Analysts at British Petroleum state that global energy consumption in 2010 grew by 5.6% with the OECD growth at 3.5% and non-OECD growth at 7.5%, the highest rate since 1973 with total energy consumption surpassing the pre-recession peak reached in 2008.
In their 60th annual review of world energy, "BP Statistical Review of World Energy June 2011", they state that oil at 34% continued as the world's leading fuel, followed by coal (30%), natural gas (24%),Hydel (6%), Nuclear (5%) and renewables (1%) although coal consumption grew by 7.6% and natural gas consumption grew by 7.4%.
India's energy consumption increased by 9.2% to 524 mil tonnes oil equivalent from 2009 on the back of a strong growth in coal consumption (11%) and natural gas (21%). Although nuclear energy grew 37%, it still constituted 1% of the energy mix.
Analysts at the Boston Consulting Group state that provision of mobile financial services (MFS) could raise India's financial inclusion rate in 2020 to 65% up from the projected 53%.
In a Telenor-funded study, "The Socio-Economic Impact of Mobile Financial Services - Analysis of Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Serbia and Malaysia", they state that mobile service providers had inherent strengths that enabled them to play a strong role in the financial sector:
1. Focus on 'long-tail' unbanked customers
2. Availability of support infrastructure such as mobile handsets
3. Existing customer relationships
4. Strong brand recognition
5. Large distribution networks
They state that provision of mobile financial services could provide hitherto un-banked individuals with a wide range of financial services, e-government services and efficient welfare distribution enhancing GDP and tax revenues by 5% and creating 4 million new jobs in the Indian economy.
They conclude that a comprehensive regulatory framework including a first tier addressing the use of MFS agents, money laundering and terrorist financing, a second tier addressing consumer protection and payment systems and a third tier addressing the underlying framework such as data privacy, e-commerce, e-security, general banking, taxation and general telecommunications was vital for this to succeed.
PAUL CORNISH of the International Security Program at the Chatham House reviews the vulnerability of developed states to aggressive economic action through cyberspace asking whether economic cyber warfare should be considered a strategic problem.
In his working paper, "The Vulnerabilities of Developed States to Economic Cyber Warfare", he states that a composite of economic warfare and cyber warfare - economic cyber warfare could offer a low-cost, low-risk alternative to cause grave damage to an increasingly interconnected global economy, a parasitism of sorts whereby the attacker would seek to exploit the target economy through espionage and intellectual property theft, rather than to destroy or impede it.
He concludes that economic cyber warfare should be subject to sustained and careful scrutiny requiring more agility and mutually supportive relationships between national governments and critical sectors of the economy such as science, innovation, manufacturing, industry, financial and banking sectors since the first casualties of economic cyber warfare were likely to be confidence and predictability that form the bedrock of the national economy and the credibility of national government.
ARPAN SHETH and MADHUR SINGHAL of Bain & Company claim that the entire philanthropy ecosystem consisting of donors, support networks and grassroots organisations had expanded dramatically over the past five years.
In their report, "India Philanthropy Report 2011", based on interviews with philanthropists and experts on philanthropy in India they state that private charitable giving now represented about 0.3-0.4% of the GDP, a growth of 50% since 2006 backed by a surge in the population of high net-worth individuals, expansion of the scale of support networks and change in attitudes about giving as well as increasing awareness.
They outline four key areas to enhance private philanthropy:
1. Enhanced accountability and transparency throughout the giving chain;
2. Professional NGOs with strong financial planning and operational skills;
3. Continued promotion of a culture of giving;
4. Collaboration with the government on adoption of more philanthropy-friendly policies.
