Academic literature on the topic 'Government Duty'

The federal government's duty to consult with Indian tribes has been the subject of numerous executive orders and directives from past and current U.S. Presidents, which have, in turn, resulted in the proliferation of agency-specific consultation policies. However, there is still no agreement regarding the fundamental components of the consultation duty. When does the consultation duty arise? And what does it require of the federal government? The answers to these questions lie in the realization that the tribal consultation duty arises from the common law trust responsibility to Indian tribes, which compels the United States to protect tribal sovereignty and tribal resources, as well as to provide certain services to tribal members. In that respect, the federal government's duty to consult with Indian tribes has a unique foundation that distinguishes it from decisions to consult with State governments or encourage public participation through the Administrative Procedures Act. This Article argues that the duty to consult with Indian tribes is properly viewed as a procedural component of the trust responsibility. It further argues that a more robust, judicially enforceable consultation requirement would be the most effective way to ensure that the federal government fulfills the substantive components of its trust responsibility to Indian tribes, while avoiding the difficult line-drawing that would be inherent in direct enforcement of those components. In this way, the consultation duty could become a powerful tool to ensure that federal agencies know and consider the impacts their actions will have on Indian people, before those actions are taken.

AbstractIn 2020 governments worldwide implemented various laws and social distancing restrictions to contain the spread of the COVID-19 virus. At the same time, conspiracy theories emerged purporting that authorities were using the COVID-19 pandemic to permanently control or harm citizens. These conspiracies undermined government responses to the pandemic and in some cases elicited civil disobedience. Using survey data from 779 Australians collected eight months into the pandemic, we examined the relationship between conspiracy beliefs, trust in the government, and duty to comply with authorities during the COVID-19 pandemic. We also examined whether trust in government moderated the association between conspiracy beliefs and duty to comply. We found that those prone to conspiracy theory beliefs and who distrusted government were less likely to comply with authorities during the pandemic. We also found that trust in the government moderated the negative relationship between conspiracy beliefs and duty to comply; high trust served as a protective factor against conspiracy beliefs. Importantly, we found that how government actions were experienced and perceived during the pandemic were important correlates of Australians’ level of trust in the government. Our findings point to the importance of governments maintaining high trust in their efficacy and approach during a crisis.

Abstract The UK government proudly affirms that the country has some of the strongest equalities legislation in the world, including the Equality Act 2010. For it to be true, however, the government should implement the legislation in its entirety, including the socio-economic duty (section 1 of the Act). That duty would require public authorities to actively consider how their decisions and policies of the highest strategic importance can increase or decrease inequalities of outcome. Regrettably, successive governments have failed to commence the duty, and therefore it is not technically binding on public authorities. It is encouraging that the duty was brought to life in Scotland in 2018 and the Welsh Government has announced they will follow suit in 2020. The socio-economic duty is potentially a useful lever to understand and address the structural causes of material inequalities and their negative effects on human rights and well-being. This article presents and draws conclusions from the strategic choices made by the people running #1forEquality, the national campaign to bring the socio-economic duty to life. The article introduces four key factors that contributed to making progress between 2017 and 2019, despite the limited resources available: a) the added value of merging advocacy and epistemic communities working on equality and on human rights; b) the engagement with political actors at key stages of the process; c) the combination of ‘naming and shaming’ and best practice; and d) the celebration of smaller victories along the way.

GST will narrow economic distance between producers and consumers as itwill be imposed only value addition. The dream of one country, one act and one taxwill be observed. It is expected that, it will help to improve the productivity in thecountry as well as will be benefited to the consumers, as maximum rate of GST ispredetermined. It will also help to avoid the multiple taxation, processes, tax evasionetc. Government proposed Central GST and States GST. CGST will subsume centralexcise duty, excess central excise duty, service tax, excess custom duty and specialexcess custom duty. SGST will subsume sale tax/ VAT, entertainment tax (other thanlocal bodies),sale tax which is imposed by Centre Government and collected by states,purchase tax, luxury tax and lottery tax and more significantly octroi which is a majorsource of revenue of the Municipal Corporations. Already there is vertical imbalanceof resources and responsibilities among Governments in India. Therefore, in thisresearch paper probable pros and cons about upcoming are discussed.

Abstract Crude Palm Oil (CPO) mainly contributes to Indonesia’s export duty receipts. However, high CPO exports have led to a need for more availability in the domestic market, impacting price increases. Therefore, the government implemented the CPO export duty policy several times, restructuring the export duty and currently uses ad nature or specific calculations (absolute value tariffs). This study compares CPO export duty in several periods based on the reference price range and CPO export duty rate. The data used are secondary time series data from July 2015 to December 2023 which were analyzed using qualitative methods through policy document analysis. The analysis results show that as far as the specific export duty calculation is calculated, the government restructures the export duty with changes in the export duty rate and CPO reference price range. The comparison of export duty rates in the three periods shows that export duty rates are in line with the increase in CPO prices in the international market. The highest export duty rate is in period III.

Is the civic duty to report crime and corruption a genuine moral duty? After clarifying the nature of the duty, I consider a couple of negative answers to the question, and turn to an attractive and commonly held view, according to which this civic duty is a genuine moral duty. On this view, crime and corruption threaten political stability, and citizens have a moral duty to report crime and corruption to the government in order to help the government’s law enforcement efforts. The resulting duty is triply general in that it applies to everyone, everywhere, and covers all criminal and corrupt activity. In this paper, I challenge the general scope of this argument. I argue that that the civic duty to report crime and corruption to the authorities is much narrower than the government claims and people might think, for it only arises when the state (i) condemns genuine wrongdoing and serious ethical offenses as “crime” and “corruption,” and (ii) constitutes a dependable “disclosure recipient,” showing the will and power to hold wrongdoers accountable. I further defend a robust duty to directly report to the public—one that is weightier and wider than people usually assume. When condition (ii) fails to obtain, I submit, citizens are released of the duty to report crime and corruption to the authorities, but are bound to report to the public, even when the denunciation targets the government and is risky or illegal.

