An Empirical Study on Determinants of Loan Repayment Behaviour of SMEs Towards Commercial Banks

India, as a developing economy even after five decades of planning, still has a long way to catch up with the advanced economies of the globe. The goal may be distant, but surely, the time needed to reach can be reduced by accelerating the pace of development. One way of doing this is by the development of industrial and business ventures. There exists a positive relationship between the growth of an economy and the growth of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). SMEs play a vibrant role in the development of an economy. Access to the formal source of credit by entrepreneurs is essential in a growing economy. Lending to SMEs is a risky activity for the banks as repayment of these loans are less guaranteed. The research article attempts to analyse the factors influencing the loan repayment behaviour of SMEs towards commercial banks. Data are collected using the convenience method of sampling from 80 registered SMEs belonging to the manufacturing and service sectors in the Bangalore region, and data are analysed using statistical tools such as correlation and logit regression analysis, conclusions are drawn based on these findings. The study reveals that characteristics of loan and lender influence the repayment to the maximum extent. The findings are helpful for commercial banks in redesigning suitable policies and schemes to reduce loan defaults.

Analysis of real estate services digitalisation: current situation and development prospects

The article analyses the digitalisation of real estate services in Russia. Empirical works of leading analytical agencies and experts’ academic papers in the field of economic sciences has been summarised and sysrematised. The development key indicators of Russian digital economy, digitalisation level of certain service sectors, digital production features and digital consumption which characterise the digital economy development, have been considered. It has been noted that at present the digital services of in real estate services are at an early stage of development due to the small number of market participants who have fully implemented digital services and online technologies in their activities. It has been revealed that most of the stages of real estate services for the sale or purchase of residential property can be partly or fully realised using digital services and online technologies. Generalised characteristics of real estate services digitalisation at present and prospects for its development have been formulated.

Increasing sustainability through reverse logistics a study on expired and waste medicines in Pakistani pharma industry

Increasing sustainability is the objective in all manufacturing and service sectors. For the increasing sustainability via circular economy, the research at hand reviews reverse logistics within the pharmaceutical industry of Pakistan. It proposes a recommendation to improve the current process of recycling medicines. The methodology is a qualitative method comprising unstructured interviews with an esteemed organization and observations to understand the dynamics of recycling and reverse logistics in drugs. The study helps develop and illustrates a framework divided into three stages (Distributor/Hospitals in 1st Tier, Whole sellers in 2nd Tier, Retailers and Customer in 3rd Tier) to target the customers and bring them into reverse logistics. The paper recommends policy implications to help improve the situation and initiate a sustainable practice for the environment and cost-efficient, including steps wise phases to gauge consumers for recycling medicines.

BUSINESS SUSTAINABILITY PRACTICE AND OPERATIONAL MANAGEMENT INHOTEL INDUSTRY IN AQABA SPECIAL AUTHORITY ECONOMIC ZONE AUTHORITY (ASEZA)

The objectives of this paper are to explore the understanding of tourism through business sustainability through the management of the environmental and operating practices of five-star hotels in Aqaba Jordan. Data would be obtained from a variety of outlets, including paper analyses, impressions, and questionnaires. Semi-structured interviews are typically used to retrieve and supply details. The primary purpose of such interviews is to collect contextual knowledge from the sampled community. It also seeks to include useful knowledge on specific problems and to gain a range of perspectives on specific issues. It is planned to pilot the paper and pencil surveys and the test details to be gathered by field visits and semi-structured interviews. The findings reveal that hotels in Aqaba have used reuse or recycle glass or plastics. In order to encourage sustainable practices in the hotel industry in Jordan, we need to build distinction and competitive advantages by cost savings. The sustained success of economic operations is of utmost importance to companies, whether in the production or service sectors. This emphasis on sustainability is especially relevant to the growth of tourism and hospitality destinations. Established and Emerging economies have embraced environmental and organizational sustainability as a core.

Analysis of Selected Service Industries in Terms of the Use of Photovoltaics before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Previous analyses of the PV market (and the impact of the pandemic on it) have focused on the market as a whole. The literature does not contain analyses of selected services sectors (e.g., catering, hotel services) in terms of the use of photovoltaics. There are no studies that would show in which segments the demand profile for electricity most closely matches the production from photovoltaic installations (not to mention the impact of the pandemic). The authors analyzed selected service sectors (catering and hotel) in terms of the use of photovoltaics before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper proposes a comparative methodology for the use of photovoltaics for self-consumption, including statistical analyses and calculations of the self-consumption index for representatives of various selected services sectors. The highest value of the self-consumption ratio at the level of 52% was shown for cafes and restaurants (during the pandemic). Surprisingly, in the pandemic, the self-consumption rate increased for restaurants and cafes for the same size of installations (compared to pre-pandemic times).

