After the Covid-induced economic crisis of 2020, consumer prices began to rise in 2021 as countries emerged from lockdowns or other restrictions  This was supposed to be the comeback year for the world economy following the Covid pandemic.

Instead, 2022 was marked by a new war, record inflation and climate-linked disasters. It was a “polycrisis” year, a term popularized by historian Adam Tooze. Get ready for more gloom in 2023.

“The number of crises has increased since the start of the century,” said Roel Beetsma, professor of macroeconomics at the University of Amsterdam “Since World War Two we have never seen such a complicated situation,” he told AFP.

After the Covid-induced economic crisis of 2020, consumer prices began to rise in 2021 as countries emerged from lockdowns or other restrictions.

Central bankers insisted that high inflation would only be temporary as economies returned to normal. But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February sent energy and food prices soaring.

Many countries are now grappling with cost-of-living crises because wages are not keeping up with inflation, forcing households to make difficult choices in their spending.

“Everything has become more expensive, from cream to wine and electricity,” said Nicole Eisermann from her stand at the Frankfurt Christmas market.

Central banks played catch-up. They started to raise interest rates this year in an effort to tame galloping inflation — at the risk of tipping countries into deep recessions, since higher borrowing costs mean slower economic activity. Inflation has finally started to slow down in the United States and the eurozone.

Careful spending

Consumer prices in the Group of 20 developed and emerging nations are expected to reach eight percent in the fourth quarter before falling to 5.5 percent next year, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The OECD encourages governments to provide aid to bring relief to households.

In the 27-nation European Union, 674 billion euros ($704 billion) have been earmarked so far to shield consumers from high energy prices, according to the Bruegel think tank.

Germany, Europe’s biggest economy and the most dependent on Russia energy supplies, accounts for 264 billion euros of that total.

One in two Germans say they now only spend on essential items, according to a survey by EY consultancy.

“I am very careful but I have a lot of children and grandchildren,” said Guenther Blum, a shopper at the Frankfurt Christmas market.

Rising interest rates have also hurt consumers and businesses, though US Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell signalled last week that the pace of hikes could ease “as soon as” December.

He warned, however, that policy will probably have to remain tight for some time to restore price stability.

For her part, European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde sent a clear signal that the ECB would maintain its tightening policy, saying that eurozone inflation had yet to peak.

Economists expect Germany and another major eurozone economy, Italy, to fall into recession. Britain’s economy is already shrinking. Rating agency S&P Global foresees stagnation for the eurozone in 2023.

But the International Monetary Fund still expects the world economy to expand in 2023, with growth of 2.7 percent. The OECD is forecasting 2.2-percent growth.

The coronavirus pandemic, meanwhile, remains a wildcard for the global economy.

China’s zero-Covid policy restrained growth in the world’s second biggest economy, but the authorities have started to relax restrictions following nationwide protests.

Climate costs

But for Beetsma, the biggest crisis is climate change, which is “happening in slow motion”.

Natural and man-made catastrophes have caused $268 billion in economic losses so far in 2022, according to reinsurance giant Swiss Re. Hurricane Ian alone cost an estimated insured loss of $50-65 billion. Floods in Pakistan resulted in $30 billion in damage and economic loss this year.

Governments agreed at United Nations climate talks (COP27) in Egypt in November to create a fund to cover the losses suffered by vulnerable developing countries devastated by natural disasters.

But the COP27 summit ended without new commitments to phase out the use of fossil fuels, despite the need to cut greenhouse gas emissions and slow global warming.

“It is not an acute crisis but a very long-term crisis, protracted,” Beetsma said. “If we don’t do enough this will hit us in unprecedented scale.” (This story has not been edited by thenn.com  staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

By, Wolfgang Fengler, Homi Kharas, and Juan Caballero

In his 1969 poem “The Poor,” Roberto Sosa writes “The poor are many /and so/ –impossible to forget.” At that time, over half of the global population lived in extreme poverty ( less than $1.90 per day per person). The World Bank estimates that around 8.5 percent of the world’s population (685 million people) could be extremely poor by the end of 2022, and that poverty is now declining at a very slow rate of only 2 percent a year.

Meanwhile, the rich—defined by World Data Lab as those in households spending more than $120 per day per person (2017 purchasing power parity)—numbering about 250 million worldwide, capture the most media attention. Oxfam’s “Inequality Kills” report shows that the richest 10 people made $810 billion between March 2020 and November 2021, and that the richest 1 percent are responsible for the same level of carbon emissions as the poorest 3.1 billion people.

In between the rich and poor, lives the middle class ($12-120 per day), numbering some 3.6 billion people. The 2022 OECD Economic Survey of the United States, described a “hollowing out” of the middle class. Their economic analysis has called on governments to help the struggling middle class for several years, and the attention given to inflation, taxes, trade, and energy policy all aims at generating a process of globalization that delivers greater prosperity to the middle class.

However, there are only 4.6 billion people in these three groups out of the 8 billion people on the planet. There are 3.4 billion people who are seemingly forgotten, not extremely poor, not part of the middle class, and not rich. Who are they?

The missing group is perhaps best described as the “vulnerable.” They are not poor enough to feature prominently in the poverty and inequality discourse, yet they have been seriously affected by the recessions caused by COVID-19, and by food and fuel shortages and price increases. Academics have long argued that the most vulnerable groups may not coincide with the poorest groups. For example, Whelan and Maitre look at the experience of Irish households and find that just over one-third of their vulnerable cluster is drawn from the poor, while two-thirds are drawn from the non-poor. They conclude that “poverty and economic vulnerability are obviously related but are still distinct.”

We look at vulnerability in terms of the risk of being pushed back into poverty and the risk of having expectations of entry into the middle class dashed. Both have significant welfare and behavior consequences.

Clearly, the risk of falling back into poverty, usually due to an economic, health, or conflict shock, depends upon a household’s distance from the extreme poverty line. The most vulnerable to this risk are those spending $2-5 per day per person. There are 1.3 billion people in this segment. The bulk of the 85 million people who may have fallen into poverty in 2020 came from this group.

At the other end of the spectrum is a group spending $8-12 per day per person. This group would have had reasonable prospects of joining the middle class in a few years. In normal times, over 100 million people move out of this group into the middle class. This has slowed to 90 million this year and a further loss of 5 million is expected in 2023, meaning that for tens of millions of people, the hope for entry into the middle class has been derailed.

In between, the group spending $5-8 is subject to both kinds of risk, although to a lesser extent. The chance of falling into poverty is smaller, and the prospects for advancing into the middle class are also smaller, so it is a more stable category. Nevertheless, it is a group where income volatility is high—a spell of unemployment, a poor crop, or a family health crisis can create proportionally large income losses. On the other side of the coin, a family member gaining meaningful employment, migrating and sending home remittances, or enjoying a good harvest can propel a family toward the middle class. Both the risk of something bad happening and something good not happening can affect these households significantly.