The first job of a government is to protect its people, and, in the United States, the government ostensibly performs this job through the police. But policing in America is deeply dysfunctional, as the police not only provide inadequate protection from violent crime, but simultaneously engage in outright acts of brutality against the citizenry. As awareness of these practices has swept across the nation, legal scholars and policymakers have offered numerous reforms and remedies to help solve policing’s problems. The responses have tended to focus on the top of the legal pyramid, using the big hammers of the federal government, the Constitution of the United States, the federal remedies of Section 1983, and the qualified immunity doctrine of federal courts as the requisite tools for reform. More recently, as these efforts have faltered, scholars and policymakers have begun to explore the possibilities for change at the state and local level. This Article, too, begins at the bottom. While the proposed fixes to the federal framework are indeed important, this Article argues that changes at the lower, foundational level of cities, local governments, and common law duties of care are equally so. Policing is, after all, a fundamentally local matter, with thousands of municipal and county governments responsible for its administration. And duties of care are the most basic articulation of the norms and obligations flowing between members of our society, shaping not just private relations, but the government-constituent relationship as well. This Article argues that attending to these roots offers an opportunity to reorient the police-citizen relationship and recast the relational norms between local government actors and their constituents more generally. In particular, this Article argues that the “public duty doctrine”—a no-duty rule that immunizes municipalities from civil liability arising from police violence and failures to protect—has contributed to a profoundly unbalanced and perverse local-constituent relationship. To reestablish just relations, localities should bear, and indeed embrace, a legally enforceable duty of care to protect their constituents. Such a duty would not open the liability flood gates, nor impose catastrophic expenses on cities, nor expand the already oversized footprint of policing. Such a duty would, however, achieve the usual tort goals of compensation and deterrence, significantly reduce the harms that police and other governmental actors visit on city constituents through both their action and inaction, align with corrective justice principles, enhance democratic accountability, advance the constitutional principle of equal protection, and accord with the thick conception of the city-constituent relationship that cities themselves put forward in the affirmative litigation context. Further, implementing this duty on the ground would not be difficult. Neither courts nor legislatures need do anything at all; many cities could simply choose to not avail themselves of the public duty defense and instead accept an owed duty. Doing so would not only reorient the city-constituent relationship in a profoundly more positive way; adopting this duty would also serve cities’ broader self-interest. As cities increasingly vie for political recognition and acknowledgement as independently legitimate polities on both the domestic and international stage, this Article draws on the burgeoning sovereignty-as responsibility literature to argue that by embracing a duty to protect, cities can advance their own status as credible, politically important actors in the wider American democratic project.

Import of textile product which keep getting higher has caused serious injury to the domestic textile industry, as an effort to protect domestic industry government has imposed additional import duty in form of safeguard duty for import of textile product. Introduction of safeguard duty is expected to give domestic industry an opportunity to adjust itself for competing with import product, but the establishment of safeguard duty for textile product is thought to be the trigger for tax evasion on import of textile product, against this violation government impose administrative sanction. The purpose of this research is to analyze the effect of safeguard duty imposition and administration sanction on tax evasion. Object of this research is all import activity on textiles product which has been imposed safeguard duty and committing administrative violation since the establishment of safeguard duty for textile product beginning on November 2019 till October 2020. Regression technique used is ordinary least square regression to regress cross section data. Research conclusion find that safeguard duty introduction significantly affecting tax evasion while administrative sanction didn’t have significant effect on reducing tax evasion.. Keywords: textile product, safeguard duty, administration sanction, tax evasion.

Throughout the United Kingdom it is likely that 'out of hours', the smallest number of social workers is covering the largest geographical areas, the highest proportion of referrals, the most hours per week with the least support and in some of the most dangerous situations. For nearly thirty years, the majority of the working week has been staffed by out of hours social workers, and yet no systematic research has ever been undertaken into any aspects of this social work service. The focus of this research then is local authority emergency duty team (EDT) social work. From a variety of perspectives and using a range of methods the researcher examines the past, present and potential future nature of out of hours social work. As an EDT worker and researcher simultaneously, the author highlights the types and variability of his own assessments and those made by colleagues locally and nationally. Having established that EDT social work deals with significant occurrences after hours, this research questions whether conventional expectations of social work assessment are applicable 10 circumstances that are radically different from day-time work. Employing statistical surveys, questionnaires, interviews and autobiographical commentary, this research collates and analyses EDT social work practice issues seeking to establish an assessment framework that can be applied to the generic, urgent and statutory demands that EDT and daytime social workers frequently face. The framework combines the qualitative and the quantitative, academic with practitioner, the personal and the political and reflects the nature of EDT social work. Addressing a research void, this study clarifies and attempts to improve out of hours social work practice, including that of the researcher. This research presents a systematic analysis of the risk assessments, the decision-making processes and the crisis work undertaken by the most experienced group of social workers in Britain. The findings of this research should be of interest to those involved in out of hours social work, but may also have relevance to (social) workers undertaking (risk) assessments of service users.

Large-scale humanitarian crises in foreign countries raise the question of whether or not other countries have a duty to alleviate that suffering. In extreme cases, humanitarian intervention, that is: military intervention for the purpose of alleviating human suffering, is sometimes advocated as the morally required course of action. This thesis suggests that while the international community has a general moral responsibility to prevent and ameliorate humanitarian crises there is no simple duty of military humanitarian intervention. Hitherto, the question has typically been treated as a matter of either moral or legal principle. This thesis argues that empirical factors, which affect the international community's ability to carry out interventions effectively, have not been given their due weight in the debate. On the basis of evaluations of international responses to crises in Somalia and Rwanda, 1992 - 1994, it is suggested that a range of factors undermine the efficacy of humanitarian interventions. These factors include the impact of state interests, the effects of domestic politics in intervening states and, contrary to expectations, the role of humanitarian considerations in decision making on intervention. By showing the limitations of a simplistic view of a duty of humanitarian intervention the thesis seeks to contribute to reconciling idealism with realism in international crisis-responses. Based on sound moral and political judgment military interventions in humanitarian crises would hopefully be less ambitious and ultimately more effective.

Emergency management agencies and government authorities increasingly use social media to warn the public of emergencies. The aim of this thesis is to provide clarification where there is uncertainty about liability, and to address concerns as to how the law will be applied. It does this by examining the responsibility of those entities to warn. It considers whether they are likely to be held legally accountable for their acts or omissions when using social media. The thesis also seeks to provide good practice principles for the use of emerging communication technologies.

The oil industry is the richest and most influential industry in the world. The industry has moved the fates of nations. Oil is required to fight wars and exert power, and the restriction of this energy source is paramount to the restriction of movement, control, and in the end, power. Management of this resource and the tax revenue it generates are of serious strategic importance, both domestically and internationally. Understanding the results of taxation for this important commodity is important to international relations as well. The tax system affects tax revenue, government actions, oil company actions, and the oil supply itself. Each of these is important to international relations.

