NewsBytes

India has become the fourth largest economy in the world, overtaking Japan, NITI Aayog CEO BVR Subrahmanyam has said. Subrahmanyam said the overall geopolitical and economic environment is favourable to India. “We are the fourth largest economy as I speak. We are a USD 4 trillion economy as I speak,” he said. Citing IMF data, Subrahmanyam said India today is larger than Japan. Till 2024, India was the fifth-largest economy in the world. “It is only the US, China and Germany which are larger than India, and if we stick to what is being planned and what is being thought through, in 2.5-3 years, we will be the third largest economy,” Subrahmanyam said. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), in its World Economic Outlook (WEO) report released in April had said that India is expected to be the fourth largest economy in the world with a GDP of USD 4.19 trillion in 2025, ahead of Japan.

India now has a new approach in combating cross-border terrorism from Pakistan and anyone involved in such crimes will not go unpunished, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor said hours before he led a delegation of Parliamentarians to Guayana. Tharoor made the remarks at a community event in New York as the delegation made a stopover — during which he and other members of the delegation also paid tributes at the 9/11 memorial — in the American city before leaving for Guyana. In Bahrain, the all-party Indian parliamentary delegation on Sunday briefed Bahrain's Deputy Prime Minister Shaikh Khalid bin Abdulla Al Khalifa about the challenge of cross-border terrorism facing India and New Delhi's firm resolve to combat it. Separate Indian delegations also briefed political leaders in South Korea and Slovenia on India's policy of zero tolerance in the wake of the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack in which 26 people died.

The General Sales Tax has the largest marginal contribution to the rise of poverty while a monthly cash transfer programme to the poorest families has the largest positive impact on inequality reduction in Pakistan, a World Bank study has said. ‘The Effects of Taxes and Transfers on Inequality and Poverty in Pakistan' reports that the General Sales Tax (GST) payments account for over 7 per cent households' pre-tax expenditure, which leads to further impoverishment among poor and vulnerable households. Dawn reported on Sunday quoting the World Bank (WB) study that estimations of the marginal contributions of individual fiscal instruments — or the additional impact that individual fiscal instruments have on poverty or inequality when all other fiscal instruments are included — demonstrate that GST has the largest marginal contribution to the national poverty increase. The second-largest impact on inequality comes from pre-primary and primary education expenditures, the WB study said.

The world needs to act with speed, scale and determination to tackle the growing threat of water scarcity and climate shocks, the Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), QU Dongyu, told the 5th Baghdad International Water Conference. Hosted by the Iraqi Ministry of Water Resources, the conference offered FAO the chance to convene experts, policymakers and partners to share knowledge and foster collaboration for sustainable water and agricultural development. Across the world, water is under growing pressure from rising demand, intensifying droughts and competing interests. The situation is particularly critical in Iraq, where water has an historical legacy. Mesopotamia — “the land between two rivers” — was the cradle of ancient civilisations like the Sumerians and the Babylonians.