Figure 1. Global population living in different spending groups

Source: World Data Pro, World Data Lab 2022

Figure 1 shows how the vulnerable are distributed among these spending categories today and in 2030 based on current projections of growth and distribution. The figure shows that the vulnerable are evenly spread across the three categories we have identified. It also shows that there is not likely to be a significant reduction in the size of this group in the next few years.

Given the size of the vulnerable group, governments would do well to pay more attention to them. Targeting social assistance based on spending/income levels is only likely to exclude a substantial portion of the vulnerable group. Additional metrics, based on country-by-country risk characteristics, are needed to build a more resilient population.

This recommendation is particularly important for Asian countries. There, great inroads have been made in reducing the absolute number of extremely poor people, so the vulnerable group is less likely to overlap with those in poverty. At the same time, Asian countries are witnessing severe climate-related shocks, so the vulnerability of many households has increased. By contrast, in Africa, levels of extreme poverty remain high, and the overlap between the vulnerable and the poor is larger. Then, targeting based on poverty, as is commonplace in many social assistance programs, will also assist in building resilience against vulnerability.

Although Asian countries have reduced poverty considerably, most people are still vulnerable. In fact, more than half of the Asian population is still poor or vulnerable. It will take another two to three years for Asia to cross the point where the majority of its population is middle-class or rich.

We need to pay more attention to the forgotten 3 billion. They are vulnerable on many dimensions, and their hopes and aspirations are in danger of destruction in today’s slow-growth and volatile economies. Identifying vulnerabilities is more complex than simply adjusting income poverty lines, although it should be one component. But the three-plus billion vulnerable people are many, and so—they should be impossible to forget. (Courtesy: Brookings Instituite)

By, Eswar Prasad & Aryan Khanna

The post-COVID recovery has run out of steam and the global economy is stalling, with many countries already in or on the brink of outright recession amid heightened uncertainty and rising risks. The October 2022 update of the Brookings-Financial Times TIGER indexes shows that growth momentum, as well as financial market and confidence indicators, have deteriorated markedly around the world in recent months.

A series of self-inflicted wounds, ranging from China’s zero-COVID policy to the United Kingdom’s fiscal recklessness, piled on top of persistent supply chain disruptions and the protracted war in Ukraine, have severely constricted space for policy maneuver. High and persistent inflation worldwide, and the actions by central banks to rein it in, are depressing economic activity, dampening household and business confidence, and roiling financial markets.

Major advanced economies such as the eurozone, Japan, and the United Kingdom have been dented by various adverse external shocks, often compounded by sluggish and tepid policy responses, throwing their growth trajectories off kilter. Many developed markets are now facing the combination of steep currency depreciations (relative to the U.S. dollar), rising government bond yields, strained public finances, and tightening policy constraints that have long characterized periods of economic and financial stress in emerging market economies.

The U.S. economy is rife with conflicting signals. Consumer demand remains strong and employment has continued to grow at a reasonably healthy pace. At the same time, GDP growth is anemic while inflation remains high by any measure, leaving the Federal Reserve with little choice but to hike rates further despite the tightening of financial conditions resulting from the stronger dollar and falling values of financial assets.

Energy supply disruptions are fueling inflation and constraining growth in European economies, with prospects of energy shortages in the winter damaging private sector confidence. Emblematic of the stresses on the U.K. economy, the plunge in the pound sterling’s value reflects a combination of these adverse external circumstances, the ongoing fallout from Brexit, and undisciplined fiscal policies. Many European countries face added concerns about populist policies that could increase the risks to fiscal and financial stability.

Japan is the sole major advanced economy that has the luxury of keeping monetary policy loose as inflation remains contained. This could help maintain stable albeit low growth, with the yen’s rapid depreciation not having any appreciable negative effects thus far.

Emerging market economies are facing similar challenges as their advanced economy counterparts, including high inflation and depreciating currencies, but have generally better growth prospects. Still, weak demand worldwide and tighter financial conditions will increase pressure on developing economies with current account deficits. Barring a few exceptions such as Turkey, Sri Lanka, and Venezuela, where rampant economic mismanagement has precipitated currency collapses, emerging markets at large do not seem at imminent risk of balance of payments crises, however.

China is facing a raft of problems resulting from the government’s rigid adherence to a zero-COVID strategy, a faltering real estate sector, and financial system stresses boiling over. Inflation remains under control, though the renminbi’s depreciation relative to the dollar has limited the People’s Bank of China’s ability to cut interest rates. The government and the PBOC have invoked a number of fiscal and monetary stimulus measures, but these have had limited traction in boosting private consumption and investment. Export growth, meanwhile, is likely to be restrained by weak global demand. (Courtesy: Eswar Prasad and Aryan Khanna (Cornell), The Brookings Institution, October 2022)

In the 2022 Global Hunger Index, India ranks 107th out of the 121 countries with sufficient data to calculate 2022 GHI scores. India was ranked 101st in the 2021 ranking.

With a score of 29.1, India has a level of hunger that is serious. It was 28.2 in 2014. The higher the score, the worse is the situation, according to the methodology. There are five levels of hunger severity, according to this methodology. Scores of ≤ 9.9 are Low; 10.0–19.9 are Moderate; 20.0–34.9 are Serious; 35.0–49.9 are Alarming; and ≥ 50.0 are Extremely Alarming. 

At 19.3 per cent, according to the latest data, India has the highest child wasting rate of all countries covered in the GHI. This rate is higher than it was in 1998-1999, when it was 17.1 per cent. Child wasting is the share of children under the age of five who have low weight for their height, reflecting acute undernutrition.

Nepal is ranked higher at 81, Bangladesh at 84 and even Pakistan at 99. India is ranked below African countries like Sudan, Congo, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Rwanda.

The Global Hunger Index is a peer-reviewed annual report, jointly published by Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilfe, designed to comprehensively measure and track hunger at the global, regional, and country levels. The aim of the GHI is to trigger action to reduce hunger around the world.

According to the data analysts, since 2000, India has made substantial progress, but there are still areas of concern, particularly regarding child nutrition.

India’s GHI score has decreased from a 2000 GHI score of 38.8 points, considered alarming, to a 2022 GHI score of 29.1, considered serious. India’s proportion of undernourished in the population is considered to be at a medium level, and its under-five child mortality rate is considered low.

While child stunting has seen a significant decrease — from 54.2 per cent in 1998-1999 to 35.5 per cent in 2019-2021 — it is still considered very high.

Each country’s GHI score is calculated based on a formula that combines four indicators that together capture the multidimensional nature of hunger:
Undernourishment: the share of the population with insufficient caloric intake.
Child stunting: the share of children under age five who have low height for their age, reflecting chronic undernutrition.
Child wasting: the share of children under age five who have low weight for their height, reflecting acute undernutrition.
Child mortality: the share of children who die before their fifth birthday, partly reflecting the fatal mix of inadequate nutrition and unhealthy environments.

Hunger is usually understood to refer to the distress associated with a lack of sufficient calories. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) defines food deprivation, or undernourishment, as the habitual consumption of too few calories to provide the minimum dietary energy an individual requires to live a healthy and productive life, given that person’s sex, age, stature, and physical activity level.

