Washington India and China have made important in-roads into reducing poverty, a top International Monetary Fund (IMF) official said, adding at the same time with high growth, they have also seen rising inequality.

"India and China too have made important in-roads into reducing poverty. Yet, with high growth, they have also seen rising inequality. Those inequalities need more attention. So we need growth. We need equitable growth. We need inclusive growth," IMF Managing Director, Christine Lagarde, said.

After Portugal's driest February in 80 years, farmers are praying for a miracle as drought ravages pastures and sparks forest fires, exacerbating the country's economic crisis.

Worse still, official forecasters expect the freak weather pattern to prevail at least through the end of March, which would worsen a drought now classified as severe and extreme throughout mainland Portugal.

What do the financial and economic crises of the high-income countries mean for emerging and developing countries? I addressed this in New Delhi last week, at a discussion sponsored by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), the Consumer Unity & Trust Society (CUTS) and the Financial Times. The conclusion I drew was that the crisis is dangerous. But this is not so much because of its direct effects. It is far more because of the lessons that might be drawn. The right lessons have to be drawn, not the wrong ones.

The Union Cabinet, on Tuesday, is likely to take up the National Manufacturing Policy, which aims at developing mega industrial zones with flexible labour and environmental laws.
According to sources in the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, all issues related to labour and environment ministries have been resolved by a Group of Ministers (GoM) set up for the manufacturing policy and it “is likely to come in Cabinet tomorrow”.

Official conservative estimates suggest that floods in Sindh would affect the gross domestic product (GDP) by about 0.5 percent and GDP growth would be at around 3.7 percent of the GDP against the target of 4.2 percent in 2011-12.

A senior official at Ministry of Finance informed here on Wednesday that recent floods would increase tremendous amount of pressure on investment in infrastructure and management of public finance as well as power sector to remain within the budgetary allocations.

There is a China hand in India's inflation, one important reason why the steady rise in interest rates may not be cooling the high inflation. About 25% of imported inputs that go into manufacture of goods produced locally are imported from China. In addition, a third of consumer goods imported into India come from China.

WASHINGTON: The World Bank and IMF are proposing global carbon taxes on aviation and ship fuels in developed economies to help reduce carbon dioxide emissions, according to a draft proposal seen by AFP on Friday.

The proposal suggests an international charge on aviation and maritime bunker fuels of $25 per ton of CO2, which it said would "reduce CO2 emissions from each sector by around five to 10 percent."

Raghuram Rajan India

The UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, pressed debt-ridden donor countries on Monday not to cut aid to the poor despite their budgetary woes.