Taxation in the context of mass robotisation and artificial intelligence

The article is devoted to the structure of taxes in the context of robotization and artificial intelligence within the production and service sectors. The increase of robots and artificial intelligence systems will entail the replacement of human labour, which, in turn, will lead to a decrease in budgetary revenues. The article discusses possible options for the future design of robot tax to compensate for budget losses.

Accessing Cloud Services Using Token based Framework for IoT Devices

Nowadays cloud environments are used by many business service sectors like healthcare, retail marketing, banking, and many business fields. At the same time, the usage of Internet of Things (IoT) devices in different sectors also increasing tremendously. So, there is a general problem for securing any business service in enterprise cloud environments restricting by only authorized devices. We are proposing cryptographic techniques with the help of a token-based framework by enabling a secure handshake between consuming applications and the source business service which aims to authorize the target end consumers of the respective business service. The proposed work aims to achieve the desired secure handshake so that any consuming application or device requests the desired business service with a secret token and an input combination. The source business service creates a secure token using any latest robust cryptographic algorithm on the above input combination and returns the token to the consuming application. The consuming application requests to the source business service, it must pass the above token which if validated then only would receive the required data. Hence, in this paper, we propose the delegation of the authorization task to the end consumers, who are responsible to fetch the security tokens and use them in their application lifecycle.

Corporate Efficiency in the Nepali Hotel Industry

Financial sources and corporate investment are the key components for business operation and corporate activities focus on to increase efficiency. The study has attempted to analyze the impact of leverage and firm-specific variables on efficiency of Nepali hotel industry. In this study, efficiency is the dependent variables whereas the independent variables are leverage, size, tangibility and growth. The descriptive and causal comparative research design has been used to examine and analyze the impact on efficiency. The data were collected from annual reports of respective hotels. The study was based on 18 observations and the sample comprises of three hotels, which were purposively selected. Descriptive statistics, correlation and regression analysis have been employed to assess the relationship among the variables. The result showed that the hotels having high leverage have higher efficiency. This study concluded that size, leverage, growth and tangibility are the major factors to determine and increase the corporate efficiency. The findings of the study suggested that there are practical implications to take financing, investment and operating decisions of service sectors like hotels of Nepal. The study has also aimed to support the increase in corporate efficiency.

Evaluating the Impact of COVID-19 on Society, Environment, Economy, and Education

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused drastic changes across the globe, affecting all areas of life. This paper provides a comprehensive study on the influence of COVID-19 in various fields such as the economy, education, society, the environment, and globalization. In this study, both the positive and negative consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on education are studied. Modern technologies are combined with conventional teaching to improve the communication between instructors and learners. COVID-19 also greatly affected people with disabilities and those who are older, with these persons experiencing more complications in their normal routine activities. Additionally, COVID-19 provided negative impacts on world economies, greatly affecting the business, agriculture, entertainment, tourism, and service sectors. The impact of COVID-19 on these sectors is also investigated in this study, and this study provides some meaningful insights and suggestions for revitalizing the tourism sector. The association between globalization and travel restrictions is studied. In addition to economic and human health concerns, the influence of a lockdown on environmental health is also investigated. During periods of lockdown, the amount of pollutants in the air, soil, and water was significantly reduced. This study motivates researchers to investigate the positive and negative consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic in various unexplored areas.

The Evolutionary Trend of Global Inequality: Analyzing the Impacts of Economic Structure

The aim of this study is to examine the evolution of inequality by focusing on the impacts of the economic structure. The technique of decomposition by income sources is employed to evaluate the contribution of the three major sectors, namely the agricultural, industrial, and service sectors to overall inequality. The data cover almost all the countries in the world from 2001 to 2017 for a total of 18 years. There are four stages of analysis in this study. The first stage of study is to provide an overall view of the evolutionary trend of global inequality, the second stage focuses on the North-South divide, the third stage determines the impacts of income groups, and the fourth stage investigates the impacts for each region. There are several salient findings: First, global inequality had declined in the study period. Second, the service sector is identified as the largest contributor to global inequality, followed by the industrial sector, while the contribution of the agricultural sector is negligible. For the North-South divide, disparity in the service sector was more marked in the North than in the South. The industrial sector played a major role in the South and contributed more than 40% to overall inequality. For the comparison amongst the income groups, our findings show that the higher the income, the higher the percentage contribution of the service sector (except for the low-income group). Finally, for the comparison across regions, although the contribution of the agricultural sector in most regions are below 1.5%; however, the contribution of the agricultural sector in both Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia is more than 8%. It implies that a lot of people in these regions still rely on the agricultural sector for a living, and the development in the industrial and service sectors in these two regions lagged behind those of the other regions. Our analysis show that the evolution pattern is very different for each region, therefore, it is necessary to take the effects of income and geographical location into consideration in formulating development policies.