2020 has been quite a year. While COVID-19 adversely impacted a lot of lives and economies around the globe (an earlier piece I wrote, focused on impact of COVID-19 on emerging economies), COVID has had a positive, accelerant impact on a number of a businesses. Some of these include businesses focused on e-commerce, logistics, B2B platforms and more importantly, renewable energy.
Interestingly, the demand for renewable energy spiked after the COVID-19 lockdown, with solar energy holding a substantial share in that demand. During the lockdown, business activity in India and around the world came to a virtual standstill leading to…
Much has been said and written about the impact of COVID-19 on the developing economies. Some even predict that COVID-19 may create steep inequalities in developing countries. While that might be true, much less has been written about the impact of COVID-19 in the light of inherent risks that a developing economy already presents. As a transaction advisor in the social impact space, most of my advice to clients in general focuses on managing their concerns around the unique risks that stem from investing in developing economies such as India. …
After the 2008 financial crisis, we learned the hard way what happens when governments flood the economy with unconditional liquidity, rather than laying the foundation for a sustainable and inclusive recovery. Now that an even more severe crisis is underway, we must not repeat the same mistake.
Originally published at https://www.project-syndicate.org on March 30, 2020.
The more contained you want the novel coronavirus to be, the more you will need to lock down your country — and the more fiscal space you will require to mitigate the deeper recession that will result. The problem for most of the Global South is that policymakers lack fiscal space even in the best of times.
Originally published at https://www.project-syndicate.org on March 24, 2020.
The Social Tree
A boutique transaction advisory focused on social impact
