UN Investment Promotion award to Invest India

Context in Current Affairs: The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) recently declared “Invest India” as the winner of the United Nations Investment Promotion Award, 2020. The award recognizes outstanding achievements of investment promotion agencies spread all over the world. Around 180 such agencies were shortlisted for the award in 2020.

Background

The UNCTAD had constituted a team to monitor Investment Promotion Agencies in the world. The team was constituted in March 2020, mainly to observe the best practices adopted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The IPA response has become the evaluation of 2020 United Nations Investment Promotion Award. This proves that in spite of being the second most populous country in the world, India’s innovation helped to control the spread of COVID-19 in the country.

United Nations Conference on Trade and Development

The UNCTAD deals with trade, investment and development issues. The main goal of the organization is to maximize trade and investment. It was established in 1964. It releases reports such as Trade and Development Report and World Investment Report

World Investment Report, 2020

The report was released by UNCTAD in June 2020. According to the report, the FDI flows decreased by 40% in 2020 as compared to 2019. For the first time, the global FDI flows will be below 1 trillion USD since 2005. It is projected that FDI will further decrease by 5% to 10% by 2021.

According to the report, India jumped to 9^th position in FDI flows in 2019. The FDI flows in to India were 51 billion USD. India was at 12^th position in 2018.

Trade and Development Report

The report said that the public external debt might increase to 2 trillion USD to 3.6 trillion USD in 2020-21. Even before COVID-19 hit developing countries, many were trapped in debt spiral. The report suggested the following to improve the situation

• To adopt Automatic Temporary standstills. This will provide macroeconomic breathing space for all developing countries.
• Debt relief and restructure programmes.
• It suggested that the international developing country debt authority should lay regulatory foundations to guide the debt restructuring in the future.

Month: Current Affairs - August, 2020