For over two decades, India has acquired the reputation of being the ‘pharmacy of the world’ as its strong generic pharmaceutical industry has supplied affordable medicines to the global markets. Exports of medicines from India, which were around a billion dollars at the turn of the century, had increased to over $20 billion in 2019-20.

Indian companies had made critical interventions during the HIV/AIDS pandemic by supplying affordable antiretroviral medicines to African countries when the major pharmaceutical producers had demanded excessively high prices for these medicines. Subsequently, after the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria took shape as a multi-stakeholder initiative to reduce…

On December 16, 2020, the Union Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) approved a subsidy of Rs.35 billion to sugar mills for the export of 60 lakh tonnes of sugar during the October 2020-September 2021 season. In 2018 and 2019, the Government of India had approved the sugar export incentive before October 1, but this year the approval was delayed. Sugar mills will now export their surplus sugar stock. This is supposed to help sugar mills clear their outstanding dues to sugarcane farmers.

India is the world’s second-largest sugar producer (after Brazil) and among the top five sugar exporters. According to official data,…

On November 15, 2020, 15 East Asian countries agreed to take their economic integration several notches higher by forging the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), the largest free trade agreement (FTA) ever. In 2019, RCEP members accounted for about 30 percent of world output and population and 28 percent of world trade. But about 44 percent of their total trade was intra-RCEP, which is a major incentive for the members of this agreement to agree to the deal, for this could contribute to the strengthening of the regional value chains. This may well prove propitious for the RCEP member countries in their efforts to…

The COVID-19 pandemic is the biggest health and economic crisis in a generation. Some governments are taking extraordinary measures to fight the pandemic, in order to save lives, protect jobs, and avoid economic disaster. But the little known Investor-State Dispute Settlement system, or ISDS, included in many trade deals, could pressure governments to roll back public-interest measures, or pay millions in compensation to corporations.

ISDS allows foreign companies to sue governments for measures that might impact their profits.

When a government adopts a policy that affects a foreign company’s profits, they can take that government to arbitration to cover their perceived financial loss. ISDS cases could…