Reports & Indices-4 Part-2

/ R&I

World Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Index

  • Published Biennially by the World Economic Forum.
  • Theme: Travel and Tourism at a Tipping Point.
  • India clocked the biggest improvement among the top performers in global tourism, jumping from 40th in 2017 to 34th .
  • Driven by rich natural and cultural resources and strong price competitiveness.
  • India shows greatest ranking improvement over 2017 among the top 25 per cent of all countries ranked in the report.

Global Energy Transition Index

  • Released by World Economic Forum (WEF).
  • India has moved up two positions to rank 74th on a global ‘Energy Transition Index’ with improvements on all key parameters of economic growth, energy security and environmental sustainability.
  • Study measuring readiness for clean energy transition in 115 economies showed that 94 have made progress since 2015, but environmental sustainability continues to lag.
  • Sweden has topped the Energy Transition Index (ETI) for the third consecutive year and is followed by Switzerland and Finland in the top three.
  • France (ranked 8th) and the UK (7th) are the only G20 countries in the top ten.
  • In China’s case, problems of air pollution have resulted in policies to control emissions, electrify vehicles, and develop the world’s largest capacity for solar photovoltaic (PV) and onshore wind power plants.
  • For India, gains have come from a government-mandated renewable energy expansion programme, now extended to 275 GW by 2027.
  • India has also made significant strides in energy efficiency through bulk procurement of LED bulbs, smart meters, and programs for labelling of appliances.
  • Similar measures are being experimented to drive down the costs of electric vehicles.
    • The index benchmarks 115 economies on the current performance of their energy systems across

    ○ economic development and growth,

    ○environmental sustainability, and

    ○energy security and access indicators- and

    ○their readiness for transition to secure, sustainable, affordable, and inclusive energy systems.

Environmental Performance Index 

  • India secured 168 rank in the 12th edition of the biennial Environment Performance Index (EPI Index 2020) — that measured the environmental performance of 180 countries.
  • Released by the Yale University.
  • India’s rank was 177 (with a score of 30.57 out of 100) in 2018.
  • The country scored 27.6 out of 100 in the 2020 index.
  • The global index considered 32 indicators of environmental performance, giving a snapshot of the 10-year trends in environmental performance at the national and global levels.
  • Denmark has ranked first in the world, followed by Luxembourg, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, France, Austria, Finland, Sweden, Norway and Germany in the top 10 countries.
  • While Japan has ranked 12th, the United States of America ranks 24th, and China stands at 120th.
  • The 2020 EPI features new metrics that gauge waste management, carbon dioxide emissions from land cover change, and emissions of fluorinated gases all important drivers of climate change.
  • For air quality, India and Pakistan both rank at the very bottom of the 2020 EPI, at 179th and 180th places, respectively.
  • By comparison, low air quality also continues to plague China, although its recent pollution controls and other environmental investments have helped it climb to 120th place in the EPI, 48 places ahead of India’s 168th overall ranking.
  • On biodiversity and habitat, India places 148th in the world, failing to maximize the conservation potential of its protected areas, especially in marine ecosystems. Perhaps most critically, India places 106th in the world on climate change mitigation.
  • Meeting the goals set out in the 2015 Paris Climate Change Agreement requires sustained cuts in emissions of all greenhouse gases, and the 2020 EPI finds that no country is decarbonizing quickly enough to meet these climate change goals.
  • Some of India’s neighbours do excel on individual greenhouse gas reductions, most notably Sri Lanka on methane and Pakistan on fluorinated gases.

Inclusive Development Index

  • Released by the World Economic Forum.
  • Designed as an alternative to GDP, the Inclusive Development Index (IDI) reflects more closely the criteria by which people evaluate their countries’ economic progress.
  • The Inclusive Development Index (IDI) is an annual assessment of 103 countries’ economic performance that measures how countries perform on eleven dimensions of economic progress in addition to GDP.
  • It has 3 pillars; growth and development; inclusion and; intergenerational equity – sustainable stewardship of natural and financial resources.
  • The IDI is a project of the World Economic Forum’s System Initiative on the Future of Economic Progress, which aims to inform and enable sustained and inclusive economic progress through deepened public-private cooperation through thought leadership and analysis, strategic dialogue and concrete cooperation, including by accelerating social impact through corporate action.

