Projecting an 8.5 per cent economic growth for the current fiscal, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday conceded that rising prices had brought distress to the common man, but exuded confidence that the “corrective” efforts of the Centre and the States would bring down inflation to about five or six per cent by the end of December this year. At a press conference here to mark the completion of the UPA-II...

The global platform for action on gender equality and women’s empowerment was fixed in Beijing 15 years ago and international organizations like the ILO, women activists and researchers, policymakers, etc all over the world have advocated for gender equality in the world of work for even longer. Although women constitute almost 41 per cent of the global labour force, yet the productive potential of women workers still remains grossly undermined....

The impact of Global Recession will force an additional 64 million people across the world to live in extreme poverty by 2010, warns the World Bank. The economic crisis and recession have substantially increased the challenge of meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) targets, according to the World Development Indicator (WDI) 2010 released by the World Bank on Tuesday. In contrast to the record growth in 2000-07, the global economy grew only...

Economic diversification is vital if the world's most poverty-stricken countries, some of them depending on a single or a few raw materials or commodities, are to escape their predicament, a top United Nations trade official said today. “Some countries had been successful in diversifying their economies, in creating jobs, in improving governance,” UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) Secretary-General Supachai Panitchpakdi told the opening session of a two-day meeting...

The global economic crisis has wiped out developing Asia's recent gains in poverty eradication as the meltdown is expected to have driven 21 million more people in the region into poverty. A joint report by the United Nations and the Asian Development Bank shows that the global economic slowdown has slackened trade, slashed export and tourism receipts and raised unemployment levels. This makes it difficult for the region to achieve its...