Economic Times ⁽²¹⁸⁾

(Full text and external link unavailable) Under the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), developed countries grant one-way tariff preferences to developing countries. But the experience with these preferences has been even less encouraging than that with aid.

(Full text and external link unavailable) Skeptics say that exports have not responded to trade liberalization. Are they right? And even if they are wrong, why has the response in India been more muted than in China? Here is one hypothesis.

(Full text and external link unavailable) India is now the top ranking user of anti-dumping. The Economic Times asked three specialists to write on "Should anti-dumping be dumped?" My take: This is a no-brainer. WTO members should jointly agree to outlaw the use of this self-destructive weapon. But should they fail to do so, countries should unilaterally discard it from their arsenals.

“The poor are a gold mine,” wrote economist Thomas Sowell two decades ago, arguing that often anti-poverty programmes benefit those who administer them rather than those for whom they are administered. India’s food procurement, storage and distribution system lends unequivocal support to Sowell's contention: Out of every Rs. 100 spent on food subsidy in India, only Rs. 3.70 reached the poor in the year 2000-01."The poor are a gold mine," wrote economist Thomas Sowell two decades ago, arguing that often anti-poverty programmes benefit those who administer them rather than those for whom they are administered. Read full article Abstract: "The poor are a gold mine," wrote economist Thomas Sowell two decades ago, arguing that often anti-poverty programmes benefit those who administer them rather than those for whom they are administered. Sowell went on to suggest that the US spending on anti-poverty programmes at the time was three times that needed to lift every man, woman, and child in America above the poverty line by simply sending money to the poor. Considering Sowell's impeccable credentials as a conservative economist, it is tempting to…

Those of you old enough to remember Mother India, the first Indian film to be nominated for an Oscar, would remember its hero Sunil Dutt sitting on top of a mound of grain and trying to keep the villain from taking it away. Well, gone are the days. We now have the Food Corporation of India sitting on top of a mountain of grain, trying to keep the rains from washing it away. How did we arrive here? What should be done? Economic Times, Wednesday, March 27, 2002 WHEN I first read about the European “Butter Mountain” back in the 1970s, I thought this was possible only in the rich countries. But only a quarter century later, through excessive hikes in support-cum-procurement prices, we have created our own “Foodgrain Mountain” containing 62 million tonnes of wheat and rice. Today, granaries of the Food Corporation of India are literally overflowing, with almost half of the grain stored in the open, ready to be washed away by rain. According to a World Bank report, of the total stock held by FCI, 50…