Undernutrition goes beyond calories and signifies deficiencies in any or all of the following: energy, protein, and/ or essential vitamins and minerals. Undernutrition is the result of inadequate intake of food in terms of either quantity or quality, poor utilization of nutrients due to infections or other illnesses, or a combination of these immediate causes. These, in turn, result from a range of underlying factors, including household food insecurity; inadequate maternal health or childcare practices; or inadequate access to health services, safe water, and sanitation.

Malnutrition refers more broadly to both undernutrition (problems caused by deficiencies) and overnutrition (problems caused by unbalanced diets that involve consuming too many calories in relation to requirements, with or without low intake of micronutrient-rich foods). Overnutrition, resulting in overweight, obesity, and noncommunicable diseases, is increasingly common throughout the world, with implications for human health, government expenditures, and food systems development. While overnutrition is an important concern, the GHI focuses specifically on issues relating to undernutrition. (IndicaNews)

If you’re planning on retiring in Connecticut, you better start saving yesterday, according to a new report.

Great schools, beautiful shoreline, classic architecture, deep woods, fabulous arts — but you better enjoy all Connecticut has to offer while you’re young. That’s the take-away from a new report that names the Nutmeg State the 3rd most expensive, and 8th worst overall, in which to retire. 

Personal finance website Bankrate ranked each state from the perspective of what matters most to a prospective retiree. The most heavily weighted category was affordability, at 40 percent, followed by well-being (20%), culture and diversity (15%), weather (15%) and crime (10%).

Of course, there’s more than a little subjectivity involved in selecting your final nesting place. Sunbelt states topped Bankrate’s list for retiree nirvana, but what if you burn easily and prefer skiing to snorkeling? And a state’s affordability drops way low for retirees if the home in which they live is already bought and paid for. But let’s all just play along…

Connecticut’s tied for 4th with Vermont in the crime category, and is ranked 8th overall for retiree “well-being,” but takes a beating in the data when it comes to affordability. The state ranks No. 48, right behind affluent enclaves Hawaii and California.

The New England winters didn’t work in Connecticut’s favor either; the state ranked No. 39 when it came to weather, a dip mitigated somewhat by its No. 14 ranking in culture and diversity.

Connecticut’s overall score of 23 tied that of Hawaii and Washington. 

The best state for retirees, according to BankRate, and your own intuition, is Florida. The Sunshine State not only scored high for its weather (No. 5), but was ranked first in culture and diversity, and 18th in affordability.

New York has lost more residents than any other state, a new report by moveBuddha, a company that calculates moving cost, said.  New York, maybe the people don’t quite love you anymore.

According to a new report by moveBuddha, a site where people can calculate their moving costs, New York lost more residents than any other state between April 1, 2020 and July 1, 2021, according to the U.S. Census Bureau population estimates.

Over that period, the state lost 319,020 people. New York state’s population as of 2020 was 20.2 million, according to the Census Bureau.

The report also used data collected from users looking for moving options on moveBuddha’s website between January 1, 2022 and August 5, 2022.  There were around 282,000 queries during this period.

New York is the fourth most-searched state to move out of this year, the company added. That’s behind New Jersey, California, and Illinois.

People are leaving for reasons that include unemployment or underemployment, skyrocketing rents, high cost of living, and high taxes, as compared to other states, moveBuddha said in the study.

People also appear to be leaving the Empire State for warmer pastures. New York to Los Angeles was the most popular search on moveBuddha. About 20% of New Yorkers looking to move were planning to head to Florida, followed by California, and Texas.

Of course, some parts of New York City are still hot. Rising rents and increasing pressure for workers to be in the office is driving demand for apartments in the city.

There’s also evidence that some people who left New York City earlier in the pandemic are coming back. And some are ready to spend on real estate. ‘Out of towners’ returning to New York (many of whom are actually returning former residents) have an average maximum housing budget of $1.3 million, while locals have budgeted an average maximum of $998, 011 for a home purchase, a recent Redfin report found.

But moveBuddha says that neighborhoods in Queens, the Bronx and Brooklyn all have more folks looking to leave, rather than move in, this year.

The report also found that four of the top 10 counties that saw a population decline between the same time period are in New York City: New York County (i.e. Manhattan), Kings County (i.e. Brooklyn), Bronx County, and Queens County.

Based on users searching on the moveBuddha site, the number of moves-out outnumbered the number of moves-in Jamaica, N.Y., Bronx, N.Y. and Staten Island, N.Y. the fastest.

In other words, for every 100 people moving out of Jamaica, only 27 people moved in. In the Bronx, that number was 36, and in Staten Island, 27.

The most popular city of origin for people moving to New York was San Francisco, moveBuddha added.

Nonetheless, there have been some gains for the Empire State: moveBuddha saw a lot more people moving in than out into Webster, N.Y., Ithaca, N.Y., and Fairport, N.Y.

The typical home price in Webster and in Fairport, or otherwise together known as Rochester, N.Y., was around $218,000, according to Zillow’s Home Value Index. Home values are up 11.2% from the previous year.

In Ithaca, a college town, the typical home is roughly $302,000, according to Zillow. Homes have grown in value by 21.3% from last year.

Got thoughts on the housing market? Write to MarketWatch reporter Aarthi Swaminathan at [email protected]

(AP) — The U.S. economy is caught in an awkward, painful place. A confusing one, too. Growth appears to be sputtering, home sales are tumbling and economists warn of a potential recession ahead. But consumers are still spending, businesses keep posting profits and the economy keeps adding hundreds of thousands of jobs each month.

In the midst of it all, prices have accelerated to four-decade highs, and the Federal Reserve is desperately trying to douse the inflationary flames with higher interest rates. That’s making borrowing more expensive for households and businesses.

The Fed hopes to pull off the triple axel of central banking: Slow the economy just enough to curb inflation without causing a recession. Many economists doubt the Fed can manage that feat, a so-called soft landing.

Surging inflation is most often a side effect of a red-hot economy, not the current tepid pace of growth. Today’s economic moment conjures dark memories of the 1970s, when scorching inflation co-existed, in a kind of toxic brew, with slow growth. It hatched an ugly new term: stagflation.

The United States isn’t there yet. Though growth appears to be faltering, the job market still looks quite strong. And consumers, whose spending accounts for nearly 70% of economic output, are still spending, though at a slower pace.

So the Fed and economic forecasters are stuck in uncharted territory. They have no experience analyzing the economic damage from a global pandemic. The results so far have been humbling. They failed to anticipate the economy’s blazing recovery from the 2020 recession — or the raging inflation it unleashed.

Even after inflation accelerated in spring of last year, Fed Chair Jerome Powell and many other forecasters downplayed the price surge as merely a “transitory” consequence of supply bottlenecks that would fade soon. It didn’t.

Now the central bank is playing catch-up. It’s raised its benchmark short-term interest rate three times since March. Last month, the Fed increased its rate by three-quarters of a percentage point, its biggest hike since 1994. The Fed’s policymaking committee is expected to announce another three-quarter-point hike Wednesday.

Economists now worry that the Fed, having underestimated inflation, will overreact and drive rates ever higher, imperiling the economy. They caution the Fed against tightening credit too aggressively.

