2020 – Central News Hub

STUDY: 28Mn extra years of life lost in 2020

YLL measures both the number of deaths and the age at which it occurs, making it a more detailed assessment of Covid-19’s impact on populations…reports Asian Lite News.

More than 28 million years of life were lost than expected in 2020 in 31 upper-middle and high-income countries, finds a new study.

According to a study, except for Taiwan, New Zealand, Denmark, Iceland, Norway and South Korea, all other countries examined had more premature deaths than expected in 2020, with a higher rate in men than women.

The highest rates of excess premature deaths were in Russia, Bulgaria, Lithuania and the US.

“As many of the effects of the pandemic might take a longer time frame to have a measurable effect on human lives, continuous and timely monitoring of excess years of life lost (YLL) would help identify the sources of excess mortality and excess YLL in population subgroups,” the researchers, including Nazrul Islam from the University of Oxford, said.

YLL measures both the number of deaths and the age at which it occurs, making it a more detailed assessment of Covid-19’s impact on populations.

For the study, published by The BMJ journal, using this measure, the team set out to estimate the changes in life expectancy and excess years of life lost from all causes in 2020.

They compared the observed life expectancy and years of life lost in 2020 with those that would be expected based on historical trends in 2005-19 in 37 upper-middle and high-income countries.

Between 2005 and 2019, life expectancy at birth increased in both men and women in all the countries studied.

In 2020, there was a decline in life expectancy in both men and women in all countries except New Zealand, Taiwan, and Norway, where there was a gain in life expectancy.

The highest decline in life expectancy (in years) was in Russia (-2.33 in men and -2.14 in women), the US (-2.27 in men and -1.61 in women), Bulgaria (-1.96 in men and -1.37 in women), Lithuania (-1.83 in men and -1.21 in women), Chile (-1.64 in men), and Spain (-1.11 in women).

Overall, excess years of life lost to the covid-19 pandemic in 2020 were more than five times higher (2,510 per 100,000) than those associated with the seasonal influenza epidemic in 2015 (458 per 1,00,000).

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India world’s 5th largest recipient of FDI in 2020

FDI inflows to Asia grew by 4% to $535 billion in 2020, making it the only region to record growth and increasing Asia’s share of global inflows to 54%, reports Asian Lite News

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) to India in 2020 increased by 27 percent to $64 billion, pushed up by acquisitions in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) industry, making it the 5th largest recipient in the world, says UN’s World Investment Report 2021.

Prepared by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the ‘World Investment Report 2021 – Investing in Sustainable Recovery’ said global FDI flows have been severely hit by the pandemic and they plunged by 35 per cent in 2020 to $1 trillion from $1.5 trillion the previous year.

It said, lockdowns caused by Covid-19 around the world slowed down existing investment projects, and prospects of a recession led multinational enterprises (MNEs) to reassess new projects.

FDI to India increased 27 per cent to $64 billion in 2020 from $51 billion in 2019, pushed up by acquisitions in the ICT industry, making the country the fifth largest FDI recipient in the world, the UNCTAD report mentioned.

Amid India’s struggle to contain the Covid-19 outbreak, robust investment through acquisitions in ICT (software and hardware) and construction bolstered FDI, it added.

Cross-border Mergers and Acquisitions surged 83 per cent to $27 billion, with major deals involving ICT, health, infrastructure and energy, the UN report said.

Large transactions included the acquisition of Jio Platforms by Jaadhu (a subsidiary of Facebook) for $5.7 billion, the acquisition of Tower Infrastructure Trust by Brookfield (Canada) and GIC (Singapore) for $3.7 billion and the sale of the electrical and automation division of Larsen & Toubro India for $2.1 billion, it noted.

Another megadeal — Unilever India’s merger with GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare India (a subsidiary of GSK United Kingdom) for $4.6 billion — also contributed to the increase in FDI in India, said the World Investment Report 2021, the report stated.

Major project announcements in the ICT industry included a $2.8 billion investment by online retail giant Amazon in ICT infrastructure in India, it mentioned.

The report said FDI in South Asia rose by 20 per cent to $71 billion, driven mainly by strong Mergers and Acquisitions in India.

FDI outflows from South Asia fell 12 per cent to $12 billion, driven by a drop in investment from India, it highlighted.

India ranked 18 out of the world’s top 20 economies for FDI outflows, with 12 billion dollars of outflows recorded from the country in 2020 as compared to 13 billion dollars in 2019, said the report.

According to it, FDI inflows to developing Asia grew by 4 per cent to $535 billion in 2020, making it the only region to record growth and increasing Asia’s share of global inflows to 54 per cent.

In China, FDI increased by 6 per cent to $149 billion, the UNCTAD Investment Report added. While some of the largest economies in developing Asia such as China and India recorded FDI growth in 2020, the rest recorded a contraction, it said.

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