South And Central Asian Affairs
Recently, India has managed to attract foreign investments, liberalized FDI in key sectors like defense, real estate, railways, and insurance, and progressed towards energy efficiency. Afghanistan has one of the lowest growth rates of all South Asian countries, at less than 3%. Largely, this is due to pressing security risks and political tension after the suspension of the U.S.-Taliban peace negotiations. However, its agriculture sector continues to grow as favorable weather reverses the impacts of a drought in 2018, prompting economists to favor Afghanistan's GDP growth projections in the next few years. The largest of the Asian countries by area is Russia, which occupies about 30% of the total territory of the continent. The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have dramatically increased food insecurity in some of the poorest and most vulnerable countries in the Asia Pacific region. Join the Asia-Pacific Rural Development and Food Security Forum 2022 on March to learn more on cr...