Global Manufacturing Index

  • Released by World Economic Forum (WEF)
  • The report analyses the development of modern industrial strategies and collaborative action. For the segregation of the same, it categorised 100 countries in four main groups- Leading, High Potential, Legacy, and Nascent.
  • The first category of ‘Leading’, included those countries that have a strong current base, and high level of readiness for the future.
  • The next category of ‘High Potential’, included countries with limited current base and at high potential for future.
  • The third category, ‘Legacy’, covered countries that have strong current base, at risk for future.
  • The fourth and last category of ‘Nascent’, had countries that have a limited current base, and low level of readiness for future.

World Economic Outlook (WEO)

  • The World Economic Outlook (WEO) is a report by the International Monetary Fund that analyzes key parts of the IMF’s surveillance of economic developments and policies in its member countries.
  • It also projects developments in the global financial markets and economic systems.
  • The WEO is usually prepared twice a year and is used in meetings of the International Monetary and Financial Committee.
  • As per the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) World Economic Outlook (WEO),

○The COVID-19 pandemic is having a “severe” effect on the world economy and is expected to cause a -3% change (i.e., a contraction) in global output in 2020, “much worse” than the 2008-09 financial crises.

  • India’s growth is expected to dip to 1.9% in 2020 and rebound to 7.4% in 2021.
  • India’s growth projection for 2020 is 3.9% less than what was projected for the country in the January update to the WEO

○while its rebound in 2021 is 0.9 % higher than the January projection (for India, forecasts on a fiscal year basis).

○World growth rates have been revised downwards by more than 6 percentage points since the January WEO update.

  • Emerging Asia is projected to be the only region that grows in 2020, at a rate of 1.0% – still more than 5 percentage points below the previous decade’s average.

In China, where the coronavirus’s impacts were first recorded this year, first quarter economic activity could have contracted by 8% year on year.

  • China is projected to grow at 1.2% in 2020 and 9.2% in 2021.
  • Apart from India’s modest 1.9% in 2020, Indonesia is expected to grow at 0.5%,while others in the region experience contractions.
  • Advance economies will have a output change of -6.1% (i.e., a contraction) in 2020 followed by 4.5% in 2021.
  • The U.S. is projected to contract by 5.9% this year and grow by 4.7% next year, while the Euro area, will contract by 7.5% this year and grow by 4.7% next year.

Global Risks Report 2020

  • Released by The World Economic Forum.
  • The first time in the report’s 10-year-history all of the top five issues that are likely to impact the world this year are environmental.
  • The “top five global risks in terms of likelihood” are — extreme weather conditions, climate action failure, natural disasters, biodiversity loss and human-made natural disasters.
  • In terms of potential impact, the top five risks are climate action failure, weapons of mass destruction, biodiversity loss, extreme weather, and water crises.
  • In the previous decade, economic and financial crises were some of the most dangerous.
    • The report states that global temperatures are set to rise by 3°C toward the end of this century.
    • This is “twice what climate experts have warned is the limit to avoid the most severe economic, social and environmental consequences”.

    Political instability

    • The report foresees a year of increased domestic and international political instability and economic slowdown. Stating that geopolitical turbulence is propelling the world towards an unsettled era of great power rivalries, it asks leaders — both in businesses and governments — to work together in tackling “shared risks”.

      Year of economic slowdown

      • The report also forecasts a year of economic slowdown.
      • The International Monetary Fund had expected growth to be at 3 per cent in 2019 — the lowest since the economic crisis of 2008-09.

Global Financial Stability Report

  • The Global Financial Stability Report (GFSR) is a semiannual report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that assesses the stability of global financial markets and emerging-market financing.
  • It is released twice per year, in April and October.
  • The GFSR focuses on current conditions, especially financial and structural imbalances, that could risk an upset in global financial stability and access to financing by emerging-market countries.
  • It emphasizes the ramifications of financial and economic imbalances that are highlighted in one of the IMF’s other publications, the World Economic Outlook.
    • GFSR usually include systemic risk assessments in worldwide financial markets, worldwide debt management, emerging economic markets and current economic crises that could affect finances worldwide.
    • Following the COVID-19 outbreak, the prices of risk assets collapsed and market volatility spiked, while expectations of widespread defaults led to a surge in borrowing costs.
    • Several factors amplified asset price moves:

    ○previously overstretched asset valuations,

    ○pressures to unwind leveraged trades,

    ○dealers’ balance-sheet constraints, and

    ○a deterioration in market liquidity.

    • Emerging market economies experienced the sharpest reversal of portfolio flows on record. As a result, financial conditions tightened at an unprecedented speed.
    • Decisive monetary, financial, and fiscal policy actions—aimed at containing the fallout from the pandemic—managed to stabilize investor sentiment in late March–early April, with markets paring back some of their losses.

Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI)

  • The Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI) is an index designed to measure gender equality in a society.
  • SIGI is a composite indicator of gender equality, introduced by the OECD Development Centre in 2007.
  • It solely focuses on social institutions that impact the roles of men and women, such as a society’s norms, values and attitudes that relate to gender in non- OECD countries.
  • The SIGI is a multifaceted measure that focuses on five principal aspects of social institutions in regards to gender inequality: familial code, son preference, ownership rights, physical integrity, and civil liberties.

Human Development Index

  • Released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
  • The Human Development Index (HDI) is a statistical tool used to measure a country’s overall achievement in its social and economic dimensions.
  • The social and economic dimensions of a country are based on the health of people, their level of education attainment and their standard of living.

Description: Pakistani economist Mahbub ul Haq created HDI in 1990 which was further used to measure the country’s development by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).

  • Calculation of the index combines four major indicators: life expectancy for health, expected years of schooling, mean of years of schooling for education and Gross National Income per capita for standard of living.
    • HDI is one of the best tools to keep track of the level of development of a country, as it combines all major social and economic indicators that are responsible for economic development.
    • India ranks 129 out of 189 countries on the 2019 Human Development Index (HDI) — up one slot from the 130th position last year.
    • The HDI measures average achievement in three basic dimensions of human development —

    ○life expectancy,

    ○education and

    ○per capita income.

  • Norway, Switzerland, Ireland occupied the top three positions in that order. Germany is placed fourth along with Hong Kong, and Australia secured the fifth rank on the global ranking.
  • Among India’s neighbours, Sri Lanka (71) and China (85) are higher up the rank scale while Bhutan (134), Bangladesh (135), Myanmar (145), Nepal (147), Pakistan (152) and Afghanistan (170) were ranked lower on the list.
  • South Asia was the fastest growing region in human development progress witnessing a 46% growth over 1990-2018, followed by East Asia and the Pacific at 43%.
  • India’s HDI value increased by 50% (from 0.431 to 0.647), which places it above the average for other South Asian countries (0.642).
  • However, for inequality-adjusted HDI (IHDI), India’s position drops by one position to 130, losing nearly half the progress (.647 to .477) made in the past 30 years.
  • The IHDI indicates percentage loss in HDI due to inequalities.
  • In the Gender Inequality Index (GII), India is at 122 out of 162 countries. Neighbours China (39), Sri Lanka (86), Bhutan (99), Myanmar (106) were placed above India.
  • The report notes that the world is not on track to achieve gender equality by 2030 as per the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
  • It forecasts that it may take 202 years to close the gender gap in economic opportunity — one of the three indicators of the GII.
  • The report presents a new index indicating how prejudices and social beliefs obstruct gender equality, which shows that only 14% of women and 10% of men worldwide have no gender bias.
    • The Human Development Report Office releases five composite indices each year:

    ○the Human Development Index (HDI),

    ○the Inequality-Adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI),

    ○the Gender Development Index (GDI),

    ○the Gender Inequality Index (GII), and

    ○the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI).

  • Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI)

    • India lifted 271 million people out of poverty between 2006 and 2016, recording the fastest reductions in the multidimensional poverty index values during the period with strong improvements in areas such as “assets, cooking fuel, sanitation and nutrition.
    • The report said that in the 101 countries studied — 31 low income, 68 middle income and 2 high income –

    ○1.3 billion people are “multidimensionally poor”,

    ○which means that poverty is defined not simply by income,

    ○but by a number of indicators, including poor health, poor quality of work and the threat of violence.

    • The report identifies 10 countries, with a combined population of around 2 billion people, to illustrate the level of poverty reduction, and all of them have shown statistically significant progress towards achieving

    ○Sustainable Development Goal 1, namely ending poverty “in all its forms, everywhere”.

    • The 10 countries are Bangladesh, Cambodia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Haiti, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru and Vietnam.
    • India’s MPI value reduced from 0.283 in 2005-06 to 0.123 in 2015-16.
    • Ethiopia, India and Peru significantly reduced deprivations in all 10 indicators, namely nutrition, sanitation, child mortality, drinking water, years of schooling, electricity, school attendance, housing, cooking fuel and assets.
    • Further more people gained access to electricity as deprivation was reduced from 29.1% to 8.6%, housing from 44.9% to 23.6% and assets deprivation from 37.6% to 9.5%.
    • The report also showed that children suffer poverty more intensely than adults and are more likely to be deprived in all 10 of the MPI indicators, lacking essentials such as clean water, sanitation, adequate nutrition or primary education.