying away…
