Chinese army builds camps, houses along Arunachal border

India continues to remain ranked 43rd on an annual World Competitiveness Index compiled by Institute for Management Development (IMD) with some traditional weaknesses like poor infrastructure and insufficient education investment keeping its ranking low, the international business school said on Tuesday.

Singapore has retained its top position on the 63-nation list.

Denmark has moved up to the second position (from 8th last year), Switzerland has gained one place to rank 3rd, the Netherlands has retained its 4th place and Hong Kong has slipped to the fifth place (from 2nd in 2019).

The US has moved down to 10th place (from 3rd last year), while China has also slipped from 14th to 20th place. Among the BRICS nations, India is ranked second after China, followed by Russia (50th), Brazil (56th) and South Africa (59th).

India was ranked 41st on the IMD World Competitiveness Ranking, being produced by the business school based in Switzerland and Singapore every year since 1989, but had slipped to 45th in 2017 before improving to 44th in 2018 and then to 43rd in 2019.

While its overall position has remained unchanged in the 2020 list, it has recorded improvements in areas like long-term employment growth, current account balance, high-tech exports, foreign currency reserves, public expenditure on education, political stability and overall productivity, the IMD said.

However, it has moved down in areas like exchange rate stability, real GDP growth, competition legislation and taxes.

Arturo Bris, Head of Competitiveness Center at IMD Business School, said India continues to struggle on the list and the recent country rating downgrade by Moody’s reflects the uncertainties regarding the economy’s future.

"In our ranking this year, we again emphasize the traditional weaknesses of India -- poor infrastructure, an important deficit in education investment, and a health system that does not reach everybody. For India to follow the path of China, it must stress its intangible infrastructure," Bris said.

"In a less global world, with China, USA, and Europe looking inwards, currencies like the rupee (and the Brazilian real for instance) are going to suffer and display high volatilities.

"Moody’s has threatened the country with a downgrade to junk and that would put India in a terrible position to attract foreign capital. So the urgency for the government should be to fix the short-term problems—and this requires to improve the credibility of the government itself," Bris added.

With the exception of Singapore, the Philippines, Taiwan and the Korean Republic, most Asian economies dropped in rankings this year, the IMD said.

The reason for the Asian economies’ less stellar performance as a region, this year is partly the result of the trade frictions between China and the US, particularly because these economies are highly dependent on trade with China.

About Singapore, which moved to the top rank last year, the IMD said its position is largely driven by the relative ease of setting up business, availability of skilled labour and its cutting-edge technological infrastructure.

The IMD said the impact of COVID-19 on the competitiveness ranking has partially been captured by executives’ opinions about the effectiveness of the different health systems.

In the ASEAN countries included in the survey, only Singapore and Thailand have a positive performance in the effectiveness of the health infrastructure.

Karachi, Jun 5: Pakistan's coronavirus cases rose to 89,249 on Friday after a record 4,896 new infections were detected in the country, while the death toll due to COVID-19 has reached 1,838, according to the health ministry.

The Ministry of National Health Service said that 68 patients died in the last 24 hours, taking the death toll to 1,838, whereas another 31,198 people have recovered.

It was the third consecutive day when a record number of cases were reported in Pakistan after the Eid holidays and easing of lockdown restrictions at the end of May.

Sindh province reported 33,536 infections, Punjab 33,144, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa 11,890, Balochistan 5,582, Islamabad 3,946, Gilgit-Baltistan 852 and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir 299.

The authorities have conducted 638,323 tests, including a record 22,812 tests in the last 24 hours, the ministry said.

Despite the spike in number of COVID-19 cases, both houses of parliament are scheduled to meet separately on Friday. The Senate session started this morning while the National Assembly will be held in the afternoon, Radio Pakistan reported.

Chairman Senate Sadiq Sanjrani and Speaker National Assembly Asad Qaiser at a meeting at the parliament house in Islamabad reviewed arrangements made for the two sessions.

Fumigation was also carried out in the parliament house for the safety of the lawmakers and staff.

Earlier, the Opposition rejected the idea of virtual meetings and insisted that the sessions be held in person, noting that it was an important session of parliament because the budget is expected to be presented in the National Assembly in the next week.

