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This editorial in the New York Times points out that the new president of the ANC party -that runs South Africa and has a monopoly of power in the post Apartheid years, under Mandela, Mbeki and Zuma- faces a uphill task as the ANC remains deeply divided after supporting Mr. Zuma in office till the very end. Apart from the stagnant economy, there are challenges the ANC faces in the lethargy of the post Apartheid years, and the culture of corruption, and patronage management that led to mismanagement of state enterprises.

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Raghuram Rajan, former chief economist of the IMF, is appointed the chief economic advisor to Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh. He says his focus is on increasing foreign investment, including letting foreign banks operate in the country, reducing waste in food storage and distribution, and promoting new business so that growth does not depend largely on the large companies in the country.

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Former World Bank chief Zoellick points to the need for investments in human capital and productivity improvements in emerging markets such as India, China and Brazil to overcome the problem of slow growth in 2013.

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Years of neglect under the Mubarak government have led to a situation in which Egypt imports 80% of its wheat supplies and agricultural products. Corruption in the sale of fertile land to developers for building homes, lack of electric supplies to farmers to pump water, lack of investment in infrastructure and irrigation, and the liberalization efforts which led to farmers diversifying from wheat into more profitable products such as fruit and flowers, have led to the current situation.

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India's central bank chief, Raghuram Rajan, points to the risks for developing economies from changes in monetary policy of the U.S. Federal Reserve. The Indian rupee lost about a fourth of its value in 2013 as the U.S. Fed announced plans to withdraw from its quantitative easing policies. Large depreciations in other developing economies, Indonesia, Turkey and Brazil, happened at the same time. Rajan and India's Reserve Bank increased the interest rate by half a percentage point in 2013 to deal with the impact on inflation as a result of the large depreciation of the rupee. The volatility of capital flows and sudden reversal in inflows of capital to developing economies leaves these countries exposed to sharp declines in economic growth. India's growth has slowed to 5%, larger than expected from the slower growth in the global economy in 2013, largely as a result of decreases in direct foreign investment and capital outflows.

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Year over year inflation in Dec. 2013 was 9.9% in India. RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan plans to focus on headline inflation which focusses on food and fuel which are about 60% of the consumer basket in India. Earlier RBI efforts used a number of indicators- inflation, growth, financial stability and exchange rates which created confusion in the minds of investors about the serious control of rising prices. Inflation for the last 5 years has been over 8%, and is persistent even as growth slows. The policy rate is now about 2 percentage points below inflation. Inflation targeting under Rajan could take the shape of 8% target in the first year, dropping to 6% and then a range between 2-6%.

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Eric Bellman's intervew with Rajiv Lall, chief executive officer of Infrastructure Development Finance, India's largest infrastructure financing company. Lall says the conditions are right for power development to be the next telecom of India's growth story, with some of the same impact that telecom has had bringing mobile phones to hundreds of millions of people in India. IDFC expects 20% growth in net profit in 2010 and 30% in 2011.

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Individual investors reacted strongly to declining prospects for emerging markets with slowing growth, depreciating currencies, corruption and political uncertainty in 2013. As of the beginning of June, retail investors pulled $18.1 billion from emerging market bond funds, about one third of the amount that went in to emerging markets since the financial crisis in 2007, according to fund tracker EPFR Global. Institutional investors have pulled out less, about $9.3 billion, or 10% of their investments in emerging markets bonds since 2007. A similiar pattern is seen for investment in the stock markets of emerging market countries. The U.S. Federal Reserve's monetary expansion helped pull more money into emerging markets such as India, Indonesia, Brazil and Turkey. As the Fed shifts away from these policies in 2013 emerging market countries have large current account deficits and less money to finance imports and debt.

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Indecision and policy missteps by the government of prime minister Manmohan Singh of India. Divisions within the Congress political party and its allies in parliament stalls moves to attract foreign investment in the retail sector and leads to a general paralysis in the government in 2011-2012.

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This NYT editorial on slowing growth in India is critical of the performance of prime minister Manmohan Singh's government.

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David Malpass is the choice of the Trump administration to head the World Bank. He has worked with Latin American countries at the State Department, was the Treasury official responsible for the World Bank in the Reagan administration, and worked on Argentine currency, China trade matters in the Trump administration.

Malpass negotiated a $13 billion replenishment for the World Bank in 2017, with U.S. share of $1.2 billion. This capped the bank's lending at $25 billion.

Last year the World Bank provided China with $60.5 billion in loans for 400 projects, which this WSJ editorial says is loans China does not need with its $3.07 trillion in foreign reserves. This editorial is critical of the current World Bank head Dr. Kim for taking a job with a World Bank partner the private equity fund GIP.

The World Bank has played a significant role in development for South Asia and China in the early years after World War II.

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Using a new methodology India's statistics agency revises growth for 2013 to 5.1%, for 2014 fiscal year to 6.9%. Growth for 2015 is forecast at 7.4%. For the 3 months Oct-Dec. 2014 the growth in GDP was at 7.5%. Changes in methodology include computing it at market price, not at factor cost. This adds up consumer and firm spending instead of producer costs.

