This week, all eyes were on the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting of the Federal Reserve, as financial markets and policymakers worldwide awaited the outcome of the committee’s deliberations. The FOMC concluded its deliberations on Wednesday with the release of a policy statement and a virtual press conference by Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.

Based on its deliberations, the FOMC signaled its willingness to accelerate plans to wind down monetary policy stimulus announced in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, the Committee reaffirmed its commitment to…

As the COVID-19 pandemic enters its third year, emerging market economies will continue to struggle to improve their financial resilience in the face of numerous domestic and global headwinds. The emergence of new virus variants like Omicron serves as a stark reminder that the COVID-19 pandemic is far from over, and it could jeopardize the economic recovery prospects of both emerging and advanced economies.

First identified in Botswana and South Africa in November 2021, the highly-contagious Omicron variant is already wreaking havoc on a significant portion of the global economy…

After they forced the government to repeal the three controversial farm laws, and thus to ensure the continuation of the minimum price support mechanism, India’s farmers face yet another challenge, this time from World Trade Organization (WTO). On 14^th December, a WTO dispute settlement panel concluded in its report that India was violating its commitments under the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) by granting price support to sugarcane producers and export subsidies to sugar during the period 2014/15 to 2018/19.

This is the first time that the government’s policies to support…

In a historic move, the UN Sustainable Development Goal 14.6 mandated the World Trade Organization (WTO) to “prohibit certain forms of fisheries subsidies which contribute to overcapacity and overfishing, and eliminate subsidies that contribute to IUU fishing …, recognizing that appropriate and effective special and differential treatment for developing and least developed countries should be an integral part of the WTO fisheries subsidies negotiation”.

The developed countries used this mandate to launch active negotiations on disciplining subsidies in coastal fishing under three pillars – IUU fishing,…

The 12^th Ministerial Conference (MC12) of the World Trade Organization is being convened in Geneva at the end of this month, a year and a half after it was scheduled to be held in Kazakhstan. MC12 is being held at an important juncture when the global trade scenario is quite upbeat. Recent WTO estimates show that global trade volumes could expand by 11 percent in 2021, and by over 4 percent in 2022, and could stabilise at a level higher than the pre-COVID trend.

The buoyancy in trade volumes has…