“We don’t think a sledgehammer is necessary,” Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said this week.

Here’s a look at the economic vital signs that are sending frustratingly mixed signals to policymakers, businesses and forecasters:

THE OVERALL ECONOMY

As measured by the nation’s gross domestic product — the broadest gauge of output — the economy has looked positively sickly so far this year. And steadily higher borrowing rates, engineered by the Fed, threaten to make things worse.

“Recession is likely,” said Vincent Reinhart, a former Fed economist who is now chief economist at Dreyfus and Mellon.

After growing at a 37-year high 5.7% last year, the economy shrank at a 1.6% annual pace from January through March. For the April-June quarter, forecasters surveyed by the data firm FactSet estimate that growth equaled a scant 0.95% annual rate from April through June. (The government will issue its first estimate of April-June growth on Thursday.)

Some economists foresee another economic contraction for the second quarter. If that happened, it would further escalate recession fears. One informal definition of recession is two straight quarters of declining GDP. Yet that definition isn’t the one that counts.

The most widely accepted authority is the National Bureau of Economic Research, whose Business Cycle Dating Committee assesses a wide range of factors before declaring the death of an economic expansion and the birth of a recession. It defines a recession as “a significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy and that lasts more than a few months.”

In any case, the economic drop in the January-March quarter looked worse than it actually was. It was caused by factors that don’t mirror the economy’s underlying health: A widening trade deficit, reflecting consumers’ robust appetite for imports, shaved 3.2 percentage points off first-quarter growth. A post-holiday-season drop in company inventories subtracted an additional 0.4 percentage point.

Consumer spending, measured at a modest 1.8% annual rate from January through March, is still growing. Americans are losing confidence, though: Their assessment of economic conditions six months from now has reached its lowest point since 2013 in June, according to the Conference Board, a research group.

INFLATION

What’s agitating consumers is no secret: They’re reeling from painful prices at gasoline stations, grocery stores and auto dealerships.

The Labor Department’s consumer price index skyrocketed 9.1% in June from a year earlier, a pace not seen since 1981. The price of gasoline has jumped 61% over the past year, airfares 34%, eggs 33%.

And despite widespread pay raises, prices are surging faster than wages. In June, average hourly earnings slid 3.6% from a year earlier adjusting for inflation, the 15th straight monthly drop from a year earlier.

And on Monday, Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer, lowered its profit outlook, saying that higher gas and food prices were forcing shoppers to spend less on many discretionary items, like new clothing.

The price spikes have been ignited by a combination of brisk consumer demand and global shortages of factory parts, food, energy and labor. And so the Fed is now aggressively raising rates.

“There is a risk of overdoing it,” warned Ellen Gaske, an economist at PGIM Fixed Income. “Because inflation is so bad right now, they are focused on the here and now of each monthly CPI report. The latest one showed no letup.’’

Despite inflation, rate hikes and declining consumer confidence, one thing has remained solid: The job market, the most crucial pillar of the economy. Employers added a record 6.7 million jobs last year. And so far this year, they’re adding an average of 457,000 more each month.

The unemployment rate, at 3.6% for four straight months, is near a half-century low. Employers have posted at least 11 million job openings for six consecutive months. The government says there are two job openings, on average, for every unemployed American, the highest such ratio on record.

Job security and the opportunity to advance to better positions are providing the confidence and financial wherewithal for Americans to spend and keep the job machine churning. (Courtesy: Associated Press)

Annual home price growth dropped by nearly 2 percentage points in June, the largest single-month slowdown on record, according to new research.

Black Knight, a real estate software and analytics company that has been tracking the metric since the early 1970s, found that annual home price growth fell from
19.3 percent in May to 17.3 percent in June as the Federal Reserve continued hiking interest rates to cool off demand.

• Existing home sales have fallen for five consecutive months as record prices and those higher interest rates drive more Americans out of the market. Black Knight’s analysis found that seasonally adjusted home sales were down by more than 21 percent since the start of the year.
• Slowing sales have led to recent inventory increases, according to Black Knight, but nationally, the United States still faces a shortage of 716,000 home listings. The company estimates it would take more than a year for inventory levels to fully normalize even with record increases.

“While this was the sharpest cooling on record nationally, we’d need six more months of this kind of deceleration for price growth to return to long-run averages,” said Ben Graboske, the president of Black Knight’s data and analytics division. (The Hill)

U.S. inflation surged to a new four-decade high in June because of rising prices for gas, food and rent, squeezing household budgets and pressuring the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates aggressively — trends that raise the risk of a recession.

The government’s consumer price index soared 9.1% over the past year, the biggest yearly increase since 1981, with nearly half of the increase due to higher energy costs. 

Lower-income and Black and Hispanic American have been hit especially hard, since a disproportionate share of their income goes toward essentials such as transportation, housing and food. But with the cost of many goods and services rising faster than average incomes, a vast majority of Americans are feeling the pinch in their daily routines.

For 72-year-old Marcia Freeman, who is retired and lives off of a pension, there is no escape from rising expenses.

“Everything goes up, including cheaper items like store brands,” said Freeman, who visited a food bank near Atlanta this week to try and gain control of her grocery costs. Grocery prices have jumped 12% in the past year, the steepest climb since 1979.

Accelerating inflation is a vexing problem for the Federal Reserve, too. The Fed is already engaged in the fastest series of interest rate hikes in three decades, which it hopes will cool inflation by tamping down borrowing and spending by consumers and businesses.

The U.S. economy shrank in the first three months of the year, and many analysts believe the trend continued in the second quarter.

“The Fed’s rate hikes are doing what they are supposed to do, which is kill off demand,” said Megan Greene, global chief economist at the Kroll Institute. “The trick is if they kill off too much and we get a recession.” 

The likelihood of larger rate hikes this year pushed stock indexes lower in afternoon trading. The central bank is expected to raise its key short-term rate later this month by a hefty three-quarters of a point, as it did last month.

As consumers’ confidence in the economy declines, so have President Joe Biden’s approval ratings, posing a major political threat to Democrats in the November congressional elections. Forty percent of adults said in a June AP-NORC poll that they thought tackling inflation should be a top government priority this year, up from just 14% who said so in December.

After years of low prices, a swift rebound from the 2020 pandemic recession — combined with supply-chain snags — ignited inflation.

Consumers unleashed a wave of pent-up spending, spurred by vast federal aid, ultra-low borrowing costs and savings they had built up while hunkering down. As home-bound Americans spent heavily on furniture, appliances and exercise equipment, factories and shipping companies struggled to keep up and prices for goods soared. Russia’s war against Ukraine further magnified energy and food prices.

In recent months, as COVID fears have receded, consumer spending has gradually shifted away from goods and toward services. Yet rather than pulling down inflation by reducing goods prices, the cost of furniture, cars, and other items has kept rising, while restaurant costs, rents and other services are also getting more expensive.

The year-over-year leap in consumer prices last month followed an 8.6% annual jump in May. From May to June, prices rose 1.3%, following a 1% increase from April to May.

