Foreign Ministers of Russia, India and China met for the eighth time in Yekaterinburg, Russia to reaffirm their commonality, in views on the global situation and, for the first time, set out coordinated positions on Kosovo, Iran, Afghanistan and the Asia-Pacific region, The Hindu reported.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said a joint communique on boosting links between the three large developing countries would look at enhanced co-operation on humanitarian aid, fighting terrorism and combating drug trafficking.

“I believe that against the backdrop of a multi-polar world it is necessary to advance cooperation between Russia, China and India, the three countries that are rapidly growing and enjoying strong economic growth,” said Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi.

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Even as millions in developing countries in Asia and Africa are expected to die of starvation due to inflationary grain prices, president Bush asked Congress to authorize US$770 million to ease the global food crisis.

The United States is feeling the pressure of their empasis on biofuels even as energy and food demand rises. While grain supply is dwindling, experts around the world say that the American focus on biofuel subsidies which has given farmers incentives to grow biofuels in place of grain is only compounding the problem. As a result of the biofuels subsidies and a high demand for energy, farmers are more keen to plant acres of corn and sugarcane, the raw material for energy instead of rice and wheat human staples. This has led to the head on collosion of of a world food crisis partly fueled by record fuel costs.

Speaking on Monday at the European Parliament, Jeffrey Sachs, head of the Earth Institute at New York’s Columbia University and a special UN adviser said that while a third of the US maize crop will go to a gas tank, “it is a huge blow to the world food supply.” “We should cut back significantly on our biofuels programmes, which were understandable at a time of much lower food prices and much lower food stocks but do not make sense now at a time of global food scarcity condition,” he added, reported Reuters.

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A benchmark variety of Thai rice, a food stable across much of Asia, is at about US$1,000 a tonne, up threefold from last year. Meat prices have risen by 60 percent in Bangladesh in the year ending in March, and by 45 percent in Cambodia and 30 percent in the Philippines. The rise in global food prices has sparked riots last month in Egypt and Haiti, protests in other countries and restrictions on food exports in Brazil, Vietnam, India and Egypt.

In the first months of 2008, food price inflation has hit double digits in Bangladesh; People’s Republic of China (PRC); Hong Kong, China; Indonesia; Pakistan; and Viet Nam. Food price inflation is also rising in India, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. And although no 2008 figures are yet available for Sri Lanka, there is little doubt that food prices are also rising at double digits there as well. Wheat-dependent countries in Central and West Asia are also experiencing double-digit rates of food inflation says an Asian Development bank report on rising food prices.

The problem is not confined to importing countries, as net exporters are also experiencing food price inflation. In fact, the rising inflation pressure has been more intense in net exporting countries.

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In its report titled “Emerging Asian Regionalism,” the Asian Development Bank said Asia will account for as much as 35 percent of world gross domestic product (GDP) in purchasing-power parity [PPP] terms, from only 28 percent in 2005. By then, Asia’s GDP is set to be more than 50-percent larger than the European Union’s or North America’s.

While continued growth will reinforce the region’s market-led integration, official cooperation, production and financial markets integration, economic interdependence and inclusive and sustainable growth will need to intensify based on sound economic principles.

The report highlights that Asia is less integrated in finance than in trade but financial markets are now larger, deeper, and more sophisticated than they were a decade ago. The ADB Study urges policymakers to strengthen supervision, surveillance and dialogue on financial markets through creation of a new, high-level “Asian Financial Stability Dialogue.”

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As China’s voracious demand for iron ore rises, the country demands a more stable, long term pricing policy from India.  India which currently meets 16 percent of China’s iron ore demands sells iron ore on a spot basis, allowing the price to fluctuate as demand grows. India is China’s third largest supplier, after Australia and Brazil, who supply over 60 percent of their iron ore to China at contract prices, which allowed shipping costs to remain ‘relatively stable.’

