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Economists distinguish between two kinds of inflation: “demand-pull” and “cost-push”. Demand-pull inflation is said to occur when there is excess demand in a situation where supply cannot be augmented, because full capacity output has been reached in one or more crucial sectors. Wartime inflation is a classic example. In India during the pre-neoliberal, dirigiste period, inflation was often the result of insufficient foodgrain output relative to demand, arising from a poor harvest.

In a breakthrough, IMF said in a statement Thursday morning that a staff-level agreement between IMF and the Sri Lankan government has been achieved. The agreement provides for $2.9 billion in assistance under Extended Fund Facility (EFF) over 48 months. The details of the agreement were made public on Thursday while the agreement seems to have been finalized on Tuesday. A staff-level agreement needs to be approved by the IMF management and the executive board to become effective. Sri Lanka had sought up to $3 billion from IMF. A crucial meeting in this regard took place late Tuesday evening between visiting IMF team and Sri Lankan government officials. President Ranil Wickremesinghe who also heads the finance department took part in the meetings with IMF.

Qatar's 2022 World Cup promises to benefit not only itself but also to provide an unintended economic, political, and religious soft power boon for its foremost rival in the region, the United Arab Emirates.

Prime Minister candidate of the British Conservative Party Rishi Sunak has been consistently outperforming Truss in debates yet he continues to lag behind his challenger among the voters of the Party. Senior Tory leaders say that he is not having good time. Sunak who made a robust start finds himself trailing behind Truss. Since he appears to be losing the race, his supporters have started the process to identify the reasons so that he may succeed in overcoming his deficiencies.

BERLIN: “It’s going to be a choice many of us will have to face when winter comes: freeze or starve.” So says Günter Pohl, a glassworker from the the town of Sprockhövel in Germany’s industrial Ruhr region. “The sanctions are supposedly targeting Russia, but they’re hitting us a lot more than they are Russia.”

No-one dares to say with any certainty what will be the result of the plebiscite on September 4 to approve or reject the new constitution of Chile.

A potential revival of the Iran nuclear accord is likely to test the sustainability of Middle Eastern efforts to dial down tensions and manage differences by improving diplomatic relations and fostering economic cooperation.

While there are plenty of important primary elections happening now, and even bigger general elections happening in the fall, Senator Bernie Sanders’s rallies in Philadelphia and Boston earlier this month were focused on something entirely different: the struggles of the working class and the importance of building the labor movement.

It is good to know that Russia and India are in an advanced stage of discussion on accepting each other’s debit and credit cards. Should the two countries agree, Indian ATMs (automated teller machines) will soon accept Russian MIR cards. And, Indian RuPay cards will be accepted in Russia. Further, the two countries are considering the mutual implementation of interbank transfer services — India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and SPFS, the Russian version of SWIFT. India’s acceptance of MIR cards will provide a big boost to the five-year-old Russian electronic fund transfer system at a time when the country is facing wide-ranging financial sanctions from western countries and Japan.

Pakistan is currently devastated by an unprecedented floods leading to the death of more than 1,000 persons till now. The struggling coalition of government of Shabaz Sharif is desperately trying to meet the challenge of this sudden natural calamity which has further given a jolt to its ailing economy. The poor workers and the peasants in the affected areas are suffering most. But still the workers organisations and the farmers bodies are continuing with their struggle for minimum wages and much needed land reforms.