Fuelled by increase in the prices of oil, shelter and food, the inflation rate in the US rose to 9.1 per cent in June. The inflation rate rise was the largest 12-month increase since the period ending November 1981.

The US Bureau of Labour Statistics said: “Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 9.1 percent before seasonal adjustment.”

“The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 1.3 per cent in June on a seasonally adjusted basis after rising 1.0 per cent in May,” it said.

According to the Bureau, the increase was broad-based, with the indexes for gasoline, shelter, and food being the largest contributors.

The energy index rose 7.5 per cent over the month and contributed nearly half of the all items increase, with the gasoline index rising 11.2 per cent and the other major component indexes also rising.

The food index rose 1.0 percent in June, as did the food at home index.

The all items – less food and energy – index rose 5.9 per cent over the last 12 months. The energy index rose 41.6 percent over the last year, the largest 12-month increase since the period ending April 1980.

The food index increased 10.4 per cent for the 12-months ending June, the largest 12-month increase since the period ending February 1981. (IANS)

Goldman Sachs reckons crude oil prices are going to $140 in the coming months. JPMorgan said they could even surge to $380 in a worst-case scenario. UBS reckons they’ll hit $130 in September.

But Citi is bucking the trend. The investment bank’s strategists predict oil will fall sharply by the end of the year, from prices of around $100 a barrel on Friday.

Francesco Martoccia, the bank’s head of European commodities strategy, warned in note to clients Tuesday that oil prices could even slump to $65 a barrel by December, if a nasty recession hits.

The same day, oil prices tumbled, with US benchmark WTI crude dropping below $100, as investors worried that central banks’ interest-rate hikes would trigger sharp slowdowns in economic growth. “The timing was exquisite,” Martoccia told Insider this week.

Yet Martoccia and his colleagues expect oil to drop even if there’s no drastic slowdown. Their so-called base case is that the price of global benchmark Brent crude tumbles to $85 a barrel by the end of the year — that’s around 18% lower than Friday’s price of $104.

At the heart of Citi’s contrarian view is its expectation that Russia will keep exporting and producing crude, even as the US and its allies batter the country with sanctions.

Many analysts expect Russian energy exports to fall sharply by the end of the year as the European Union gradually bans purchases from the country. The G7 is also exploring how to cap Russian oil prices — which could cause exports to drop further.

The logic is simple. Unable to sell its oil, Russia will shut down production. Buyers will then be competing for the remaining global supplies, driving up oil prices.

But Citi takes a different view. Its strategists believe India and China will ramp up purchases, keeping Russian oil pumping and alleviating the pressure on the market. “We actually don’t see a supply crunch in the making,” Martoccia said.

Crude oil exports to European countries in the OECD will drop from 2.5 million barrels a day in the first quarter of the year to 970,000 in the fourth, Citi predicts.

Yet it thinks China will step up its imports from 1.4 million to 2.3 million barrels a day, and India from 110,000 to 950,000 a day. Other developing economies will lift their purchases slightly, meaning Russia will be exporting more crude by the end of the year than at the start.

“I’m skeptical that the governments wouldn’t listen to their own energy needs, because we have seen already protests and riots around the world because of the increase in food prices and energy prices,” Martoccia said.

The other key ingredient in oil prices is demand. Citi thinks the world’s appetite for oil is going to slow over the coming months as the global economy cools.

Martoccia said Europe in particular is likely to cut back on its energy consumption. Many economists expect the eurozone to fall into a recession as a result of soaring inflation driven by rocketing natural gas prices. Germany has already started to dim its streetlights to save energy.

“When you look at the gas demand, for instance, from the industrial complex in Italy, or even the orders of one of the biggest industrial facilities, it’s going down,” he said. “And eventually you have to see spillover effects elsewhere.”

Oil-price prediction is a difficult game. Many analysts say the opposite to Citi, arguing Russian production will fall, and a Chinese economic recovery and the return of global tourism will boost demand.

Citi is hedging its bets. It thinks there’s a 30% chance oil jumps back up to around $120 by the end of the year. “This year, it’s very difficult to have a high conviction,” Martoccia said.

The average U.S. price of regular-grade gasoline spiked 39 cents over the past three weeks to $5.10 per gallon, media reports here suggested. The average price at the pump is $1.97 higher than it was one year ago.

Nationwide, the highest average price for regular-grade gas is in the San Francisco Bay Area, at $6.55 per gallon. The lowest average is in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, at $4.43 per gallon. According to the survey, the average price of diesel rose 20 cents over three weeks, to $5.86 a gallon.

Industry analyst Trilby Lundberg of the Lundberg Survey said Sunday that the price jump comes amid higher crude oil costs and tight gasoline supplies.

Skyrocketing gas prices and the high inflation rate, which is 40 year high, are a glaring problem for the White House with no clear, immediate solution, presenting a major political challenge for Biden and Democrats going into the midterms. The Labor Department’s consumer price index rose 1 percent last month alone and 8.6 percent in the 12-month stretch ending in May.

Eighty-five percent of voters said they think inflation is a very serious or somewhat serious problem, according to an Economist-YouGov poll from earlier this month. In the same poll, 44 percent of respondents said Biden has “a lot” of responsibility for the inflation rate and 31 percent said he has “some.”

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told CBS News this week that Americans should brace for a rough summer, with a top energy agency predicting fuel prices may not come down to less than $4 per gallon until the fall or winter.

“There will be some relief on the horizon, but during the summer driving season, it is going to be rough, no doubt about it, because we have such a demand and supply mismatch on the global market for oil,” Granholm said.

The president and his administration have pointed to steps they’ve taken in recent months to try to pump the brakes on rising gas prices.

Biden has ordered the release of millions of barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to boost supply, pushed for nations in the Middle East to boost production, lifted restrictions on the sale of fuel with higher ethanol content, and promoted renewable energy sources such as electric vehicles and solar power.

But the reality, as even some Biden administration officials acknowledge, is the president has little sway over day-to-day gas prices, which are often at the mercy of global supply chains and have been impacted by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

“This is, in large part, caused by [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s aggression,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said on CNN this week. “Since Putin moved troops to the border of Ukraine, gas prices have gone up over $1.40 a gallon, and the president is asking for Congress and others for potential ideas. But, as you say, the reality is that there isn’t very much more to be done.”

Republican strategist Doug Heye argued the Biden administration has had a lackluster response to inflation that has contributed to the hit his approval rating has taken and the low marks he has received on the economy.

“There seems to be, on some of these issues, just a shrugging of the shoulders, and that’s why you see, overwhelmingly, Biden’s handling of the economy is unpopular,” he said. “Obviously what’s happened in Ukraine has caused a spike, and there’s nothing wrong with talking about that, but that seems to be the entire explanation when inflation has gone up every month that Biden has been president.”

Biden has stressed that he is sympathetic to the impact of high inflation on American families. “I understand Americans are anxious, and they’re anxious for good reason,” he said in remarks at the Port of Los Angeles. “Make no mistake about it: I understand inflation is a real challenge to American families,” he added. “Today’s inflation report confirmed what Americans already know: Putin’s price hike is hitting America hard. Gas prices at the pump, energy and food prices account for half of the monthly price increases since May.”