Cette thèse de doctorat s’inscrit dans mes intérêts de recherche générale à l’intersection de l’économie du développement, de l’économie politique et de l’histoire économique. Plus précisément, mon programme de recherche se concentre autour de deux axes principaux. D’une part, en numérisant des ensembles de données historiques à grande échelle, j’explore les vicissitudes à long terme des inégalités sous des formes multidimensionnelles en Afrique et en Asie de l’Est, en particulier leurs déterminants historiques (via l’avènement et la fin du colonialisme, la montée et la chute de différents régimes politiques, etc.) et leurs interactions à long terme avec le développement contemporain et les résultats de la croissance. D’autre part, j’adopte une perspective plus micro en concevant des expériences d’enquête transnationales pour comprendre comment les gens perçoivent subjectivement les inégalités et forment leurs préférences en matière de redistribution, en particulier dans les pays en développement où la forte présence d’institutions traditionnelles et des trajectoires de croissance uniques peuvent avoir façonné la vision des citoyens sur l’inégalité et le développement de manière différente, les idées tirées pouvant également éclairer les politiques pour un développement plus durable à long terme. Dans cette thèse de doctorat, je tente de répondre à ces questions en me concentrant sur les dimensions de recherche susmentionnées en quatre chapitres traversant les territoires de l’Afrique de l’Ouest et de l’Asie de l’Est. Dans le premier chapitre, j’examine les déterminants historiques de la conception des institutions coloniales françaises en Afrique de l’Ouest, En particulier, je me concentre sur l’un des épisodes de travail forcé les plus draconiens intégrés dans le système de conscription de l’époque, spécifiquement au Mali colonial où les réservistes militaires étaient exploités pour les travaux publics et la construction de chemins de fer. J’estime les répercussions à long terme du travail forcé colonial en collectant manuellement un énorme ensemble de données historiques sur les soldats coloniaux au Mali avec mes collègues qui recherchent sur le développement au Mali contemporain. Dans mes deuxième et troisième chapitres, je m’éloigne du colonialisme en Afrique de l’Ouest et me plonge dans l’étude des perceptions des inégalités et de la formation des préférences redistributives dans la Chine contemporaine. À travers deux expériences d’enquête consécutives avec mes co-auteurs,nous constatons que les attitudes des citoyens chinois envers les inégalités et les préférences pour la redistribution diffèrent significativement des idéaux occidentaux, et nous tentons de rationaliser cet ensemble unique de préférences avec l’expérience économique transitoire de la Chine et la faible agence politique de la population. Dans mon dernier chapitre, je retourne dans l’histoire de la Chine au 20e siècle et, avec mes coauteurs, nous estimons l’évolution à long terme de l’accumulation de la richesse nationale chinoise depuis la fondation de la République de Chine (1911) jusqu’en 2020. Nous trouvons des modèlestrès frappants en ce qui concerne la dynamique de l’accumulation de la richesse d’un pays ayant subi des trajectoires politiques et de développement drastiques au cours du siècle dernier, ce qui ouvre la voie à plus de dialogues pour comprendre la relation complexe entre inégalité et croissance en Chine et dans le monde en développement en général à l’avenir
This Ph.D. dissertation speaks to my general research interests at the intersections of development economics, political economy and economic history. Specifically, my research agenda centers around two main axes. On the one hand, by digitizing large-scale historical datasets, I explore the long-term vicissitudes of inequalities in multi-dimensional forms in both Africa and East Asia, in particular their historical determinants (via the advent and end of colonialism, the rise and fall of different political regimes, etc) and their long-run interactions with contemporary development and growth outcomes. On the other hand, I zoom in from a more micro perspective, by designing cross-country survey experiments, in order to understand how people subjectively perceive inequalities and form preferences for redistribution, especially in developing countries where the strong presence of traditional institutions and unique growth trajectories could have shaped citizens to view inequality and development in alternative manners and the insights from which could also inform policy-making for more sustainable development in the longer run. In this Ph.D. thesis, I attempt to answer these questions centering around the aforementioned research dimensions in four chapters, traversing the territories of West Africa and East Asia. In the first chapter, I examine the historical determinants over the design of French colonial institutions in West Africa. In particular, I zoom in on one of the most draconian forced labor episodes embedded in the conscription system at the time, specifically in colonial Mali where military reservists were exploited for public works and railway construction, and estimate the long-term developmental repercussions of colonial forced labor by hand-collecting an enormous historical dataset on colonial soldiers in Mali together with my colleagues researching on development in contemporary Mali. In my second and third chapters, I depart away from colonialism in West Africa, and dive into investigating inequality perceptions and the formation of redistributive preferences in contemporary China. Via two consecutive survey experiments with my co-authors, we find that Chinese citizens’ attitudes towards inequalities and preferences for redistribution differ significantly from the western ideals,and we attempt to rationalize this unique set of preferences with China’s transitional economic experience and low political agency of the population. In my final chapter, I go back into the history of China in the 20th century, and together with my co-authors, we estimate the long-run evolution of Chinese national wealth accumulation from the founding of the Republic of China (1911) till 2020. We find very striking patterns with regards to the dynamics of wealth accumulation of a country having undergone drastic political and development trajectories over the past century, which paves the way for more dialogues on understanding the intricate relationship between inequality and growth in China and the developing world at large in the future

The Crown has fiduciary obligations to First Nations and must act in consequence. One of this consequence is that the Crown has a duty to consult with aboriginal peoples when it infringes aboriginal or treaty right. The thesis deals with the principles related to the Crown's duty to consult with First Nations. I elaborate on principles established by the courts and also on questions that remain unanswered to date. Those questions include when, how and with whom the consultation should be done. I also examine the situation in New Zealand, where the consultation process is a little more advanced than here in Canada and compare the principles elaborated by New Zealand courts with those existing in Canada. From the New Zealand experience, I suggest consultation guidelines to be used in Canada by the Crown and its representatives.

碩士
朝陽科技大學
企業管理系碩士班
101
The shortage of manpower at fire department becomes a serious problem for the local government. A proper duty planning can make the goal of fire distinguish be achieved by limited human resources, and seems more important than before. This study tried to find out the factors of satisfaction on the duty planning for all firemen of Taichung city by using the questionnaire method, such as frequency distribution, arithmetic mean, percentile rank, chi-square test, one-way ANOVA statistical analysis. Finally, the distinction of the job assignments and regular communication are more important than the person who is in charge to plan the duty. And the small teams have the highest satisfaction than the big teams. The amount of duties is the key of impact factors. The duty of emergency protection is harder than the duty of fire safety inspection among the duties of non-disaster-relief. The hose operation is the most arduous task among the duties of disaster-relief. Driver is the most difficult to arrange and easily make troubles among the duties of disaster-relief. The satisfaction of the firemen whose experience is less than one year is the highest. Arbitrarily, the firemen whose experience is more than one year but less than three years have the lowest satisfaction. It is declined sharply, indicates a large gap between reality and the ideal.

Проданчук О. С. Особливості нормотворчої діяльності у сфері зовнішньоекономічної діяльності : кваліфікаційна робота магістра спеціальності 081 "Право" / наук. керівник Д. О. Єрмоленко. Зaпорiжжя : ЗНУ, 2020. 116 c.
UA : Робота викладена 116 сторінках друкованого тексту. Перелік посилань включає 70 джерел. Правове регулювння зовнішньоекономічної діяльності державою, насамперед полягає в підтримці державою збалансованості економіки та рівноваги внутрішнього ринку України, стимулювання прогресивних структурних змін в економіці та створення найсприятливіших умов для залучення економіки нашої держави до системи світового поділу праці та наближення її до ринкових структур розвинених країн світу, тому саме це зумовлює актуальність обраної теми та необхідність проведення глибокого аналізу нормативно-правової діяльності органів державної влади на різних рівнях в сфері ЗЕД. Метою кваліфікаційної роботи є розгляд законодавчих положень і доктринальних джерел з метою обґрунтування засад правового регулювання зовнішньоекономічної діяльності в Україні, визначення окремих завдань і особливостей реалізації державою правового регулювання зовнішньоекономічної діяльності в Україні та формулювання окремих пропозицій щодо вдосконалення, модернізації норм чинного законодавства в частині здійснення більш якісного правового регулювання зовнішньоекономічної діяльності в Україні Об'єктом дослідження даної кваліфікаційної роботи є норми права в сфері зовнішньоекономічній діяльності. Предметом дослідження є методи і моделі державного регулювання ЗЕД.
EN : The work is outlined in 116 pages of printed text. The list of links includes 70 sources. Legal regulation of foreign economic activity by the state, first of all, is to support the state of economic balance and equilibrium of the internal market of Ukraine, to stimulate progressive structural changes in the economy and to create the most favorable conditions for attracting the economy of our country to the system of world division of labor and bringing it closer to market structures. this is what determines the relevance of the chosen topic and the need for a thorough analysis of the regulatory and legal activities of state bodies. authorities at various levels in the field of foreign trade. The purpose of the qualification work is to review the legislative provisions and doctrinal sources in order to substantiate the principles of legal regulation of foreign economic activity in Ukraine, to determine the specific tasks and features of the state implementation of legal regulation of foreign economic activity in Ukraine and to formulate specific proposals for improvement, modernization of the norms of the current legislation legal regulation of foreign economic activity in Ukraine The object of study of this qualification work is the rules of law in the sphere of foreign economic activity. The subject of the study are methods and models of state regulation of FEA.

