"India's new budget is a pre-election bonanza for key constituencies: tax cuts for the middle class and perks for the country's big corporations. There's a little something for everyone, including a $15 billion in loan waivers for small farmers. For all the attention that India's retail revolution, information technology prowess and booming manufacturing sectors have garnered in recent years, agriculture, on which 70 percent of the population still directly depends, is in crisis.

While well intentioned, the new budget's loan forgiveness scheme will not help those farmers who most need relief: 80 percent of the farmers have no access to formal credit, and it is bank loans that are to be forgiven. Moreover, since farmers who do have access to formal credit will have less incentive to repay their loans, banks will become more reluctant to lend to any farmers at all. A policy of expanding legitimate micro-lending schemes and prosecuting illegal loan sharks, not to mention the promotion of sustainable agricultural practices that require less expensive inputs, would do far more to help India's poorest farmers."

"Across the Mekong region, a vast highway grid is taking shape, dragging former backwaters into the modern age but also speeding the spread of social ills and environmental harm, experts say. To their proponents, the 'economic corridors' set to crisscross the six nations along the river will boost commerce and development in a mostly rural region, much of it impoverished by decades of conflict and isolation.

To its critics, the plan to cover the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) with a network of highways will accelerate rainforest logging and wildlife poaching and the spread of human trafficking, illegal drugs and HIV/AIDS. The UN Environment Program has warned that despite increasing economic integration, a key weakness of the GMS is that it still lacks a genuinely regional body with the mandate to develop and implement a shared vision of sustainable development."

"Access to clean water is one of Indonesia's biggest problems. According to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Report 2007, piped water is accessible to 30.8 percent of households in the country's cities and 9 percent in its villages. To meet the MDGs target by 2015, Indonesia needs Rp 43 trillion (US$4.6 billion) in clean water funding. The government currently provides Rp 500 billion. In order to close the funding gap, the government expects private investment in drinking water infrastructure.

Attracting private investment in clean water is no easy task. Between 1990 and 2006, there were only 26 collaboration projects with private firms. Increasing public funding for clean water infrastructure is the most rational approach for Indonesia. There are resources and mechanisms the government could employ to increase clean water funding, such as state and local budgets, grants, government bonds and community-public partnerships."

"As long as farmers produce the same old local staples -- such as rice, maize, millet or cassava, which rarely trade internationally -- it doesn't matter much how many more mouths they feed. As yields go up, prices go down, and the farmers are no better off. It's only if or when they get into export crops that their incomes increase. So, while Asia's Green Revolution freed up huge numbers of workers to move to the city and power its modern-day Industrial Revolution, the resulting new wealth is most unevenly distributed. And many farm families remain mired in poverty.

The least-developed urgently need policies and programs to foster international trade, the springboard for the astonishing economic growth and dramatic poverty alleviation in countries like China, India, Malaysia and Vietnam. This includes an end to agricultural protectionism, the perennial hold-out in every trade-liberalization scheme, and favored access to international markets for the countries that are so far missing the globalization boat."

"Pacific trade ministers have met to craft a declaration that hopefully would influence the outcome of the Doha Development Round in the event the ongoing push for an agreement by the end of the year is successful. At the forefront of the Pacific Least Developed Countries (LDCs) concerns were fisheries subsidies, the accession process to WTO membership and export taxes. On fisheries subsidies, the Solomon Islands welcomed the exemption given to LDCs in the WTO chair's draft text on fisheries subsidies.

The Pacific LDC ministers also called for additional technical assistance, including immediate steps to get the 'Enhanced Integrated Framework' and the WTO's Aid for Trade initiative up and running. Through the Maseru Declaration, the world's poorest countries have set out their priorities for a global trade deal as WTO members in Geneva gear up for another attempt to strike a deal in the long-running Doha Round trade talks."

"The increase of actual use of foreign investment in China's western regions exceeded the nation's average by 128 percentage points in the first two months this year. During the first two months, the western regions' actual use of foreign investment was $1.3 billion, more than double over the same period of 2007. The increase is attributed to the policy of encouraging foreign investment in the middle and western regions.

Foreign investors are being welcomed to participate in reforms of state-owned companies. A quarter of the nation's tax revenue comes from foreign invested companies. By the end of Feb., the number of foreign invested companies was 637,000 nationwide and the amount of the actual use of foreign investment reached $781 billion."

"Laos declared 2008 to be the National Year of Sanitation, illustrating the government's commitment to UNICEF's global campaign on water and sanitation. Low sanitation coverage continues to be among the greatest threats facing children in Laos. A recent cholera outbreak in the south of the country highlights the importance of good sanitation and hygiene. As few as 20 percent of people in the country currently have access to adequate sanitation.

A unique educational package called the 'Blue Box' has been specially developed for schoolchildren. Supported by UNICEF and developed in cooperation with the Ministry of Education, the Blue Box is a participatory, interactive toolkit for primary schools. The kit contains games, story cards, songs, posters and other materials containing key hygiene messages."

"Thailand's new government will take two or three months to decide how to raise the money to expand mass transit rail systems and build other infrastructure projects, Finance Minister Surapong Suebwonglee said. The government is still in the process of deciding the exact source of funding estimated at 1.5 trillion baht to 1.7 trillion baht ($47.4-$53.7 billion).

Under consideration is the issuing of 30-year bonds worth 95 billion baht to finance the projects over the next four to five years. The new mass transit lines in Bangkok are part of the new government's pledge to accelerate spending on infrastructure to boost domestic confidence weakened by political tension before and after a 2006 military coup."

"Vice President Kalla has renewed calls for state-owned power company PT Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN) to speed up construction of coal-fired power plants in a bid to swiftly resolve a power crisis plaguing Java. The Java-Bali power grid has a capacity of 15,000 MW, less than the area's 16,251 MW peak power consumption, forcing PLN to regularly cut off electricity supply in the region.

President Yudhoyono recently issued a government regulation ordering PLN to complete the construction of 35 planned plants, 10 of which are to be built on Java, by 2010 at the latest. PLN has predicted a continuation of the electrical crisis into next year if no extra power is made available."

"The value of the Chinese yuan has been a sore spot in United States-China relations in recent years. Beijing has made slow but gradual upward appreciation of the yuan while spending hundred of billions in dollars buying the United States' growing debt. In January this year, China spent $492.6 billion to purchase US government treasury bonds, making it the second-largest buyer of US debt, after Japan. With inflation in China reaching a record 8.7% in February 2008, the yuan's appreciation will likely continue.

A major appreciation of the yuan, together with raising interest rates further, is seen as the most effective way of bringing China's ongoing inflation under control. Some experts also argue that the best way for China to deal with its $1.6 trillion foreign reserve is to appreciate the Chinese currency by 40%, and move the Chinese economy into a more value-added industrial structure through a new type of international division of labor. In this new design, China would transfer the current labor-intensive manufacturing industries to other developing countries that have a lower wage range."

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