He called on Congress to pass legislation to cut shipping costs and the costs of energy bills and prescription drugs as well as tax reform so big corporations pay more. Part of the challenge for the White House, however, is that many Americans don’t realize Biden doesn’t control gas prices, said Matt Bennett, a strategist with centrist think tank Third Way.

“I think he needs to get caught trying to do everything possible. Haul the CEOs of the oil companies in to the White House and demand that they tell him exactly what they need to get production up in the short term,” Bennett said.

The White House said it was shifting gears toward a monthlong campaign in June to talk up the economy and to show the White House is prioritizing inflation while pushing the positives it has delivered on the economy.Biden reiterated that the U.S. is dealing with inflation from a position of strength, touting again the low unemployment rate.

Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright argued that the president’s focus on the positives of the economy will resonate with voters in the midterm elections this fall. “From a messaging standpoint, I think [Democrats] have to demonstrate district by district, race by race, what efforts we have done to save the economy,” Seawright said. “Make sure we tell the story and not let the story be told about us.”

The US economy shrank at an annual rate of 1.4 per cent in the first quarter as effects of the Omicron surge start to show up, the US Commerce Department reported.

The latest data marks the economy’s first contraction since the Covid-19 pandemic impacted the country in early 2020, Xinhua news agency reported.

“In the first quarter, an increase in Covid-19 cases related to the Omicron variant resulted in continued restrictions and disruptions in the operations of establishments in some parts of the country,” the department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) said in an “advance” estimate.

The BEA noted that government assistance payments in the form of forgivable loans to businesses, grants to state and local governments, and social benefits to households “all decreased as provisions of several federal programs expired or tapered off”.

The decrease in real gross domestic product reflected declines in private inventory investment, exports, federal government spending, and state and local government spending, while imports — a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, increased, the report showed.

Personal consumption expenditures, non-residential fixed investment and residential fixed investment increased, it added.

The US economy contracted in the first quarter as inflation remained elevated at levels not seen in four decades.

The March consumer price index surged 8.5 per cent from a year earlier, the largest 12-month increase since the period ending December 1981, according to data from the Labour Department. That compared with a 7.9 per cent year-on-year gain in February.

Since the March policy meeting, a flurry of comments from US Federal Reserve officials indicated that the urgency for rate hikes is growing, and the central bank is prepared to take more aggressive actions going forward.

Diane Swonk, Chief Economist at major accounting firm Grant Thornton, noted in a recent analysis that as the Fed moves forward with more aggressive rate hikes to combat surging inflation, “what was the strongest and fastest recovery on record may soon be among the shortest.”

Even Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, who argued that soft, or at least softish landings have been relatively common in the US monetary history, noted that no one expects that bringing about a soft landing will be straightforward or easy in the current context. “It’s going to be very challenging,” Powell said.

Former US Treasury Secretary, Lawrence Summers also pointed out that in the past decades, when inflation was above 4 per cent and unemployment was below 4 per cent, the US economy usually fell into recession within two years, which means the Fed’s task would be very difficult.

“A growth recession is likely; unemployment will rise,” Swonk said, adding, “Those waiting for a recession to hire workers may find themselves without the jobs they had hoped to fill.”

Prices rose 19.8% year-over-year in February, an even higher rate than the 19.2% growth seen in January, according to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller US National Home Price Index.

Phoenix, Tampa and Miami reported the highest year-over-year gains among the 20 US cities tracked by the index. Phoenix led the way for the 33rd consecutive month with home prices rising 32.9% from the year before. It was followed by Tampa and Miami, which saw 32.6% and 29.7% gains, respectively.

All 20 cities reported price increases in the year ending February 2022. In January, 16 cities saw year-over-year growth. Prices were strongest in the South and Southeast, but every region continued to show big gains.

“US home prices continued to advance at a very rapid pace in February,” said Craig J. Lazzara, managing director at S&P Dow Jones Indices. “That level of price growth suggests broad strength in the housing market, which is exactly what we continue to observe.”

Although Lazarra noted that rising inflation, further interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve and rising mortgage rates may soon take the momentum out of the housing market.

The imbalance between strong demand from prospective buyers and insufficient supply of available homes has also been pushing home prices higher, said George Ratiu, manager of economic research for Realtor.com

“Today’s S&P Case-Shiller Index highlights a housing market experiencing a renewed sense of urgency in February, as buyers worked through a small number of homes for sale in an effort to get ahead of surging mortgage rates,” he said.

While inventory has increased a bit since February, according to the National Association of Realtors, there are several other changes that have taken place since then, too.

Real estate markets have seen supply-chain disruptions from the war in Ukraine. Mortgage rates have also been rising fast, climbing above 5% for the first time since 2010. In addition, a strong labor market is driving wages and inflation higher, he said.

“For buyers, the jumps in prices and mortgage rates translated into sticker shock,” said Ratiu.

For a median-priced home financed with a 30-year loan, the monthly payment is $550 higher than a year ago, he said.

But with more inventory expected to come onto the market this spring and rising mortgage rates, housing analysts are expecting to see a cool-off in demand.

“Many buyers are deciding to take a step back and re-evaluate their budgets and timelines,” said Ratiu.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaks during the inauguration of the Samsung Electronics smartphone manufacturing facility in Noida, India, July 9, 2018. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi

NEW DELHI – The World Bank cut its economic growth forecast for India and the whole South Asian region on Wednesday, citing worsening supply bottlenecks and rising inflation risks caused by the Ukraine crisis.

The international lender lowered its growth estimate for India, the region’s largest economy, to 8% from 8.7% for the current fiscal year to March, 2023 and cut by a full percentage point the growth outlook for South Asia, excluding Afghanistan, to 6.6%.

In India, household consumption will be constrained by the incomplete recovery of the labour market from the pandemic and inflationary pressures, the bank said.

“High oil and food prices caused by the war in Ukraine will have a strong negative impact on peoples’ real incomes,” Hartwig Schafer, World Bank Vice President for South Asia, said in a statement.

The World Bank raised its growth forecast for Pakistan, the region’s second-largest economy, for the current year ending in June, to 4.3% from 3.4% and kept next year’s growth outlook unchanged at 4%.

The region’s dependence on energy imports meant high crude prices forced its economies to pivot their monetary policies to focus on inflation rather than reviving economic growth after nearly two years of pandemic restrictions.

The World Bank slashed this year’s growth forecast for Maldives to 7.6% from 11%, citing its large imports of fossil fuels and a slump in tourism arrivals from Russia and Ukraine.

It raised crisis-hit Sri Lanka’s 2022 growth forecast to 2.4% from 2.1% but warned the island’s outlook was highly uncertain due to fiscal and external imbalances.

Sri Lanka’s central bank said on Tuesday it had become “challenging and impossible” to repay external debt, as it tries to use its dwindling foreign exchange reserves to import essentials like fuel.