碩士
國立中山大學
政治學研究所
95
Contents of Thesis and Abstract: In a highly democratic nation, a majority of the national affairs are determined by the opinions of civilians. All public departments work their utmost to pursue “public satisfaction.” As one of the control bodies of the society, the police organization not only performs intervening and banning acts, but also has to pay attention to the quality of its service to the public. Between the roles the police should play, there exists an extremely great conflict. Undoubtedly, there creates additional burden to the work of the police, which was originally under high working pressure and high degree of tiredness. According to Clause 2 of the Police Act of Taiwan, “The duties of the police are to maintain public order, protect social safety, prevent all the dangers and harms, and facilitate the welfare of people according to laws.” However, in practice, the complicatedness of duties of the police in Taiwan and the multiplicity of businesses the police involves can be considered of the highest level in the world. The district on-duty police officers, who always stand on the frontline and have frequent contacts with citizens, are just the most basic-level police officers implementing different kinds of administrative work of the police. In view of this, this paper finds out the factors affecting the working pressure and job satisfaction of district on-duty police officers as well as their extents, hoping to understand whether they have strong preference for the change of duties in turn. It is hoped that the study can help improve the quality of both the district on-duty police officers and the administrative work of the police. The study took 1,202 district on-duty police officers subordinating to the Police Bureau of Kaohsiung City Government as the research targets, and employed the way of questionnaire survey to carry out the research. There were 430 questionnaires sent out, and 405 valid questionnaires were returned. After using the statistical software, SPSS to undergo descriptive analysis, t-test, one-way ANOVA, related and regressive statistical analysis, the study acquires the following results: 1. Part of the facets of working pressure, job satisfaction and the preference for the change of duties in turn has significant difference if there is a difference in the statistical variables of part of the attributes of individuals. 2. Working pressure has significant negative relativity and significant negative effects on job satisfaction. 3. Job satisfaction has significant negative relativity to the preference for the change of duties in turn. The facet of “internal satisfaction” has significant negative effects on the facet of “preference for the change of duties in turn,” but has significant positive effects on the facet of “perception for the change of duties in turn.” The facet of “external satisfaction” has significant positive effects on the facet of “perception for the change of duties in turn.” 4. Working pressure has significant positive relativity to the preference for the change of duties in turn. The “personal factor of pressure” has significant positive effects on the preference for the change of duties in turn. “External environmental pressure” has significant positive effects on the facet of “preference for the change of duties in turn.” 5. When both working pressure and job satisfaction at the same time perform regressive statistics on the preference for the change of duties in turn, the results show that job satisfaction really has mediating effect. Keywords: district on-duty police officers, working pressure, job satisfaction, preference for the change of duties in turn

AbstractWhen it came to power, the Bolshevik government based the legitimacy of its action on the scientific nature of its decisions, figures being a core element. Political decisions were to be based on science, for the well-being of everyone and the fulfilment of the communist plan to create a new society and human being. Statistics, an information and decision-support tool, became now also an instrument of power to prove the soundness of state action. This raised severe tensions and repression, between statisticians following recommendations of international statistics congresses, and the new government. For the duty of statisticians was to formulate a new theory of statistics and new methods and tools. Characterizing some of these, the chapter carves out the specific nature of the Soviet Union.

AbstractThis chapter will consider the noteworthy changes in Japan’s peacekeeping policy under the second Abe administration (2012–2020), with special emphasis on the period between 2013 and 2017. Since its outset in the early 1990s, Japan’s peacekeeping policy had been gradually shaped by the trends of “integration” and the “robustness” in United Nations Peacekeeping Operations (UNPKOs), but various problems remained unsolved, especially in terms of “robustness.” With the return of Prime Minister Abe at the end of 2012, reforms to follow the trend of “robustness” were carried out as part of his all-inclusive renovation of Japan’s security policy, namely the Peace and Security Legislation, to resolve numerous long-standing problems in the field. With this in mind, this chapter starts by considering new developments in Japan’s security policy as a whole before examining how these sweeping reforms transformed the quality of Japan’s peacekeeping, paying special attention to the newly added roles, such as the “coming-to-aid” duty. This chapter will also trace moves toward “integration,” especially regarding the “All Japan” approach.

This chapter talks about how the world and, in particular, the regional balance of power made comprehensive intelligence reform imaginable for the first time. The immediate precipitant for this reimagining arrived after a conspicuous U.S. intelligence failure one sunny late summer morning in September 2001. This chapter has examined how the civilian and military institutions of the Japanese intelligence community were actively reimagined in the first decade of 21st century. The ruling party and the government all were motivated by shifts in the strategic environment to undertake extended deliberations regarding reform of the intelligence community. This chapter outlines how involved the ruling party and government are on rearranging its roles and missions, introducing and optimizing new technological capacity, and coming up with ways international collaboration might be enhanced.

There is a need to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. While significant progress has been made in electrifying transport, heavy duty transportation and aviation are not likely to be capable of electrification in the near term, spurring significant research into biofuels. When coupled with carbon capture and storage, biofuels can achieve net-negative greenhouse gas emissions via many different conversion technologies such as fermentation, pyrolysis, or gasification to produce ethanol, gasoline, diesel, or jet fuel. However, each pathway has a different efficiency, capital and operating costs, and potential for carbon capture, making the optimal pathway dependent on policy and spatial factors. We use the Integrated Markal-EFOM System model applied to the USA, adding a rich suite of biofuel and carbon capture technologies, region-specific CO2 transportation and injection costs, and government incentives from the Inflation Reduction Act. We find that under current government incentives, biofuels and carbon capture from biorefineries are primarily focused in the Midwest and South of the USA, but play a relatively small role in the overall USA transportation sector even in 2055. However, increased government incentives, biomass availability, or oil price could lead to increased biofuel production and reduced transportation emissions.

