This Policy Brief discusses the proposed amendments to Republic Act No. 7653 (RA 7653). The first part briefly presents the mandate of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP). It then describes the financial sector’s challenges that necessitate the amendment of the said law. The salient...

There has been an increase in the demand for infrastructure services and opening up of the infrastructure sector for private investment. As a result, a large number of financial intermediaries and private sector participants would the financial market to raise long term funds in Bangladesh. It...

Pension assets have seen rapid growth world-wide over the past decades, although they suffered large losses during the global financial crisis of 2007–2008. Such growth is notably due to both structural and parametric pension reforms since the 1980s. In the Asian region too, the pension...

A comprehensive inventory of bilateral FTAs on a global scale, with sections on Africa and the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific, and Latin America and the Caribbean. It highlights the key points of each agreement, and details planned future developments. Background paper prepared for the...

This paper assesses the impact of India’s unilateral tariff reductions and lowering of quantitative restrictions since 1991. It then evaluates the WTO commitments on nonagricultural market access in the light of these reductions. This short paper based on hard quantitative analysis is a...

Much more than comparative advantage and free markets have been at play in shaping China's export success. Government policies have helped nurture domestic capabilities in consumer electronics and other advanced areas that would most likely not have developed in their absence. As a result, China...

This article analyses the importance of international commercial service transactions relating to both trade and investment, which form an essential element of analyzing production fragmentation and economic integration in Asia. Following an aggregative analysis the authors discusses data...

The EU Commission argues that radical changes to he origin rules will both simplify processes and make them more development friendly. Will they? There are different opinions on what Rules of Origin should achieve – which complicates the task of setting the right level. A substantial...

Taking into account the latest data of exports of textiles and clothing to the European Union from South Asia and China, a year-end assessment of the impact of the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) introduced by the EU in January last. Despite loss of GSP benefit on textiles, Indian...

Policy makers are particularly concerned about the extent and speed of exchange rate pass-through into domestic prices. However, in recent times there seems to be a growing degree of disconnect between exchange rate changes and domestic consumer prices in general, or, for that matter, even into...