Introduced by Chinese President Xi Jinping at the beginning of 2021, “common prosperity” has become a defining theme of Chinese politics today, serving to set critical priorities for Beijing across economic, environmental, and social policy, at both the national and local levels. Focused largely on alleviating systemic inequalities, the common prosperity campaign has been described as a transformational new path for China’s development. Despite the central importance of common prosperity to the direction of Chinese policymaking, clarity on the concept remains limited outside of China.

What exactly does common prosperity mean in practice, and what are the intentions and motivations of the political campaign being waged in its name? Where is the campaign headed, and will it be able to accomplish its goals? And, in particular, what will common prosperity mean for international non-profits and philanthropic organizations working in or with China on those areas central to the campaign?

“China’s Common Prosperity Program: Causes, Challenges, and Implications,” a new paper by Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI) Senior Fellow Guoguang Wu, examines these questions in detail. The paper finds that common prosperity is derived from a complex number of motivations, including reducing pressing inequalities, but also key political goals of interest to the Chinese party-state.

The U.S. added 678,000 jobs and the unemployment rate dropped to 3.8 percent in February, according to data released Friday by the Labor Department.

Unprecedented demand for workers and resilient consumer spending helped power another strong month of job growth in February. Economists expected the U.S. to add roughly 400,000 jobs last month, far less than the actual haul in the February jobs report, and push the jobless rate to 3.9 percent.

“If we see more numbers like this moving forward, we can be optimistic about this year. Employment is growing at a strong rate and joblessness is getting closer and closer to pre-pandemic levels,” said Nick Bunker, economic research director at Indeed.

“In these uncertain times, we cannot take anything for granted. But if the recovery can keep up its current tempo, several key indicators of labor market health will hit pre-pandemic levels this summer,” he said.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) said the U.S. saw “widespread” job growth in February led by a surge in service sector hiring — a promising sign for industries still recovering from the onset of the pandemic.

Leisure and hospitality employment rose by 179,000 jobs in February, led by a gain of 124,000 jobs in restaurants and bars. Professional and business services added 95,000 jobs, the health care sector added 64,000 jobs and construction employment rose by 60,000 after staying flat in January.

Transportation and warehousing employment rose by 48,000 in February, and retail trade employment rose by 37,000.

The BLS also revised the December and January job gains up by a combined 92,000 jobs.

While the labor force participation rate stayed flat, the February jobs report showed other signals of labor shortages easing and more Americans returning to the workforce.

Average hourly earnings rose 5.1 percent over the past 12 months, down from 5.7 percent in January. Wages have risen sharply as employers struggled to fill a record number of job openings from a smaller pool of workers than before the pandemic.

The number of Americans who said they could not look for a job because of the pandemic — who are not counted as unemployed — fell from 1.8 million in January to 1.2 million last month. The number of people who lost hours at work because of a pandemic-related shutdown also sunk from 6 million in January to 4.2 million in February.

“With the Omicron wave receding rapidly, the labor market has unlocked faster jobs growth. Additionally, employer demand for workers exceeds labor supply significantly, which is likely to keep jobs growth healthy even if demand slows amid disruptions from the war in Ukraine and rising interest rates in coming months,” said Daniel Zhao, senior economist at Glassdoor.

While the U.S. labor market held strong in February, economists are concerned about the potential fallout of the war in Ukraine and the sanctions imposed on Russia in response. A surge in oil prices, steep drop in economic activity or retaliation from Russia could dent the U.S. economy and risk stoking inflation even higher after hitting the highest annual rate in 40 years.

The jobs report will keep the Federal Reserve on track to raise interest rates in March to help cool inflation and tame what Fed Chairman Jerome Powell on Thursday called an “overheated” labor market. Even so, Powell said the deep uncertainty driven by the war could still force the Fed to adjust the pace of future rate hikes.

“The war in Ukraine reemphasizes the risk of inflation in the economic recovery, especially as price increases are concentrated in areas that the Federal Reserve may not have much control over,” Zhao wrote.

“Ultimately, however, today’s jobs report helps build confidence in the resilience of the recovery and its ability to continue driving jobs growth despite unanticipated headwinds.”

The U.S. national debt has surpassed $30 trillion, the highest it’s ever been, as borrowing surged during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to data published by the Treasury Department on Tuesday.

National debt skyrocketed pandemic, but the nation reached the milestone much earlier than projected as a result of the trillions in federal spending being used to combat the pandemic, the New York Times reported.

‘Hitting the $30 trillion mark is clearly an important milestone in our dangerous fiscal trajectory,’ Michael Peterson, head of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, told the Times.

‘For many years before Covid, America had an unsustainable structural fiscal path because the programs we’ve designed are not sufficiently funded by the revenue we take in,’ he added.

In January 2020, the Congressional Budget Office projected that the national debt would reach $30 trillion by the end of 2025. But it was reached much sooner due to the pandemic.

The $5 trillion used to combat the pandemic, which was used to fund jobless benefits, financial support for small businesses and stimulus payments, was financed with borrowed money, the Times reported.

The federal government now owes almost $8 trillion to foreign investors, led by Japan and China, which must be repaid with interest, according to CNN.

‘That means American taxpayers will be paying for the retirement of the people in China and Japan, who are our creditors,’ David Kelly, chief global strategist at JPMorgan Asset Management, explained to CNN Business.

The national debt has been skyrocketing since the Great Recession when the debt was $9.2 trillion in December 2007,  according to Treasury data.

But by the time, former President Donald Trump took office, the national debt stood at nearly $20 trillion, CNN reported.

‘Covid exacerbated the problem. We had an emergency situation that required trillions in spending,’ said Michael Peterson, CEO of the Peterson Foundation. ‘But the structural problems we face fiscally existed long before the pandemic.

US oil prices jumped above $90 a barrel last week for the first time in more than seven years. The latest rally comes just a day after OPEC and its allies declined to aggressively ramp up production to cool off red-hot energy prices.

Crude jumped 2.2% to $90.15 a barrel in afternoon trading. That marks the first time US oil prices surpassed the $90 threshold on an intraday basis since October 2014.

Oil has surged by 37% since closing at a recent low of $65.57 a barrel on December 1 amid Omicron fears and the fallout from the US-led intervention into energy markets.

Last week, Brent crude, the world benchmark, closed above $90 a barrel for the first time since October 2014.

OPEC+, led by Saudi Arabia and Russia, announced Wednesday it will stick to its previously telegraphed plan to increase production by 400,000 barrels per day. That’s despite the fact that some on Wall Street suggested OPEC+ could boost production more substantially to meet demand.

“OPEC+ opted to hold its shortest meeting on record and rubber-stamped the 400 kb/d monthly increase, sticking with a hands-off the wheel management approach despite global inflationary fears,” RBC Capital Markets strategists wrote in a note to clients Thursday.

The last 30 years have seen dramatic reductions in global poverty, spurred by strong catch-up growth in developing countries, especially in Asia. By 2015, some 729 million people, 10% of the population, lived under the $1.90 a day poverty line, greatly exceeding the Millennium Development Goal target of halving poverty. From 2012 to 2013, at the peak of global poverty reduction, the global poverty headcount fell by 130 million poor people.