<div class="section abstract"><div class="htmlview paragraph">China's plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) market with stocks at 7.8 million is the world's largest in 2021, and it accounts for half of the global PEV growth in 2021. The PEV market in China has dramatically evolved since the pandemic in 2020: over 20% of all new PEV sales are from China by mid-2022. Recent features of PEV market dynamics, consumer acceptance, policies, and infrastructure have important implications for both the global energy market and manufacturing stakeholders. From the perspective of demand pull-supply push, this study analyzes China's PEV industry with a market dynamics framework by reviewing sales, product and brand, infrastructure, and government policies from the last few years and outlooking the development of the new government’s 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025). From the demand side, small-sized sedans and compact sport utility vehicles with increased electric ranges are both popular for PEVs, and the electric range of over 60% of new battery electric vehicles in 2021 has been longer than 400 km. From the supply side, although foreign brands like Tesla are still competitive, the products by Chinese domestic automakers like BYD are becoming more attractive and cannibalizing the high-end market. However, the production capacity and cost of PEVs may be limited by the upstream of the supply chain – the battery manufacturing and supply chain inflation. In addition, it is also uncertain how much sales demand impacts will be caused by the potential global economic recession. The government firmly supports electrification and decarbonization of the vehicle industry by emphasizing the importance of the vehicle industry for promoting the greenhouse gas net zero by 2060. The dual-credit policy is regarded as the most critical regulation in a bid to restrain fuel consumption and promote PEV share. Still, the market is facing some technological obstacles, such as battery safety and driving range anxiety, before real prosperity. In addition, the Chinese electric vehicle market is seeing a trend toward the development of new technologies such as vehicle-to-X, autonomous driving, and connected vehicles.</div></div>

The Mental Health Act 1983 has been criticised as being overly restrictive, with inadequate scope for patient choice and autonomy. The Government’s Draft Mental Health Bill proposes reforms to improve patient choice. A joint parliamentary committee report on the draft Bill recommended further changes to enhance choice, including a statutory duty to offer patients advance choice documents. Reports to date suggest that advance care planning could offer some benefits, but uptake can be low. Proposals to replace the Nearest Relative who has certain powers under the Act, with a Nominated Person of the patient’s choosing, have been widely welcomed. There are questions about operationalisation and safeguarding. Alongside the reforms, the Government is piloting ‘culturally appropriate advocacy’, which preliminary findings suggest could help advocates better support patients from ethnic minority backgrounds. The draft Bill removes learning disabilities and autism as grounds for detention under Section 3 of the Act. Stakeholders have raised concerns about unintended diversion to more restrictive pathways, such as the criminal justice system. A range of stakeholders share the view that careful implementation is needed to maximise the benefits of proposed reforms. The Government has not announced when the Bill will be introduced.

Many people argue that mobile money has the potential to increase financial inclusion and improve the livelihoods of poor people in Africa. However, while many African governments impose specific taxes on mobile money transactions, very little is known about their effect on the use of mobile money services. This study assesses the short- and long-term impact of the tax on money transfer fees that the Kenyan government introduced in 2013. The tax, more specifically an excise duty, was imposed on fees incurred in all money transactions, including mobile money. It was introduced at 10 per cent and increased to 12 per cent in 2018. Our analysis has two parts. We use country-level data to see if the tax affected the use of mobile money – transaction values and volume – and the number of active mobile money agents. In addition, we use four rounds of nationally representative survey data to estimate changes in the use of mobile money after introduction of the tax. We find that the excise duty did not have a significant impact on different aggregated indicators relating to the use of mobile money. However, survey data shows that the tax may have reduced the rate of increase in use of mobile money services affected by the changes in tax, such as sending and receiving money, compared to services that were not, like savings and paying bills. Importantly, while the amounts transacted may not change, users send and receive money within households less regularly. In addition, the tax seems to have a more detrimental impact on poorer households, which were less likely to be financially included before the tax was introduced. Larger households also show more negative effects after the tax. URI

The UK Government’s climate change strategy has set ambitious targets to decarbonise transport. To support this the government has funded several programmes to develop new vehicle technologies and fuel/energy supply chains. To understand the performance of these new technologies there is a need for standardised tools that capture vehicle data and provide assessments of energy use that can be applied to compare energy consumption objectively. Such tools should also be capable of monitoring fleets of vehicles, to support evidence-based decision-making and strategic planning regarding the deployment of fleets employing new fuel types. This fleet performance monitoring tool has been the focus of the Motorcade project. Motorcade has drawn on data from two hydrogen vehicle demonstration projects providing telematics data on energy consumption to develop an Azure-based VAME (Vehicle Analytics for Monitoring and Evaluation) toolkit which collates, cleans, processes and interrogates telemetry data to obtain standardised metrics for reporting performance, reported in a Power BI dashboard. The toolkit is able to compare fuel, energy (excluding energy demand due to weather), duty cycle, emissions and cost for vehicles that deploy using electric and hydrogen technologies.

The purpose of this rapid review is to lay out some of the general approaches used by both business and government to tackle ‘modern slavery’ in international business supply chains, and locate evidence of their effectiveness International institutions have been encouraging large international businesses to tackle modern slavery by offering guidelines on how to investigate the issue in their supply chains (‘due diligence’), but their implementation, and ‘auditing’ is highly variable. National governments are increasingly mandating businesses through legislation to report on what they do. More recently, governments have begun imposing a legal duty of care on parent companies which means they can be held responsible for what their subsidiaries do. Key findings are: There is no consistency in how international companies currently implement the due diligence guidelines; The design of national disclosure legislation is generally judged to be flawed. There is medium compliance in terms of quantity of company reports and low compliance in terms of quality; The design of national disclosure legislation is generally judged to be flawed. There is medium compliance in terms of quantity of company reports and low compliance in terms of quality. Overall, the evidence on forced labour and modern slavery is recognised as being “dangerously thin and riddled with bias” (LeBaron, 2018, p.1). It is difficult to research directly because of its illegality, the involvement of powerful interests, and the potential to further endanger highly vulnerable workers. Nevertheless, there is a very large number of articles and reports written on the issue, particularly from the last five years. The main sources used in this review came from both grey literature and academic literature.

Household food insecurity is a widely used concept in high-income countries to describe “uncertainty about future food availability and access, insufficiency in the amount and kind of food required for a healthy lifestyle, or the need to use socially unacceptable ways to acquire food.” (Anderson, 1990). In the UK, research focused on food insecurity was relatively rare before the rapid spread of food banks and growing usage from 2010 but since then, has burgeoned (Loopstra and Lambie-Mumford, 2023). There was very little peer-reviewed literature on the topic in the UK when DEFRA commissioned a Rapid Evidence Assessment of evidence on food aid in the UK (Lambie-Mumford et al 2014), but there is now an established field of research on household food insecurity and responses to it that spans disciplines including public health and nutrition, social policy, politics, geography, food policy and systems. Government monitoring of food insecurity has also evolved over this time, with the FSA first including a food insecurity measure into the Food and You survey in 2016, and the DWP including the same in the FRS from 2019/20. The Agriculture Act 2020 requires the UK government to report on food security to Parliament at least once every three years, and the UK Food Security Report that is produced to fulfil this duty now includes reporting on data from these government surveys (Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, 2021). This rapidly developing field has resulted in a varied landscape of research and evidence on food insecurity. The FSA has an interest in advancing its research on household food insecurity in the UK as part of its strategy. The FSA works to protect consumers’ wider interests in relation to food, and the FSA strategy 2022-2027 recognises that people are worried about food affordability and insecurity and therefore they will continue to consider the impact of these issues across all work. To inform the FSA’s approach to future collaborations and research priorities on food insecurity in the UK, it was deemed a priority to first gain greater clarity on the scope of the research landscape already in existence in the UK. Thus, this research was commissioned to give the FSA an overview of household food insecurity data and the landscape of the type of research questions related to food insecurity that have been explored in the UK context. More specifically, the aims of the project were: to scope the landscape of research and data on household food insecurity in the UK, covering that produced by academia, civil society, and government departments and including publicly available datasets; and to identify the key gaps in the research landscape and inform priorities for the FSA’s work on household food insecurity going forward. Importantly, the task was not to describe the findings of this large body of research, but rather to identify the landscape of research questions asked in relation to food insecurity and the approaches taken to answer these. The areas focused on were research on definition, concept and measurement of food insecurity, drivers of individual/household-level access to food, experiences of different population sub-groups, outcomes related to food insecurity including those related to food safety, and responses to food insecurity at the national/local level (including those by third sector organisations and local and national governments).

