Nearly 65% of adults in the Arab region remain excluded from formal financial systems, according to a new report by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA). The Annual SDG Review 2025 paints a sobering picture of persistent financial exclusion that is undermining the region’s ability …
THE countdown has begun for the adoption, in June, of the UN's International Convention to Combat Desertification. However, global efforts to arrive at a consensus on the issue are proving almost as tortuous as the problem that the convention seeks to address. The recently-held 4th session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating …
THE developed and the developing countries were locked in yet another standoff at the recent Asian Development Bank (ADB) meeting in Nice, France. At the heart of the dispute lay the insistence of industrialised countries, led by the US, that the ADB's capital increase be linked to a reorientation of …
BICKERING between the North and the South has hindered the phasing out of ozone-depleting substances in the Third World. Although 7 of the 14 members of the Ozone Fund's executive committee are from developing countries, merely 300 tonnes of such substances were phased out in the Third World last year; …
FINANCE minister Manmohan Singh has turned his back on International Monetary Fund-imposed financial discipline and given India a growth-oriented budget that pushes for further globalisation of the economy. But, given the high fiscal deficit and inflationary trends, there may be many pitfalls ahead. The budget stresses rapid technological advancement, opens …
HIT BY a severe recession, Japanese companies are reducing spending on research and development (R&D;) and many firms are scaling down low-priority or long-term projects in favour of those that offer immediate returns. Japan's ministry of international trade and industry surveyed 28 big companies and found their total spending would …
A PLAN to reward UK farmers switching to organic methods has been criticised for not recognising those already practising organic farming. Under the five-year scheme, the government will pay British farmers who convert to organic methods $104.16 a hectare initially, reducing this to $37.2 a hectare in the last year. …
INTERNATIONAL Monetary Fund statistics show military spending in the world, excluding the countries of the former Soviet Union, fell from 3.9 per cent of global gross domestic product (GDP) in 1986 to 3.1 per cent in 1992. The fund predicts a further decline to 2.3 per cent of global GDP …
WHILE no two health care systems are alike, certain questions are germane to all: How do markets for health care work? Should governments work in the health care market? Why, and to what extent? What form could such intervention take? What is the trade-off between equity and efficiency? The first …
To boost the stagnant demand for solar heating devices, the Union ministry of nonconventional energy sources (MNES), along with the ministry for urban development, has chalked out a scheme to make the installation of solar and air heaters mandatory for all government buildings. This was announced in the beginning of …
LESS THAN a week before he faced a no-confidence motion in Parliament in July, Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao found time to keep an appointment with 25 top scientists. The meeting, called at the instance of minister of state for science and technology P R Kumaramangalam, was ostensibly a …
POLITICAL support for expensive scientific projects, plagued as they are by cost overruns, is dwindling in the US because with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the defence applications of space research are now less urgent. Besides, US scientists have suggested -- for the first time in modern memory -- …
THE WORLD Health Organisation asked governments and other groups at the Ninth International AIDS Conference held in Berlin in June, to provide it with $2.5 billion annually, to combat the AIDS epidemic and save 10 million people all over the world this decade. The World Bank also endorsed the plan, …
INDIAN science is being made to go commercial. With funding cuts and a new technology policy that aims at enabling India to fulfill its role in the "global economic environment", the ministry of science and technology has been working to turn the various scientific institutions in the country away from …
MANY OF the nation's premier scientific establishments have utilised government funding poorly and failed to meet their 1991-92 objectives, complains the office of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG). The CAG report, placed before Parliament on May 7, made its complaint on the basis of an audit of the working …
• Although the ministry of non-conventional energy sources spent Rs 69 crore -- 62 per cent of its expenditure on solar energy programmes -- on installing solar photovoltaic devices during 1986-92, evaluation studies indicate most of the units are not functioning because of "lack of proper maintenance, poor performance of …
THE RESURGENCE of infectious bacterial diseases in the developed world is proof that the battle against them is not over. But there has been no corresponding surge in drug research, because multinationals consider large investments in research to be uneconomical (Science, Vol 257, No 5073). Scientists warn against complacence in …
BURDENED by repayment of its enormous external debt, the Peruvian government has been forced to cut down its budgeting for health and sanitation facilities, even though a cholera epidemic claimed about 4,000 lives there in 1991 and diarrhoeal diseases kill about 17,000 children each year in the country. The deteriorating …
There is mixed official opinion on the budgetary allocation for environment, which shows an increase of Rs 40 crore over the previous year's amount of Rs 329.81 crore. But, says Vinay Shankar, additional secretary, MEF, "The real increase this year is by about Rs 66 crore. We should take into …
FINANCE minister Manmohan Singh contends non-conventional energy sources (NCES) have been given a boost through customs duty reductions of upto 20 per cent on a variety of items and continuation of the tax holiday for renewable energy projects. Funding for solar and wind energy programmes have been raised from 22.9 …
MINISTER of state for science and technology P R Kumaramangalam's announcement of the formation of a body to select and finance industrially useful projects is caught in a contention over its funding and scope. Hectic meetings are under way in New Delhi's Technology Bhawan to finalise the shape of the …
