"President Hu Jintao joined other leaders at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit Sunday to pursue a new strategy for growth after the global economic crisis and reject protectionism. Countries should uphold fair, free and open global trading and investment systems, as well as maintain the free flow of goods, investment and services to help restore world economic growth, Hu said.

Leaders of APEC economies, which account for more than half of the global economy, said they would continue with huge stimulus spending measures until a durable economic recovery has clearly taken hold. Leaders at the APEC summit also resolved to push the Doha Round of World Trade Organization negotiations to its finish line, which would be the end of 2010. The round of talks has stalled for eight years."

"India's post-reform process of urban economic growth has brought significant gains to the rural poor as well as the urban poor. The poor in urban and rural areas are now linked through trade, migration, and transfers, which explains why rising standards in India's towns are helping to reduce poverty in the villages. Even though agricultural growth has been relatively weak since 1991, overall high growth has positively affected the lives of the rural masses.

Now, two experts on poverty have come up with new research, which shows that India's high economic growth since 1991 is, indeed, pro-poor and has decisively reduced poverty. Gaurav Datt and Martin Ravallion, both respected economists, employed a new series of consumption-based poverty measures to show that slightly more than one person in two lived below the poverty line in India during the 1950s and '60s. By 1990 this had fallen to one person in three. By 2005, it fell again, and only one in five persons now lives below the poverty line."

"There are many factors that determine the rate of investments in a country. The greater the number of infrastructures and their diverse nature, the more chance investors in different fields will find the overall investment climate to be conducive. But infrastructure is far short of need in Bangladesh. The most urgent area in respect of infrastructure building is in the power sector.

Power is indispensable for any kind of enterprising but currently there is a very big mismatch between power production and its use in the country. Private sector activities are suffering from bureaucratic impediments and a tussle between different lobbies. But these issues need to be addressed decisively for new power generation units to be established rapidly throughout the country. Apart from power, there is a need for substantial investment in ports, information technology, supporting facilities, transportation and other areas."

"The Indonesian government last week declared its commitment to supply the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and its three regional partners China, Korea and Japan, with 12,000 tons of rice yearly. The supply is to be used in emergency situations, such as natural disasters or famine. The commitment is a part of a total 300,000 tons of rice committed at the AMAF conference in Brunei.

The government will ask the State Logistics Agency to oversee the supply. It excludes the national rice stockpile for domestic emergencies, which has reached 550,000 tons this year. Asean member countries have high hopes of Indonesia becoming the region's main food supplier, as the country's food security was considered to be quite stable."

"Nepal's sustainable and so-called inclusive growth through macroeconomic reform programs is under scrutiny. People are deprived of life's basic necessities. Affordable and quality healthcare and education are unavailable. The majority of the working poor face food insecurity. The global financial crisis has contributed to market failure. Currently, eight million Nepalis are struggling for food security. About 35 percent of the population in Nepal are bearing the brunt of insufficient food supply.

Safety nets are essential to safeguard the vulnerable. Public social safety nets are normally classified into formal and informal. In the formal safety nets, individual's access to economic and social support is guaranteed by law but in informal safety net schemes, there is the likelihood of support to individuals for attaining or remaining above the designated minimum standard of living without any legal guarantee."

"In a developing nation like Bangladesh, economic growth is instrumental in fighting poverty and ensuring development. Bangladesh has been registering annual economic growth of more than 5 percent on average for the last two decades. But the ongoing global and domestic issues on food, energy, infrastructure, and law and order, have exposed a number of challenges that have cast shadows on Bangladesh's growth prospects. The country needs identify a priority sector that will be most effective for reform and growth.

Higher education must be a priority sector. But it has remained unattended for various reasons, and now requires immediate repair to let the economy move forward. Reforms in other areas such as the judiciary and bureaucracy are expected to be easier once significant progress in this core sector has been achieved. As seen from the developmental experience of most emerging nations, higher education in particular can raise productivity by upgrading human capital."

"Pakistan has recently seen a rise in food prices, making the country's food security situation significantly worse. Some organizations are trying to conquer the crisis. There is a bumper harvest this year, and the marketplaces and shops are full. Yet around half Pakistan's population is living without adequate food. Prices have shot up, especially in the rural areas, home to the country's poorest residents.

To combat the crisis, the FAO, and the WFP have joined the EU Food Facility's Pakistan program, designed to reduce hunger and increase agricultural productivity. It is increasingly difficult for farmers to live off the land. Resources are limited, as seeds and fertilizer needed for good yields, fetch prices that are out of reach for many."

"The first rice trading floor in Vietnam will debut in the Mekong Delta during Vietnam's first ever Rice Festival slated at the end of this month. The floor is expected to help businesses and farmers avoid difficulties due to price fluctuations. It will also offer farmers the opportunity to apply modern technologies to improve the quality of their rice and increase Vietnam's competitiveness in the world's rice markets.

This is the second farm produce exchange to be established in the country after the coffee trading floor in the Central Highland province of Dak Lak. Major rice export markets included the Philippines, Indonesia, Cuba and Iraq. Exports have increased sharply to African countries and the Middle East."

"The Indonesian government will review a presidential regulation on public-private partnerships (PPP) and a presidential decree on government project procurement rules to ease bottlenecks hampering development. Land acquisition is the biggest issue in the development of the government infrastructure projects as the process often meets problems such as overlapping ownership and conflicting spatial planning made by different central and regional government bodies.

Various PPP programs have been offered to business players since 2005, but only a few resulted in project development. Over the past five years, the government only managed to develop 85 kilometers of new toll roads or 7.8 percent of the 1,095-kilometer target. A total of Rp 2,100 trillion ($222 billion) is needed to finance infrastructure projects in the country annually, of which the government can only provide 15 percent."

"Cambodia's stock exchange will have a soft opening at the beginning of next year, a finance official said, thereby missing the government's previous end-of-year deadline due to delays in passing necessary legislation. The soft opening of Cambodia's stock market will be in January or February next year,

The government has only passed about 10 of the 30 required regulations to launch the bourse. The three state-owned companies the government has pushed to list on the exchange -- Sihanoukville Autonomous Port, Phnom Penh Port and Telecom Cambodia -- would not make their initial public offerings until the end of 2010."

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