This study was conducted in selected provinces of Bicol Region from April 2015 to May 2015 to describe the knowledge, attitudes and practices (KAP) of dog owners regarding rabies and dog bites. A purposive sampling was used in selecting the respondents of the study. Frequencies were tabulated for all variables. Of the 1,200 respondents, 2,193 dogs were recorded making a 2:1 ratio of dogs to householders in this particular study. Among these dogs 58% were vaccinated against rabies. The majority of the ones taking care of the dogs were female (57.3%) but the primary owner (62.9%) was the head of the family. Only 34.7% of the respondents knew that it is their duty to get their pets vaccinated against rabies. Around one-fourth (20.7%) admitted that someone in their household had been bitten by a dog but most respondents (62.5%) did nothing to the dog. The majority (57.7%) of the bite victims were youths (1-14 years old) and almost all (82.7%) of the wound bites were washed with soap and water. Television (44.9%) was the primary source of knowledge about rabies. The majority of participants (67.3%) said that humans are the main end-hosts that can be infected with rabies. Salivation or drooling (42.7%) and craziness (34.2%) were the main signs cited as behaviour of rabid dogs while craziness (40.2%) and hydrophobia or fear of water (25.4%) were cited for rabid humans. Most (33.9%) do not know the source of rabies but the majority (61.8%) believe that vaccination is the main preventive measure against rabies. The majority of participants (63%) reported that the local ordinances regarding rabies in their locality is about the Local Anti-Rabies Act and almost all (93.2%) admitted that vaccination is the most common anti-rabies program of the government.

The COVID-19 pandemic is exacerbating existing human rights violations, and enabling others. However, it is also stimulating opportunities to further the human rights agenda. A robust framing is needed to hold duty bearers to account, and to help governments and communities to build back better. This paper provides an overview of the issues through the lens of 5 key human rights principles. It uses a human rights framing to assist governments, business and civil society to understand their obligations and ways they can help manage the impacts of the pandemic. This is an advance version of the paper for discussion. The paper will be revised to take account of comments and a final version will be published in the coming months.

The monitoring and evaluation (M&E) Guidelines and Framework presented in this document (and in the accompanying M&E Indicator Framework) aim to encourage stakeholders in the rural sanitation and hygiene sector to take a more comprehensive, comparable and people focused approach to monitoring and evaluation. Many M&E frameworks currently reflect the interests and ambitions of particular implementing agencies – that is, community-led total sanitation (CLTS) interventions focused on open-defecation free (ODF) outcomes in triggered communities; market-based sanitation interventions focused on the number of products sold and whether sanitation businesses were profitable; and sanitation finance interventions reporting the number of facilities built using financial support. Few M&E frameworks have been designed to examine the overall sanitation and hygiene situation – to assess how interventions have affected sanitation and hygiene outcomes across an entire area (rather than just in specific target communities); to look at who (from the overall population) benefitted from the intervention, and who did not; to report on the level and quality of service used; or examine whether public health has improved. Since 2015, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have extended and deepened the international monitoring requirements for sanitation and hygiene. The 2030 SDG sanitation target 6.2 includes requirements to: • Achieve access to adequate sanitation and hygiene for all • Achieve access to equitable sanitation and hygiene for all • End open defecation • Pay special attention to the needs of women and girls • Pay special attention to those in vulnerable situations The 2030 SDG sanitation target calls for universal use of basic sanitation services, and for the elimination of open defecation, both of which require M&E systems that cover entire administration areas (i.e. every person and community within a district) and which are able to identify people and groups that lack services, or continue unsafe practices. Fortunately, the SDG requirements are well aligned with the sector trend towards system strengthening, in recognition that governments are responsible both for the provision of sustainable services and for monitoring the achievement of sustained outcomes. This document provides guidelines on the monitoring and evaluation of rural sanitation and hygiene, and presents an M&E framework that outlines core elements and features for reporting on progress towards the 2030 SDG sanitation target (and related national goals and targets for rural sanitation and hygiene), while also encouraging learning and accountability. Given wide variations in the ambition, capacity and resources available for monitoring and evaluation, it is apparent that not all of the M&E processes and indicators described will be appropriate for all stakeholders. The intention is to provide guidelines and details on useful and progressive approaches to monitoring rural sanitation and hygiene, from which a range of rural sanitation and hygiene duty bearers and practitioners – including governments, implementation agencies, development partners and service providers – can select and use those most appropriate to their needs. Eventually, it is hoped that all of the more progressive M&E elements and features will become standard, and be incorporated in all sector monitoring systems.

The monitoring and evaluation (M&E) Guidelines and Framework presented in this document (and in the accompanying M&E Indicator Framework) aim to encourage stakeholders in the rural sanitation and hygiene sector to take a more comprehensive, comparable and people focused approach to monitoring and evaluation. Many M&E frameworks currently reflect the interests and ambitions of particular implementing agencies – that is, community-led total sanitation (CLTS) interventions focused on open-defecation free (ODF) outcomes in triggered communities; market-based sanitation interventions focused on the number of products sold and whether sanitation businesses were profitable; and sanitation finance interventions reporting the number of facilities built using financial support. Few M&E frameworks have been designed to examine the overall sanitation and hygiene situation – to assess how interventions have affected sanitation and hygiene outcomes across an entire area (rather than just in specific target communities); to look at who (from the overall population) benefitted from the intervention, and who did not; to report on the level and quality of service used; or examine whether public health has improved. Since 2015, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have extended and deepened the international monitoring requirements for sanitation and hygiene. The 2030 SDG sanitation target 6.2 includes requirements to: • Achieve access to adequate sanitation and hygiene for all • Achieve access to equitable sanitation and hygiene for all • End open defecation • Pay special attention to the needs of women and girls • Pay special attention to those in vulnerable situations The 2030 SDG sanitation target calls for universal use of basic sanitation services, and for the elimination of open defecation, both of which require M&E systems that cover entire administration areas (i.e. every person and community within a district) and which are able to identify people and groups that lack services, or continue unsafe practices. Fortunately, the SDG requirements are well aligned with the sector trend towards system strengthening, in recognition that governments are responsible both for the provision of sustainable services and for monitoring the achievement of sustained outcomes. This document provides guidelines on the monitoring and evaluation of rural sanitation and hygiene, and presents an M&E framework that outlines core elements and features for reporting on progress towards the 2030 SDG sanitation target (and related national goals and targets for rural sanitation and hygiene), while also encouraging learning and accountability. Given wide variations in the ambition, capacity and resources available for monitoring and evaluation, it is apparent that not all of the M&E processes and indicators described will be appropriate for all stakeholders. The intention is to provide guidelines and details on useful and progressive approaches to monitoring rural sanitation and hygiene, from which a range of rural sanitation and hygiene duty bearers and practitioners – including governments, implementation agencies, development partners and service providers – can select and use those most appropriate to their needs. Eventually, it is hoped that all of the more progressive M&E elements and features will become standard, and be incorporated in all sector monitoring systems.