The novel coronavirus which first originated from China's Wuhan city in December last year has claimed 391,249 lives and has infected over 6 million people globally, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

Apr 29: US President Donald Trump doubled down on China for failing to tame the coronavirus at its very origin, saying it has led to 184 countries "going through hell", as several American lawmakers demanded steps to reduce dependence on Beijing for manufacturing and minerals.

Trump has been publicly blaming China for the global spread of the "invisible enemy" and launched an investigation against it. He has also indicated that the US may be looking at "a lot more money" in damages from China than the USD 140 billion being sought by Germany from Beijing for the pandemic.

Leaders of the US, the UK and Germany believe that the deaths and the destruction of the global economy could have been avoided, had China shared the information about the virus in its early phases.

"It's in 184 countries, as you hear me say often. It's hard to believe. It's inconceivable," Trump told reporters at White House Tuesday. "It should have been stopped at the source, which was China. It should have been stopped very much at the source, but it wasn't. And now we have 184 countries going through hell.”

The virus, which originated in China's Wuhan city in mid-November, has killed more than two lakh people and infected over three million globally. The largest number of them are in the US: nearly 59,000 deaths and over one million infections.

The massive outbreak in the US has put Trump under increasing pressure from American lawmakers to decrease US dependence on Beijing and they have also sought compensation from China.

Senator Ted Cruz and his colleagues have urged Defence Secretary Mark Esper and Interior Secretary David Bernhardt to support the development of a fully domestic supply chain of rare earths and other minerals that are critical for manufacturing defence technologies and supporting national security.

“It is clear that our dependence on China for vital rare earths threatens our US manufacturing and defence-industrial base. As the October 2018 Defence Industrial Base Report states: ‘China represents a significant and growing risk to the supply of materials deemed strategic and critical to US national security.' [...] Ensuring a US supply of domestically sourced rare earths will reduce our vulnerability to supply disruptions that poses a grave risk to our military readiness," the Senators wrote.

The US is 100 percent import-dependent for rare earths as well as 13 other metals and minerals on the US Government Critical Minerals List and more than 75 percent import reliant for an additional 10 minerals.

Congressman Brian Mast on Tuesday introduced a legislation to hold China accountable for its "coronavirus deception". The resolution would empower the US to withhold payments on debts owed to China equal to the costs incurred by the US in response to COVID-19.

“China's total lack of transparency and mishandling of the coronavirus outbreak has cost tens of thousands of lives, millions of jobs and left untold economic destruction. Congress must hold China accountable for their cover-up and force them to pay back the taxpayer dollars that have been spent as a result,” Mast said.

Cruz, member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, announced his intention to introduce a legislation to cut off Hollywood studios from assistance they receive from the Department of Defence if those studios censor their films for screening in China.

This legislation is part of Sen. Cruz's comprehensive push to combat China's growing influence over what Americans see and hear, which includes legislation targeting information warfare from the Chinese Communist Party across higher education, sports, films, radio broadcasts, and more.

Indian-American Congressman Ami Bera and Congressman Ted S. Yoho, both members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, will lead a bipartisan virtual Special Order to highlight the importance of US global leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“If we abdicate our place as a leader in global health, there is another country eager to take the reins. China has not been subtle in asserting itself on global health issues, and often not for the benefit of other nations. China's recent coronavirus debacle should be evidence enough that their communist regime cannot be trusted to lead with accountability, transparency, or pragmatism, traits that are essential when fighting widespread disease,” Yoho said.

“As for how China would fare as a global health leader, look no further than the disastrous initial response by the WHO to coronavirus, one that was clearly influenced by Beijing. Information was slow-walked, warnings from nations like Taiwan were ignored at crucial turning points, and cooperation with outside health experts was spurned until it was too late. And it has resulted in the largest public health disaster the world has seen in over a century,” he said.

In an interview to Fox News, Senator Marco Rubio alleged that if China had acted when those warnings were being made, instead of silencing the people that were talking about it, they could have limited the spread.

“So there was no doubt that that was a deliberate decision made on their part. The one way to hold them accountable is to do what we should be doing anyway. That is moving the means of production to become less and less dependent upon them. What you're going to see after this pandemic is that more and more countries are going to prioritize their healthcare manufacturing capabilities and other industries,” he said.