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Indian rating agency Crisil says expeditious settlement of stressed assets in India's banking system is needed for the private sector to play its part in the country's infrastructure development. In the last 4 years much of the effort in infrastructure was undertaken by the government. Crisil CEO Ashu Suyash, says Rupees 50 lakh crore needs to be allocated for capital investment in infrastructure for the 5 year period 2018- 2022. About Rupees 3000 crore investment per day is required. In addition to improving the banking system, other actions needed are new private-public partnership efforts, front ending of projects, and a deepening of the infrastructure financing system. Infrastructure investments have suffered from lack of investment in India and this should be a top priority for the government, say experts. This includes tapping into pension and insurance funds under new arrangements. The central government has announced a 7 lakh crore investment plan to build 83,000 kilometres of highways by 2022. Crisil has developed an "investability index" to track and measure the attractiveness of such projects.   ...

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The Bharatiya Janta Party wins state elections in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, two large states in the north and central part of the country. The Aadmi Common Man party does well in New Delhi elections. The Congress party sees a large loss of seats in all three major election states. The ruling national Congress party sees its support erode as a result of corruption and mismanagement of the economy, and younger voters dissatisfied with the party.

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Tyler Cowan says slower growth in India is a troubling sign in 2012, and as significant if not more than the eurozone crisis. A less mentioned and major problem is the low productivity in agriculture, and he points to Japan, Taiwan, and S. Korea where major increases in agricultural productivity preceded successful industrialization. With growing population and continued growth India will be one of the largest economies in the world. The other major problem is shortages of energy supplies and the inability of state owned company, Coal India, to upgrade technology and increase output.

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Inflation in India is at 9.1% in May 2011, compared to the prior year. GDP growth for the first quarter of 2011 slowed to 7.8%, from an annual rate of 8.3% in the fourth quarter of 2010. Other figures show the same trend. Local investment growth for the second half of the fiscal year ending March 31, 2011 was at 4.1%, a decline from 14.7% at the beginning of the year. Foreign investment in the first quarter 2011 declined 32% from the prior year, down to $3.4 billon. Car sales have also declined to the lowest rate in two years.

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A new family sedan will come out of a new manufacturing plant VW has built in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 2011. The plant will turn out a new version of the Passat to compete with the Toyota Camry and the Honda Accord. Production capacity will be 150,000 A new Beetle will also be introduced. This is the first time VW has built a car specifically designed for the U.S.. During its previous efforts in the 80's VW used European designs and transferred them to the U.S. Its plans are to sell 400,000 VW's in the U.S. by 2013. VW sold 213,000 cars in the U.S. in 2009, so this means doubling sales in 4 years. At it height VW sold 577,000 cars in 1970, but this was before the Japanese and the Koreans entered the market in a significant way, and now the potential is there for Chinese and Indian imports at the low end of the price scale. Another factor making this goal difficult to achieve is the smaller car market and lower economic growth. By 1992, sales had dropped to 49,000, after the boxier replacement to the bug- in its Rabbit and Golf models- never took off. The new Beetle's introduction in 1998 improved sales, which reached 356,000 in 2001, and then declined as a result of too few new models, declining quality and a weakening dollar. There is a feeling among VW's American dealers, that VW's European headquarters staff is not giving the US the priority it deserves. The revolving door change in CEO's for the US operations, has only reinforced this impression. Mr Browning of GM's European operations replaced Jaccoby recently. Jaccoby joined Volvo as its new CEO. Steps taken to address these issues are to revamp the Jetta model for American customer preferences, and advertising that appeals to price conscious customers with the line: "Great for the price of good." Another innovative effort is an ad strategy that tries to capture Hispanics in the US market, with ads on Spanish language television networks. A sign of how much German management is involved in the detail of the new Jetta, is the discussion at the management board level about whether the new model should have American style cup holders. This meant pushing the brake two inches forward towards the driver, a decision that was made to do so after some deliberation at the management board. This will lead to intense competition in the US market, with Asian, European and US manufacturers all vying for the same price conscious customers....

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Diesel prices are regulated and subsidized by the Indian government, but gasoline prices are deregulated since 2010, resulting in gasoline costing 64% more than diesel in India. As a result buyers are staying away from gasoline cars and shifting to diesel creating distortions in demand. The government is considering a tax on diesel cars and SUV's of between $3000 to $4600 to correct the distortion. Because lower income people woud be hurt by increasing the price of diesel it continues to be subsidized. Because of the uncertainty car manufacturers are shutting down production to reduce growing inventory of gasoline vehicles. High interest rates of 12% on car loans also reduces demand. Suzuki Maruti sales declined 6% in May 2012, Ford and GM showed sales declines of 14% and 20%. The year ending March 2012 shows Indian car sales growing only slightly by 2.2% to 2 million cars. Sales were rising at 29% only about a year ago. Gasoline costs 68 rupees a liter in New Delhi after a 11.5% increase in May 2012, compared to 41 rupees per liter for diesel. The increase in gasoline prices is a result of the government having difficulty paying the rising imports of oil, costing $141 billion for the year ending March 31, 2012. The sharp slowdown in the car industry and the problems in the energy sector have affected India's growth rate....