"Around a decade ago, about 40 percent of India's 825,000 villages lacked all-weather roads. Under a $34-billion program some 375,000 kms of new rural roads will be built by 2010 and nearly the same length improved. The results are showing already: household incomes have jumped by half or even doubled, crop yields have nearly tripled and literacy rates have improved.

For every 1 million rupees ($22,000) spent on rural roads, 163 people are lifted out of poverty, according to estimates. But the roads sector is plagued by poor planning and execution, corruption, and huge time and cost overruns. The other major issue is funding; India needs $70 billion for building roads over the next three years, the government says. After a series of road shows abroad, the National Highways Authority aims to get in bids for 6,563 kms of road projects worth $12 billion in the year to March."

"Despite the global economic downturn, trade in Viet Nam is outpacing its outdated and overworked ports infrastructure. Filling the capacity gap will require substantial foreign investment, but questions about the country's underlying financial health, including a recent sharp devaluation of the local currency, could hamper those inflows.

Viet Nam has 40 active ports and last year moved nearly 197 million tons of cargo. That's a small fraction of the cargo moved through the region's busiest modern ports. The lack of modern port facilities threatens to dampen Viet Nam's economic growth prospects and limit new trade opportunities. Government officials acknowledge the dearth of deepwater and internationally standardized port facilities, including enough berths to service incoming container and trans-ocean vessels."

"Efforts to boost income growth in PRC are certainly needed as the country tries hard to make domestic consumption a new growth engine. But no less important are redistribution efforts to enhance the purchasing power of the many low-income families. Official statistics show that real urban household disposable income expanded by 10.5 percent in the first three quarters of this year while real rural household cash income rose 8.5 percent during the period.

Such income growth must have contributed considerably to the country's broad-based pickup in consumer spending. Retail sales increased by 17 percent in real terms, pushing up the country's gross domestic product growth by 4 percentage points. However, in spite of the greater role domestic consumption played in stoking economic growth, consumer-led demand is still nowhere near enough to make up for declining exports this year, not to mention picking up the potential slack if the country reduces its dependence on investment for growth."

"President Yudhoyono has pledged to reduce Indonesia's carbon emissions by at least 26 percent by 2020, and potentially more, depending on international support. Such reductions in carbon emissions must not conflict with Indonesia's efforts to improve living standards. So how can these two goals be reconciled? The traditional thinking is that reducing carbon emissions must come at the expense of economic growth. Such a viewpoint is too simplistic.

In fact, the scheme to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation can help move Indonesia onto a more sustainable path to low-carbon prosperity. Low-carbon development will happen on the ground and at the provincial and district level. It is here that the infrastructure for successful low-carbon development efforts needs to be created."

"In the first summit meeting between Japan and officials from the five countries that border the banks of the 4,800-kilometer Mekong River, attendees pledged to urgently tackle the environmental issues related to development of the region. Tokyo pledged 200 billion yen ($2.2 billion) to the initiative, which will begin next year and aims to promote biodiversity and cooperation on water resource management.

To those communities whose livelihoods and survival have already been damaged by the dredging, dams and pollution currently in place, the words at the summit meeting mean very little, especially with 11 more dams planned for the river's mainstream. The continuing degradation of the river concerns as many as 70 million people from its origin in the Tibetan Plateau to the South China Sea."

"The Bangladesh government needs to spend more on skill development as the private sector usually does not invest in this area due to slow or no returns. The inability of workers to pay for training in developing economies does not motivate the private sector either. In developing countries, the government, therefore, must not shy away from this unavoidable responsibility.

Existing opportunities for skills and vocational training in the country are rather limited. The government runs fewer polytechnics and other training facilities than needed. There needs to be a rapid expansion of the training facilities and programs. In the long run, returns would be much higher than the expenditure."

"The Kyrgyz Republic is looking to establish direct road links with Pakistan through the Karakoram Highway to further improve bilateral trade relations between the two countries. With the development of direct communication channels, bilateral trade would increase by 10 times, according to an official.

Both countries have signed a total taxation agreement to protect mutual investments and this is expected to boost the confidence of investors and enhance bilateral business and investment activities between the two countries. He said Pakistani textile products are very popular in the Kyrgyz Republic and called upon Pakistani businessmen to look for setting up textile industries in the country."

"Buoyed up by the ongoing economic recovery and domestic consumption in PRC, the willingness of potential employers to hire people in 2010 will be stronger than this year, with companies in second-tier cities showing greater interest, a survey shows.

According to the poll, 19 percent of potential employers said they would hire people in the first quarter of next year -- 2 percentage points higher than in the fourth quarter of 2008, and also the highest since late last year. Those who aim to cease recruitment in the next quarter add up to only 5 percent of the total, 1 percentage point lower than in the previous quarter and the lowest in a year."

"The dizzy growth of the microfinance industry in recent years -- 90 percent compounded average in the last four years -- has fuelled suspicions of an infection spreading through its system. Judging from the entrepreneur interest and inflow of private equity funds into microfinance institutions (MFIs), further scale-up is inevitable.

In the financial services business, to scale up fast is to court disaster. But in the case of Indian microfinance, industry experts believe that it need not be so, given the size of the underserved market. Today, a large chunk of the industry is outside regulation. A good 90 percent of the MFIs are small, serving fewer than 10,000 borrowers and they are unregulated. Thus far, microfinance has been a success story. Before the 'wow' turns 'woe', there is a clearly a need for course-correction."

"Replacing smoky indoor cooking fires in South Asia with environmentally friendly stoves would have the same effect on health as almost halving the country's cancer burden, a study says. The research, the first to quantify how many lives could be saved by using improved cook stoves, is one of a series of public health benefits from reducing carbon emissions in selected scenarios, including food, agriculture and household energy.

Introducing 150 million low-emission household cook stoves over the next decade would not only reduce greenhouse gases but prevent the deaths of 240,000 children under five from acute lower respiratory infection and 1.8 million deaths from lung and heart disease by 2020, the study said."

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