Banco de la República is celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2023. This is a very significant anniversary and one that provides an opportunity to highlight the contribution the Bank has made to the country’s development. Its track record as guarantor of monetary stability has established it as the one independent state institution that generates the greatest confidence among Colombians due to its transparency, management capabilities, and effective compliance with the central banking and cultural responsibilities entrusted to it by the Constitution and the Law. On a date as important as this, the Board of Directors of Banco de la República (BDBR) pays tribute to the generations of governors and officers whose commitment and dedication have contributed to the growth of this institution.1 Banco de la República’s mandate was confirmed in the National Constitutional Assembly of 1991 where the citizens had the opportunity to elect the seventy people who would have the task of drafting a new constitution. The leaders of the three political movements with the most votes were elected as chairs to the Assembly, and this tripartite presidency reflected the plurality and the need for consensus among the different political groups to move the reform forward. Among the issues considered, the National Constitutional Assembly gave special importance to monetary stability. That is why they decided to include central banking and to provide Banco de la República with the necessary autonomy to use the instruments for which they are responsible without interference from other authorities. The constituent members understood that ensuring price stability is a state duty and that the entity responsible for this task must be enshrined in the Constitution and have the technical capability and institutional autonomy necessary to adopt the decisions they deem appropriate to achieve this fundamental objective in coordination with the general economic policy. In particular, Article 373 established that “the State, through Banco de la República, shall ensure the maintenance of the purchasing power of the currency,” a provision that coincided with the central banking system adopted by countries that have been successful in controlling inflation. In 1999, in Ruling 481, the Constitutional Court stated that “the duty to maintain the purchasing power of the currency applies to not only the monetary, credit, and exchange authority, i.e., the Board of Banco de la República, but also those who have responsibilities in the formulation and implementation of the general economic policy of the country” and that “the basic constitutional purpose of Banco de la República is the protection of a sound currency. However, this authority must take the other economic objectives of state intervention such as full employment into consideration in their decisions since these functions must be coordinated with the general economic policy.” The reforms to Banco de la República agreed upon in the Constitutional Assembly of 1991 and in Act 31/1992 can be summarized in the following aspects: i) the Bank was assigned a specific mandate: to maintain the purchasing power of the currency in coordination with the general economic policy; ii) the BDBR was designatedas the monetary, foreign exchange, and credit authority; iii) the Bank and its Board of Directors were granted a significant degree of independence from the government; iv) the Bank was prohibited from granting credit to the private sector except in the case of the financial sector; v) established that in order to grant credit to the government, the unanimous vote of its Board of Directors was required except in the case of open market transactions; vi) determined that the legislature may, in no case, order credit quotas in favor of the State or individuals; vii) Congress was appointed, on behalf of society, as the main addressee of the Bank’s reporting exercise; and viii) the responsibility for inspection, surveillance, and control over Banco de la República was delegated to the President of the Republic. The members of the National Constitutional Assembly clearly understood that the benefits of low and stable inflation extend to the whole of society and contribute mto the smooth functioning of the economic system. Among the most important of these is that low inflation promotes the efficient use of productive resources by allowing relative prices to better guide the allocation of resources since this promotes economic growth and increases the welfare of the population. Likewise, low inflation reduces uncertainty about the expected return on investment and future asset prices. This increases the confidence of economic agents, facilitates long-term financing, and stimulates investment. Since the low-income population is unable to protect itself from inflation by diversifying its assets, and a high proportion of its income is concentrated in the purchase of food and other basic goods that are generally the most affected by inflationary shocks, low inflation avoids arbitrary redistribution of income and wealth.2 Moreover, low inflation facilitates wage negotiations, creates a good labor climate, and reduces the volatility of employment levels. Finally, low inflation helps to make the tax system more transparent and equitable by avoiding the distortions that inflation introduces into the value of assets and income that make up the tax base. From the monetary authority’s point of view, one of the most relevant benefits of low inflation is the credibility that economic agents acquire in inflation targeting, which turns it into an effective nominal anchor on price levels. Upon receiving its mandate, and using its autonomy, Banco de la República began to announce specific annual inflation targets as of 1992. Although the proposed inflation targets were not met precisely during this first stage, a downward trend in inflation was achieved that took it from 32.4% in 1990 to 16.7% in 1998. At that time, the exchange rate was kept within a band. This limited the effectiveness of monetary policy, which simultaneously sought to meet an inflation target and an exchange rate target. The Asian crisis spread to emerging economies and significantly affected the Colombian economy. The exchange rate came under strong pressure to depreciate as access to foreign financing was cut off under conditions of a high foreign imbalance. This, together with the lack of exchange rate flexibility, prevented a countercyclical monetary policy and led to a 4.2% contraction in GDP that year. In this context of economic slowdown, annual inflation fell to 9.2% at the end of 1999, thus falling below the 15% target set for that year. This episode fully revealed how costly it could be, in terms of economic activity, to have inflation and exchange rate targets simultaneously. Towards the end of 1999, Banco de la República announced the adoption of a new monetary policy regime called the Inflation Targeting Plan. This regime, known internationally as ‘Inflation Targeting,’ has been gaining increasing acceptance in developed countries, having been adopted in 1991 by New Zealand, Canada, and England, among others, and has achieved significant advances in the management of inflation without incurring costs in terms of economic activity. In Latin America, Brazil and Chile also adopted it in 1999. In the case of Colombia, the last remaining requirement to be fulfilled in order to adopt said policy was exchange rate flexibility. This was realized around September 1999, when the BDBR decided to abandon the exchange-rate bands to allow the exchange rate to be freely determined in the market.Consistent with the constitutional mandate, the fundamental objective of this new policy approach was “the achievement of an inflation target that contributes to maintaining output growth around its potential.”3 This potential capacity was understood as the GDP growth that the economy can obtain if it fully utilizes its productive resources. To meet this objective, monetary policy must of necessity play a countercyclical role in the economy. This is because when economic activity is below its potential and there are idle resources, the monetary authority can reduce the interest rate in the absence of inflationary pressure to stimulate the economy and, when output exceeds its potential capacity, raise it. This policy principle, which is immersed in the models for guiding the monetary policy stance, makes the following two objectives fully compatible in the medium term: meeting the inflation target and achieving a level of economic activity that is consistent with its productive capacity. To achieve this purpose, the inflation targeting system uses the money market interest rate (at which the central bank supplies primary liquidity to commercial banks) as the primary policy instrument. This replaced the quantity of money as an intermediate monetary policy target that Banco de la República, like several other central banks, had used for a long time. In the case of Colombia, the objective of the new monetary policy approach implied, in practical terms, that the recovery of the economy after the 1999 contraction should be achieved while complying with the decreasing inflation targets established by the BDBR. The accomplishment of this purpose was