‘Last year India’s spot sales to China led to additional costs of US$838.3 million for Chinese steel makers,’ Luo Bingsheng, executive vice chairman of the China Iron and Steel Association told Forbes.

Now, China plans to take serious action to make sure iron ore prices are more stablized. China will have to consider reducing purchases of iron ore from India if Indian suppliers do not moderate their ‘over-reliance’ on spot sales, he added.

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The quest for natural gas has brought age old enemies India and Pakistan to seek an agreement, allowing a pipeline from Iran to bring energy to Pakistan and India.”I am very optimistic about the IPI (Iran, Pakistan, India) pipeline as it would go a along way in meeting India’s energy requirements in the long run,” Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Murli Deora told The Hindu on Sunday. The US$7.4 billion , 2,700-km-long pipeline is scheduled to be completed by 2011 and would initially carry 600 million cubic metres of gas per day.

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Today being world Earth Day, its only fit we discuss the next big environmental crisis to hit Asia - e-waste or electronic waste. With consumerism on the rise, the rate at which we buy and dispose off mobile phones, Tv’s, laptops, PC’s, refrigerators etc is only making the problem of e-waste worse for Asia.

The star.com reported that despite international agreements that prohibit the import and export of hazardous waste, shipments of broken electronic devices continue to pour into the harbours of Kenya, India and China.The reason is strictly financial. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates it’s up to 10 times cheaper to export e-waste than to dispose of it domestically.

About 150,000 people are employed by the e-waste industry in Guiyu, China, and 25,000 more work in the scrapyards of New Delhi, India. The gold, silver, copper, aluminum and other metals salvaged become a vital resource for the manufacturing of new items. A typical wage for the arduous, dangerous work is $2 to $4 a day.

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India and China’s growth in trade is having a ripple effect in the areas of consumer goods, art and tourism. Over the last few months, several large shopping malls, trade shows and exhibition centers in Beijing and Shanghai have been displaying the richness and diversity of India.

In 2007, over half a million visitors were exchanged between India and China. These included over 4,62,450 visitors from India to China, a year-on-year rise of 48 percent and about 68,000 Chinese visitors came to India, a 14 percent increase compared to the year before. In 2005, India received 46, 805 tourists from China while 6,29,947 Indian tourists traveled to China during the same year. (more…)

The Indian Embassy will start an India Tourism Office in Beijing on Monday the 7th of April. The ITO in Beijing follows the successful opening of the China Tourism Office in New Delhi in August last year. The inauguration will also coincide with Ms Ambika Soni - Indian Minister of Tourism and Culture’s visit to Beijing and Shanghai and a week long food festival in both Beijing and Shanghai. The tourism office will be responsible in promoting India as a tourist destination in China.

People are at the heart of any relationship. China’s outbound tourism sector has skyrocketed in recent years, with the number of Chinese traveling to India reaching 68,000 last year and the number of Indians flying to China almost seven-times that totaling more than 462,000. Comparatively, the number of Chinese going abroad reached 37.5 million in 2007, up from 34 million in 2006, and 12 million in 2001. China has surpassed Japan to become the biggest source of outbound tourists in Asia.

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Countries on the banks of the greater Mekong river - Cambodia, the People’s Republic of China, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam, which have been experiencing growth rates of 7 percent or more in the past decade came together over the weekend in Laos, to discuss strenghtening trade and investment ties in the region.

The subregion’s economic performance was driven in part by increased trade, resulting from the transition to market-based systems and closer integration with external markets.

The greater Mekong subregion (GMS) countries met to discuss ways and means to increase intra-regional trade. On Monday, Xinhua reported that over the last few years, trade has expanded both within and outside the subregion. Over the period 1994-2006, intra-GMS exports, excluding to China, grew at an annual average rate of 19 percent, while exports to other countries increased at an annual average rate of 11 percent.

Regional cooperation within the GMS framework has seen advances in transportation, telecommunications, trade, tourism, and agriculture.

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