This success story was dominated by China and India. In December 2020, China declared it had eliminated extreme poverty completely. India represents a more recent success story. Strong economic growth drove poverty rates down to 77 million, or 6% of the population, in 2019. India will, however, experience a short-term spike in poverty due to COVID-19, before resuming a strong downward path. By 2030, India is likely to essentially eliminate extreme poverty, with less than 5 million people living below the $1.90 line. By 2030, the only Asian countries that are unlikely to meet the goal of ending extreme poverty are Afghanistan, Papua New Guinea, and North Korea.

In other parts of the world, poverty trends are disappointing. In Latin America, poverty fell rapidly at the beginning of this century but has been rising since 2015, with no substantial reductions forecast by the end of this decade. In Africa, poverty has been rising steadily, thanks to rapid population growth and stagnant economic growth. Exacerbated by a pandemic-induced rise in poverty of 11%, African poverty shows little signs of decline through 2030.

These trends point to the emergence of a very different poverty landscape. Whereas in 1990, poverty was concentrated in low-income, Asian countries, today’s (and tomorrow’s) poverty is largely found in sub-Saharan Africa and fragile and conflict-affected states. By 2030, sub-Saharan African countries will account for 9 of the top 10 countries by poverty headcount. Sixty percent of the global poor will live in fragile and conflict-affected states. Many of the top poverty destinations in the next decade will fall into both of these categories: Nigeria, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mozambique and Somalia. Global efforts to achieve the SDGs by 2030, including eliminating extreme poverty, will be complicated by the concentration of poverty in these fragile and hard-to-reach contexts.

By 2030, poverty will be associated not just with countries, but with specific places within countries. Middle-income countries will be home to almost half of the global poor, a dramatic shift from just 40 years earlier. Nigeria is now the global face of poverty, overtaking India as the top poverty destination in 2019. (While India temporarily regained its title due to COVID-19, which pushed many vulnerable Indians back below the poverty line, Nigeria will reclaim the top spot by 2022.) In 2015, Nigeria was home to 80 million poor people, or 11% of global poverty; by 2030, this number could grow to 18%, or 107 million.

Poverty numbers and trends have traditionally been reported on a country-by-country basis. However, today we see that low-income countries have significant corridors of prosperity, while middle-income countries can have large pockets of poverty. With advances in geospatial and sub-national data, there is a growing push to move from country-wide metrics to sub-national data, in order to better identify and target these poverty “hotspots.”

The Economic Survey 2021-22 has projected the economy to grow at 8.0-8.5 per cent in 2022-23, thereby moderating the growth forecast from 9.2 per cent expansion for 2021-22 outlined by the National Statistical Office (NSO) in its first advance estimates of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Last year’s Survey had projected real GDP to record a 11 per cent growth in 2021-22, post a 7.3 per cent contraction in 2020-21. While this year’s growth comes on a low base year economic output, the expansion next year has to be seen from the recovery levels in economic output.

The Survey flags inflation as a concern while assessing the macroeconomic stability indicators and suggests that the Indian economy is “well- placed” to take on the challenges of 2022-23.

India’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on January 31st tabled the Economic Survey 2021-22 in the Lok Sabha, the Lower House of India’s Parliament.

“Growth in 2022-23 will be supported by widespread vaccine coverage, gains from supply-side reforms and easing of regulations, robust export growth, and availability of fiscal space to ramp up capital spending. The year ahead is also well poised for a pick-up in private sector investment with the financial system in a good position to provide support to the revival of the economy,” it said.

The growth projection for the next year based on “the assumption that there will be no further debilitating pandemic related economic disruption, monsoon will be normal, withdrawal of global liquidity by major central banks will be broadly orderly and oil prices will be in the range of $70-$75/bbl,” the Survey said.

The Survey projection is comparable with the World Bank’s and Asian Development Bank’s latest forecasts of real GDP growth of 8.7 per cent and 7.5 per cent respectively for 2022-23. As per the IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook (WEO) growth projections released on 25th January, 2022, India’s real GDP is projected to grow at 9 per cent in both 2021-22 and 2022-23 and at 7.1 per cent in 2023-24. It stressed the need to watch up for imported inflation. India’s Consumer Price Index inflation stood at 5.6 per cent in December 2021 but wholesale price inflation, however, has been running in double-digits. “Although this is partly due to base effects that will even out, India does need to be wary of imported inflation, especially from elevated global energy prices,” it said.

Last year’s Economic Survey had pitched for an expansionary fiscal policy in 2021-22 to boost growth and advised the government towards significant privatisation of state-owned companies. A privatisation push and review of the banking sector asset quality was recommended in last year’s survey.

Setting the tone for the Union Budget 2022-23, to be presented on Tuesday, the Economic Survey 2021-22 tabled in the Parliament on Monday stressed on the need for the government to provide a buffer against stresses such as the uncertainty in the global environment, the cycle of liquidity withdrawal by major central banks, etc.

India’s economic growth in 2022-23 could spring a surprise: ASSOCHAM

Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, India’s economic growth in the upcoming financial year, i.e., 2022-23, can be surprising on the higher side, ASSOCHAM Secretary General said on Monday.

“While the 8-8.5 per cent GDP projections for FY23 are on the back of a high base of 9.2 per cent in the current financial year, ASSOCHAM is of the view that India’s economic growth can surprise us on the higher side.

“Even as the pandemic is still raging in most parts of the world, its latest variant is less damaging. Besides, with 75 per cent of eligible Indians fully vaccinated and the booster dose being rolled out, India would be far better prepared to take on the challenges,” ASSOCHAM Secretary General Deepak Sood said.

ASSOCHAM said it shares the prognosis of the Economic Survey that the Indian economy is well placed to take on the challenges of 2022-23, riding on the back of continuous reforms in supply side and safety nets to the vulnerable sections of the society.

Sood further said that the advance estimates suggest manufacturing to be growing by 12.5 per cent in the current fiscal while services would expand by 8.5 per cent.

“Traditionally, services grow at a faster face. Clearly, the Covid impact on contact intensive industries is reflecting even as manufacturing has been aided by supply side reforms. Once the impact of PLI scheme kicks in, we expect the manufacturing to be leading the growth for the foreseeable future,” Sood said, adding that robust performance in exports has also helped the manufacturing.

He further said that the Economic Survey is right in its assessment about the investment scenario, saying: “The private investment recovery is still at a nascent stage, though there are increased activities in the brownfield projects. Heavy lifting would still be needed by the government with capital expenditure, and we expect that in the Budget.”

The Survey has pointed out that the government has the fiscal capacity to maintain the support, and ramp up capital expenditure when required, ASSOCHAM said in a statement.

“Schemes like credit guarantee with 100 per cent guarantee for additional funding of Rs 4.5 lakh crore to MSMEs have provided critical relief to the sectors severely hit by the pandemic. More such measures are expected in the Budget,” it said.

“The Survey has re-emphasised the government’s asset monetisation and disinvestment agenda, which spells out bare minimum presence of government ownership even in the strategic sectors. Successful completion of Air India disinvestment should infuse confidence for the roadmap,” it added.