"Only 2 percent of the $1.18 billion allocated to infrastructure under the government's stimulus package had been disbursed by the end of May. This is shocking given the urgency of upgrading the country's creaking infrastructure. Bureaucratic red tape, new tender procedures and inefficiencies have stymied the disbursement of funds for a host of projects, from highways, power plants and ports to the vital upgrading of schools, hospitals and public markets.

Given the sorry state of the nation's infrastructure, it is no secret that execution is the weak link in our ability to undertake large public projects. It is also widely accepted that without new infrastructure, the economy will not grow at a faster rate and Indonesia will be left clutching at the coattails of countries such as China and India."

"Food security is central to any fight against rural poverty in India. The government has started understanding the fact that hunger and starvation deaths are not due to low per capita food production of a particular region. It is often due to the inability to get access to food.

India needs higher food production to ward off any unforeseen food crisis in the country, particularly due to natural calamities and drought. If food production keeps pace with population growth, India's dependency on the foreign countries for food grains can be overcome."

"Ho Chi Ming City and Ha Noi were the two largest clean water wasters, each leaking 40 percent of total supply every day. The main reason for water leakage was probably the use of old pipes. About 30 percent of 3,400km of the city's water pipelines, which were cracked in several places, were installed 30 years ago.

The work on tracking the old pipes to replace them with new ones faced many challenges because there was no documentation on their exact locations, like a pipeline map. The city needed $505 million to upgrade and replace the pipeline system."

"The government's decision to transfer state-owned shares to the National Social Security Fund will enable consumers in PRC to worry less about their pension funds and spend more to hasten the change of China's growth model. Given the importance of the national pension fund for the country's sustained growth in the future, it is vital to examine the new policy in line with the financial health of the national social security system.

China established a national social security fund in 2000 to pay out pensions. With total assets of only about 500 billion yuan ($73.1 billion) at the end of 2007, the national pension fund needs to be rapidly increased to between 4 and 5 trillion yuan in 30 years when the country's elderly population will peak."

"Commerce ministers from the Mekong region have been warned that countries must boost trade and transport sector reforms if they hope to boost intraregional trade and reduce reliance on ailing external trade partners. The Asian Development Bank said the economic crisis had highlighted the importance of intraregional trade in the wake of falling demand from major trade partners.

In Cambodia garment exports, which make up around 98 percent of Cambodia's total merchandise exports, fell 26 percent in the first quarter of the year. Intra-garment trade involving Cambodia is almost nonexistent, with even the garment sector sourcing the bulk of its fabric from outside the region due to trade barriers."

"India has received 45 percent less than normal rain in June this year, causing government concern over a failed monsoon that could hinder the prospects of economic recovery. Water stocks in 81 key reservoirs across the country that account for 72 percent of India's total stock indicate that current storage is just 10 percent of full capacity and 20 percent of last year's storage.

A further delay in the monsoon could result in states reducing the supply of water for irrigation and conserving it for drinking purposes instead. With the global recession impacting growth in manufactured good and services, the government has been relying on agriculture to grow at least 2.5% to shore up the economy."

"Indonesia's health budget is equivalent to only 3.1 percent of its GDP, which is not enough to cover all the needs within the health system. On the other hand, health insurance from both government and private sectors has reached 44.5 percent coverage, which indicates 55.5 percent of the population is still without health insurance.

Low health spending in proportion to the national GDP should be increased because of the rapid population growth, poverty alleviation and a future aging population. The focus of the health platform needs to be shifted from curative programs toward promotion and prevention. The total number of health facilities has increased over the past 50 years, but if the government of Indonesia allocates too much money for curative programs instead of promotion and prevention, this will cause more problems."

"Social safety nets are necessary to alleviate poverty within broader macroeconomic growth policies that take a long time to trickle down benefits to the poor and disadvantaged. Special programs for poverty alleviation are needed, especially for countries like Pakistan that has recently been through an economic crisis that has reversed poverty alleviation gains made during the earlier part of the decade.

Creation of a database based on household profiling for the entire country is an administratively complex and costly exercise. But once completed, it can be shared to improve the productivity of, and synergy between, social protection programs to minimize duplication and correct serious exclusion errors in the selection of beneficiaries and avoid arbitrariness and corruption, so that the help being offered reaches those in most need of it."

"India has extended a helping hand to PRC by participating in its poverty-alleviation project to set up a state-of-the-art training-cum-information center for thousands of farmers in a relatively backward and mountainous northwestern region.

The center is meant to serve as a network-based platform for the farming community to access information efficiently and quickly about latest farming techniques, cropping and marketing trends as well as to attain necessary technical and managerial skills."

"The recent dredging for sand from the lower channel of the Mekong River will alter water flows and inflict major environmental damage if it continues unchecked, an official says. The rush was triggered by the Cambodian government's ban on sand exports on environmental and domestic supply concerns.

Since early 2008, the Vietnamese government has allowed boats carrying sand from Cambodia to anchor on the lower channel of the Mekong River. It had become a major trading post for sand. The crowding of barges will affect river traffic and unchecked dredging will affect its flow. This would in turn cause riverbanks and houses to collapse."

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