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Financial Infrastructure: Spread of Banking and
Market Perception of This Sector
-- Tamal Datta Chaudhuri
This paper examines the spread of banking as part of infrastructural growth of the Indian
economy. Spread means geographical spread across
states, between rural and urban areas, across class of borrowers
and industries.
It is important to evaluate whether the objective of financial inclusion in some sense is being
met. How the Indian banking sector is perceived by the
market and whether there has been a change in this perception
is also examined. The Indian banking sector may be pursuing its own real objectives and may be achieving a lot. The question
is: Does the stock market also feel so?
© 2010 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Urbanization and Poverty Reduction: A Case Study of Pakistan
-- Muhammad Shahbaz, Naveed Aamir
and Muhammad Shahbaz Shabir
The relationship between poverty and urbanization
along with a battery of poverty determinants have been
examined. For this purpose Autoregressive Distributed Lag
(ARDL) bounds testing has been applied to investigate
the cointegration. Our empirical analysis shows strong evidence of the fact that in
Pakistan, poverty is mostly influenced by increasing macroeconomic shocks. Improvement in the inflow of international remittances indicates that it
helps in reducing poverty. Urbanization is reducing poverty but its impact is quite negligible.
In fact, this poverty reduction effect of urbanization appears more in the short span of time as compared to the
long-run.
The ever increasing inflationary pressure lowers the real value of nominal assets used for transactions in
order to purchase basic necessities of life. Poverty trends are lowering through agriculture and trade-openness
thereby showing a positive impact on the well-being of poor segments of population. But economic growth in
Pakistan is creating higher poverty among lower classes and benefits of this growth accrue only to rich classes.
Considering the tax structure, major revenue is generated through indirect taxes, therefore, increased tax
imposes heavy burden. Moreover, increased poverty in Pakistan is also on account of big size of government administrative expenditures.
© 2010 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Commodity Futures Markets, Warehouse Receipts and
the Dynamics of Warehousing Infrastructure: The
Indian Scenario
-- Manoj Pillai
Agriculture is an important component of the Indian Economy. It contributes to about 21% of
India's Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 11% of total
exports and provides employment to around 60% of the work
force and is directly related to self-reliance, meeting the food and nutritional security of the people,
equitable distribution of income and wealth in rural areas, reduction of poverty and improvement in the quality of
life. The liberalized economic policies resulted in a commendable growth of some sectors of the economy, but
when it comes to agricultural development, the growth scenario presents a dismal and bleak picture. There has
been a consistent decline in the growth of the agricultural sector since 1990 compared to the
1980s. Commodity markets and warehouse financing are innovative initiatives devised specifically to revive and resurrect
the agricultural sector with the twin objectives of providing price discovery and risk mitigation to the farmers.
This article delves into all the relevant aspects of warehouse finance and warehouse infrastructure in India.
© 2010 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Green Buildings: An Assessment of Life Cycle Cost
-- R Kansal and G Kadambari
Modern building practices show little regard for
energy efficiency, environmental or social impact of the
built environment over their entire life cycle. Resources such as ground cover, forests, water and energy are
depleted to give way to buildings. On an average, worldwide building construction consumes approximately
17% fresh water, 25% wood stock and 40% material
and energy produce. This indiscriminate use of natural resources
puts pressure on the ecosystem. During building
construction, vast quantities of waste material is created,
and during building operations, large amount of energy is consumed, contributing extensively to environmental
pollution. This paper presents the various aspects and benefits of green buildings along with building environment assessment tools
and rating systems followed worldwide. Life cycle cost analysis is performed to prove the economics of green
buildings vis-à-vis ordinary buildings.
© 2010 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Airport Privatization in India:
Importance and Challenges
-- Manzoor K P
The airport infrastructural facilities in India are very poor, and it ranks low in infrastructural availability
in the world. All the major airports in the country face passenger traffic problem due to lack of modern facilities.
The Government of India failed to make further investment in the airports due to fund constraints.
Therefore, it has opted for private-public participation (PPP) to modernize the Indian airports. The Government's
decision to privatize airports has invited enormous criticisms from airport workers. While the supporters argue
that privatization is needed for better performance of country's economy, the airport workers argue
that privatization is a dangerous decision for the self-reliant growth of civil aviation industry in India.
© 2010 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
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