Loud Thinking

Archive for April, 2015

Why India bails out its workers from Yemen and other war situations: Remittance lolly

WASHINGTON: If you are wondering why the Government of India expends so much time and resources to rescue its emigrants from crisis- and war situations abroad, the answer in part lies an annual World Bank study that weights annual worldwide remittances of migratory work force — or simply, the money Indian workers and professionals send back to India.

Yet again, India has topped the remittance chart for 2014, pulling in $ 70.38 billion from its global migrant workforce. China follows with $64.14 billion, and Philippines, Mexico, and Nigeria trail at a distance.

READ ALSO: India ends Yemen evacuation, rescues people from 41 countries

In fact, remittances worldwide plateaued a bit in 2013-2014 because of tough economic conditions in countries where migrants head to, but things are expected to look up in 2015 and beyond. India itself held steady, with remittance increasing only marginally from $ 69.97 in 2013 to $ 70.38 in 2014.

Still, the $ 70 billion windfall constituted a healthy 3.7 per cent of the country’s nearly $ 2 trillion GDP. The money often cushions the economy to other shocks.

Because remittances are large and more stable than many other types of capital flows, they can greatly enhance the recipient country’s sovereign credit rating, thus lowering borrowing costs and lengthening debt maturity, says the World Bank Brief. In a recent development, rating agencies have started accounting for remittances in country credit ratings, but given data difficulties, it says, there is still room for further improvement.

READ ALSO: India evacuates 232 foreigners including Americans, Europeans from Yemen

More importantly, say authors of the report, with new thinking these mega flows can be leveraged to finance development and infrastructure projects. Future inflows of remittances can be used as collateral to facilitate international borrowings by national banks in developing countries. Remittances can also facilitate access to international capital markets by improving sovereign ratings and debt sustainability of recipient countries.

“I would love to see a bullet train system in India, an international airport in Nigeria, another Suez Canal in Egypt, a hydro-project in Pakistan, all financed by mobilizing the power of remittances and diaspora savings,” says Dilip Ratha, Lead Economist for Migration and Remittances, at the World Bank’s Development Prospects Group and Head of the Global Knowledge Partnership on Migration and Development.

Ratha’s work is backed by Kaushik Basu, World Bank Chief Economist and Senior Vice President, who did a stint as Government of India’s chief economic advisor before returning to the U.S. ”Israel and India have shown how macro liquidity crises can be managed by tapping into the wealth of diaspora communities. Migrants and remittances are clearly major players in today’s global economy,” says Basu.

In fact, Basu points out that the total remittances in 2014 of $583 billion is more than double the overseas developmental assistance in the world. In other words, money repatriated by migrant workers trumps foreign aid and foreign investment.

Any wonder than that India deployed its ships and airplane to bail out its workers in Yemen?

Do you know the full form of these IT related jargon?

1 GOOGLE – global organization of oriented group language of earth
2 YAHOO – yet another hierarchical officious oracale
3 WINDOW – Wide interactive network develpment for office work sollution
4 COMPUTER – Communication oriented machine purposely utilized technical educational research a scholarly articale
5 VIRUS – virtually infected reputed utilized software
6 UMTS – universal mobile telecommunicati­on system
7 AMOLED – active matrix organic emitting diode
8 OLED – organic lite emitting diode
9 IMEI – international mobile equipment identy
10 ESN – electronic serial number
11 UPS – uninterupitible­ power supply
12 HDMI – high defenation multimedia interface
13 VPN – virchual private network
14 APN – access point name
15 SIM – subsucriber identy module
16 LED – lite emitting diode
17 DLNA – digitel line network access
18 RAM – random access memory
19 ROM – read only memory
20 VGA – video graphic array
21 QVGA – quarter video graphic array
22 WVGA – wide video graphic array
23 WXGA – wide extended graphic array
24 USB – universal service bus
25 WLAN – wireless local area network
26 PPI – pixel per inch
27 LCD – liquid crystel display
28 HSDPA – high speed downlink packet access
29 HSUPA – high speed upload packet access
30 HSPA – high speed packet access
31 GPRS – general packet radio service
32 EDGE – enhancement datarate for globel evolution
33 NFC – near field communication
34 OTG – on-the-go
35 S-LCD – super clear liquid display
36 O S – oprating system
37 SNS – socail networking sites
38 H S – HOTSPOT
39 P O I – point of interest
40 GPS – globel position system
41 DVD – digitel video disc
42 DTP – desk top publishing
43 DNSE – digitel natural sound engine
44 OVI – ohio video inrranet
45 CDMA – code division multiple access
46 WCDMA – wide-band code division multiple access
47 GSM – globel system for mobile communication
48 WI-FI – wireless fidelity
49 DIVX – digitel internet video access
50 APK – authenticated public key
51 J2ME – java 2 micro edition
52 SIS – symbian installation source
53 DELL – digitel electronic link library
54 ACER – acquisition collabration experimantion reflaction
55 RSS – really simple syndication
56 TFT – thin film transister