Fiscal positions in small states, those with a population of 1.5 million or less, have deteriorated significantly over the past decade. The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent global shocks have worsened fiscal and debt positions in small states, intensifying their existing fiscal vulnerabilities. Forty percent (14) of the 35 emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) that […]
Surjamani Devi remembers the time not so long ago when she used to stoke her earthern cookstove with twigs to get the fire going for the family meal. “The room was full of smoke,” she recalled when we visited her small mud and thatch home in Khudwa village in the eastern state of Bihar, one […]