remarkable. In the first half of the first decade of the 2000s, economic activity recovered significantly and reached a growth rate of 6.8% in 2006. Meanwhile, inflation gradually declined in line with inflation targets. That was how the inflation rate went from 9.2% in 1999 to 4.5% in 2006, thus meeting the inflation target established for that year while GDP reached its potential level. After this balance was achieved in 2006, inflation rebounded to 5.7% in 2007, above the 4.0% target for that year due to the fact that the 7.5% GDP growth exceeded the potential capacity of the economy.4 After proving the effectiveness of the inflation targeting system in its first years of operation, this policy regime continued to consolidate as the BDBR and the technical staff gained experience in its management and state-of-the-art economic models were incorporated to diagnose the present and future state of the economy and to assess the persistence of inflation deviations and expectations with respect to the inflation target. Beginning in 2010, the BDBR established the long-term 3.0% annual inflation target, which remains in effect today. Lower inflation has contributed to making the macroeconomic environment more stable, and this has favored sustained economic growth, financial stability, capital market development, and the functioning of payment systems. As a result, reductions in the inflationary risk premia and lower TES and credit interest rates were achieved. At the same time, the duration of public domestic debt increased significantly going from 2.27 years in December 2002 to 5.86 years in December 2022, and financial deepening, measured as the level of the portfolio as a percentage of GDP, went from around 20% in the mid-1990s to values above 45% in recent years in a healthy context for credit institutions.Having been granted autonomy by the Constitution to fulfill the mandate of preserving the purchasing power of the currency, the tangible achievements made by Banco de la República in managing inflation together with the significant benefits derived from the process of bringing inflation to its long-term target, make the BDBR’s current challenge to return inflation to the 3.0% target even more demanding and pressing. As is well known, starting in 2021, and especially in 2022, inflation in Colombia once again became a serious economic problem with high welfare costs. The inflationary phenomenon has not been exclusive to Colombia and many other developed and emerging countries have seen their inflation rates move away from the targets proposed by their central banks.5 The reasons for this phenomenon have been analyzed in recent Reports to Congress, and this new edition delves deeper into the subject with updated information. The solid institutional and technical base that supports the inflation targeting approach under which the monetary policy strategy operates gives the BDBR the necessary elements to face this difficult challenge with confidence. In this regard, the BDBR reiterated its commitment to the 3.0% inflation target in its November 25 communiqué and expects it to be reached by the end of 2024.6 Monetary policy will continue to focus on meeting this objective while ensuring the sustainability of economic activity, as mandated by the Constitution. Analyst surveys done in March showed a significant increase (from 32.3% in January to 48.5% in March) in the percentage of responses placing inflation expectations two years or more ahead in a range between 3.0% and 4.0%. This is a clear indication of the recovery of credibility in the medium-term inflation target and is consistent with the BDBR’s announcement made in November 2022. The moderation of the upward trend in inflation seen in January, and especially in February, will help to reinforce this revision of inflation expectations and will help to meet the proposed targets. After reaching 5.6% at the end of 2021, inflation maintained an upward trend throughout 2022 due to inflationary pressures from both external sources, associated with the aftermath of the pandemic and the consequences of the war in Ukraine, and domestic sources, resulting from: strengthening of local demand; price indexation processes stimulated by the increase in inflation expectations; the impact on food production caused by the mid-2021 strike; and the pass-through of depreciation to prices. The 10% increase in the minimum wage in 2021 and the 16% increase in 2022, both of which exceeded the actual inflation and the increase in productivity, accentuated the indexation processes by establishing a high nominal adjustment benchmark. Thus, total inflation went to 13.1% by the end of 2022. The annual change in food prices, which went from 17.2% to 27.8% between those two years, was the most influential factor in the surge in the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Another segment that contributed significantly to price increases was regulated products, which saw the annual change go from 7.1% in December 2021 to 11.8% by the end of 2022. The measure of core inflation excluding food and regulated items, in turn, went from 2.5% to 9.5% between the end of 2021 and the end of 2022. The substantial increase in core inflation shows that inflationary pressure has spread to most of the items in the household basket, which is characteristic of inflationary processes with generalized price indexation as is the case in Colombia. Monetary policy began to react early to this inflationary pressure. Thus, starting with its September 2021 session, the BDBR began a progressive change in the monetary policy stance moving away from the historical low of a 1.75% policy rate that had intended to stimulate the recovery of the economy. This adjustment process continued without interruption throughout 2022 and into the beginning of 2023 when the monetary policy rate reached 12.75% last January, thus accumulating an increase of 11 percentage points (pp). The public and the markets have been surprised that inflation continued to rise despite significant interest rate increases. However, as the BDBR has explained in its various communiqués, monetary policy works with a lag. Just as in 2022 economic activity recovered to a level above the pre-pandemic level, driven, along with other factors, by the monetary stimulus granted during the pandemic period and subsequent months, so too the effects of the current restrictive monetary policy will gradually take effect. This will allow us to expect the inflation rate to converge to 3.0% by the end of 2024 as is the BDBR’s purpose.Inflation results for January and February of this year showed declining marginal increases (13 bp and 3 bp respectively) compared to the change seen in December (59 bp). This suggests that a turning point in the inflation trend is approaching. In other Latin American countries such as Chile, Brazil, Perú, and Mexico, inflation has peaked and has begun to decline slowly, albeit with some ups and downs. It is to be expected that a similar process will take place in Colombia in the coming months. The expected decline in inflation in 2023 will be due, along with other factors, to lower cost pressure from abroad as a result of the gradual normalization of supply chains, the overcoming of supply shocks caused by the weather, and road blockades in previous years. This will be reflected in lower adjustments in food prices, as has already been seen in the first two months of the year and, of course, the lagged effect of monetary policy. The process of inflation convergence to the target will be gradual and will extend beyond 2023. This process will be facilitated if devaluation pressure is reversed. To this end, it is essential to continue consolidating fiscal sustainability and avoid messages on different public policy fronts that generate uncertainty and distrust. 1 This Report to Congress includes Box 1, which summarizes the trajectory of Banco de la República over the past 100 years. In addition, under the Bank’s auspices, several books that delve into various aspects of the history of this institution have been published in recent years. See, for example: Historia del Banco de la República 1923-2015; Tres banqueros centrales; Junta Directiva del Banco de la República: grandes episodios en 30 años de historia; Banco de la República: 90 años de la banca central en Colombia. 2 This is why lower inflation has been reflected in a reduction of income inequality as measured by the Gini coefficient that went from 58.7 in 1998 to 51.3 in the year prior to the pandemic. 3 See Gómez Javier, Uribe José Darío, Vargas Hernando (2002). “The Implementation of Inflation Targeting in Colombia”. Borradores de Economía, No. 202, March, available at: https://repositorio.banrep.gov.co/handle/20.500.12134/5220 4 See López-Enciso Enrique A.; Vargas-Herrera Hernando and Rodríguez-Niño Norberto (2016). “The inflation targeting strategy in Colombia. An historical view.” Borradores de Economía, No. 952. https://repositorio.banrep.gov.co/handle/20.500.12134/6263 5 According to the IMF, the percentage change in consumer prices between 2021 and 2022 went from 3.1% to 7.3% for advanced economies, and from 5.9% to 9.9% for emerging market and developing economies. 6 https://www.banrep.gov.co/es/noticias/junta-directiva-banco-republica-reitera-meta-inflacion-3