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…

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…

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…

Further to your report “India’s shadow banking crisis sparks credit crunch” (FT.com, July 3): even more worrisome is the danger of the ongoing liquidity squeeze in the shadow banking sector turning into a more serious solvency issue. Several liquidity-starved shadow banks have already initiated the sale of loan portfolios and assets to meet repayment obligations.

As shadow banks are the largest net borrowers of funds from the financial system with a substantial part of funding coming from banks, mutual funds…

India’s shadow banking system is in deep trouble. An imminent crisis has been slowly but surely brewing in India’s shadow banking sector for the past one year. The first signs of trouble in this sector emerged in June 2018 when Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services (IL&FS) – a major non-banking financial company – defaulted in payment obligations on inter-corporate deposits and commercial papers worth Rs 4.5 billion.

Thereafter, a string of defaults by IL&FS group’s subsidiaries on bank…