Policies for Promotion of Malaysian SMEs Go Global in the Digital Economy

The main purpose of this study is to seek industrial players' inputs on fiscal and monetary policies necessary to enhance SME export performance. The authors use survey data from 215 small and medium enterprises having export markets. They report the most essential governmental export support policies from the perspective of the industry players. The study revealed that accessing to financing is the top request to the government. Other policy recommendations are related to market access, human capital development, tax regimes, infrastructure and technology adoption, legal and regulatory environment, and monetary policies. This study gives implications for Malaysia External Trade Development Corporation (MATRADE) policymakers and export-oriented small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The study contributes to the Malaysian SMEs in relation to inputs to the government to improve their export performance especially using e-commerce.

The Impact of the Ongoing Pandemic on Digital Finance Transactions: An Empirical Analysis

The ongoing pandemic has resulted in a disruption of the life of all citizens and impacted all the spheres, more so the financial system because the Pandemic and its aftermath has shut all economic activity except those which as per the government directives are considered the most essential. This has deeply impacted private consumption, external trade as well as investment in the economy. Accordingly, both in retail stores and e-commerce orders, a common strand is that many of the consumers are now paying bills via digital payment mechanisms and taking contactless delivery of goods wherever possible. “Digital financial transaction systems, e-wallets and apps, online transactions using e-banking, usage of Plastic money (Debit and Credit Cards), etc. have recorded a substantial increase in demand during the crisis”. The objective of the present paper is to examine and analyze the digital finance transactions in selected cities during the ongoing pandemic

Analysis of the Propagation Effects of Remittances on the Vulnerability of External Trade of the Republic of Moldova

In the Republic of Moldova remittances have become a much-discussed subject, the country ranking among the economies with the highest share of remittances in terms of GDP. What is more, remittances, unlike FDI, external trade and other sources of income, seem to have a significant impact on economic growth. Republic of Moldova is a small open economy vulnerable to external shocks. We will examine the effect of remittances on the balance of trade by creating an econometric model. Am attempt has also been made to capture the positive and negative spillovers that migrants’ remittances have on a country’s socio-economic development. Within the research a variety of analytical tools are employed including Granger causality tests, unit root tests, coupled with a structural vector auto regression (SVAR), impulse response function (IRF) analyses and variance decomposition. We find that net trade and remittances are closely associated and follow an almost identical path. Remittances have strong effect on the growth of negative net trade of the Republic of Moldova.

Impacts of supply-side climate change mitigation practices and trade policy regimes under dietary transition: the case of European agriculture

The EU’s Green Deal proposal and Farm to Fork strategy explicitly call for both demand and supply measures to reduce food system emissions. While research clearly illustrates the importance of dietary transitions, impacts of potential supply-side measures are not well understood in relation to competitiveness concerns and leakage effects. This study assesses trade and GHG emission impacts of two supply-side mitigation strategies in the EU (plus UK and Switzerland), against a 2050 baseline featuring healthy/sustainable diets adopted by European consumers. To capture potential leakage effects arising from changing external trade flows, two supply-side strategies (intensification and extensification) are assessed against three trade policy regimes, resulting in six scenarios formulated with detailed inputs from the EUCalc model and simulated with a purported-designed CGE model. Our results show that intensification, while improving the EU+2’s external trade balance, does not reduce its emissions, compared to the baseline. In contrast, extensification leads to a substantial emission abatement that augments reductions from the assumed dietary transition embodied in the baseline, resulting in a combined 31.1% of agricultural emission reduction in EU+2 during 2014-2050. However, this is at the expense of worsening agrifood trade balance amounting to US$25 billion, and significant carbon leakages at 48%, implying that half of the EU+2’s emission reduction are cancelled out by rising emissions elsewhere. Furthermore, implementing the EU+2’s prospective regional trade agreements leads to increased EU emissions; however, a border carbon adjustment by the EU+2 can improve its trade balance and partially shifting mitigation burdens to other countries, but ultimately only marginally reduce global emissions (and carbon leakage). Finally, different trade and emission effects are identified between the crop and livestock sectors, pointing to the desirability of a mixed agriculture system with intensified livestock sector and extensified crop agriculture in EU+2 that balances emission reduction goals and competitiveness concerns.

REBUILDING INDIA’S EXTERNAL TRADE: A SEARCH FOR OPPORTUNITIES IN MYANMAR

Myanmar is a resource-rich country. It is endowed with precious mineral resources. Previously, Myanmar was called ‘Rice bowl of the East’ because of its fertile land and rich forest products. Not only in mineral resources, it is also rich in cultural aspects as well. Myanmar is also known as a ‘home of many civilizations to the South East Asian nations’. However, it is one of the poorest countries in the world despite its richness in natural and mineral resources. It has been known as one of the most isolated countries due to its setback under the military rule. The economy was under strict governmental control and the poor economic policies virtually destroyed the whole economy. In other words, the economy of the country deteriorated due to poor management of resources. The people of the ‘rice bowl of the east’ were dying due to hunger and the morale of the people has been ruined. Many cases of human rights violation have been reported every year.

The Xlendi Bay shipwreck (Gozo, Malta): a petrographic and typological study of an archaic ceramic cargo

An underwater survey off the southwest coast of the island of Gozo revealed a well-preserved shipwreck 110 m below the surface. The site belonged to a previously unknown wreck with a cargo of volcanic millstones and ceramic amphorae dating to the 7th century BC. This article presents the first results of thin-section analysis taken from the pottery objects, and concludes that the ship was carrying a heterogeneous cargo of amphora-borne goods from the Maltese islands, North Tunisia, and possibly Sicily, making it the earliest, known shipwreck in the central Mediterranean; and provides the earliest evidence for Maltese external trade in the central Mediterranean.