Bank rate

It’s the rate charged by the central bank for lending funds to commercial banks.

Balance of Trade

 It’s the difference between the monetary value of a nation’s exports and imports over a certain time period. It is usually expressed in the unit of currency of a particular country.

Black Market

The buying and selling of goods or foreign money in an illegal way.

Black economy

It’s a section of a country’s economic activity that is derived from sources that don’t follow the country’s rules and regulations regarding commerce and trade. The activities are mostly illegal in nature.

Brown economy

It’s an economy that depends on the economic growth of the petrochemicals such as coal, petroleum and natural gas, which in production, great amounts of carbon dioxide and soot are released into the atmosphere. The economic development depends on restricted resources, the environmental pollution is severe.

Blue Economy

Blue economy is a term in economics related to the exploitation, preservation and regeneration of the marine environment. Its scope of interpretation varies among organizations. According to the World Bank, the blue economy is the “sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth, improved livelihoods, and jobs while preserving the health of ocean ecosystem.

Capital

It’s typically refers to cash or liquid assets being held or obtained for expenditures.

Cost

In production, research, retail, and accounting, a cost is the value of money that has been used up to produce something or deliver a service, and hence is not available for use anymore. In business, the cost may be one of acquisition, in which case the amount of money expended to acquire it is counted as cost.

Consumer Sovereignty

Consumer sovereignty is the economic concept that the consumer has some controlling power over goods that are produced, and the idea that the consumer is the best judge of their own welfare.

Demand  

Demand is an economic principle referring to a consumer’s desire to purchase goods and services and willingness to pay a price for a specific good or service. 

Economics

It’s the study of how people allocate scarce resources for production, distribution, and consumption, both individually and collectively.

Elasticity of Demand

It’s the responsiveness of the quantity demanded of a commodity to changes in one of the variables on which demand depends. In other words, it is the percentage change in quantity demanded divided by the percentage in one of the variables on which demand depends.

Equilibrium

In economics equilibrium is a condition or state in which economic forces are balanced. In effect, economic variables remain unchanged from their equilibrium values in the absence of external influences.

Economic Benefit

Economic benefits are defined as tangible benefits that can be measured in terms of revenue generated or money saved through the implementation of policies. An economic benefit is a benefit that we can quantify in monetary terms. Profits, net cash flow, net income, or revenue, for example, are economic benefits.

Fiscal policy

Itrefers to a government’s spending and how it affects the economy, particularly if spending levels change. Fiscal policy also refers to the tax policies of a government to influence economic conditions. It drives the policy actions of the Government. Budget, tax, subsidies, expenditure etc. form part of the fiscal policy.

GDP

Gross domestic product (GDP) is the standard measure of the value added created through the production of goods and services.  

Golden Economy

The term describes an ideal state for an economic system. In this perfect state, there is full employment, economic stability, and stable growth. It is also called sunshine economy. Emphasis is laid on energy sector. Sunshine Economy depend on non-fossil energy such as wind energy, solar energy, water, biomass energy, geothermal energy, marine energy etc. as basic energy supply to encourage distribution of facilities, to improve the energy structure.

Government spending

It refers to money spent by the public sector on the acquisition of goods and provision of services such as education, healthcare, social protection; the important areas being social welfare and defence.

Grey Market

It’s an unofficial market in goods that have not been obtained from an official supplier.

Grey Economy

The informal economy is also known to be the grey economy. This is an economy that is a diversified set of economic activities, enterprises, jobs, and workers that are not regulated or protected by the state. The grey economy helps to establish self-employment in small, unregistered enterprises. It has been expanded to include wage employment in unprotected jobs.

Green Economy

It’s a three-dimensional focus in sustaining and advancing economic, environmental and social wellbeing, to increase GDP and reduce poverty. A green economy is an economy that aims at reducing environmental risks and ecological scarcities, and that aims for sustainable development without degrading the environment. It is closely related with ecological economics, but has a more politically applied focus.

Incentives

In economics, incentives are what encourage an individual to act in a certain way. In other words, how consumers and businesses respond to market signals such as prices and financial benefits.

Inflation

Inflation is the rate of increase in prices over a given period of time. Inflation is typically a broad measure, such as the overall increase in prices or the increase in the cost of living in a country.

Law of demand

It states that quantity purchased varies inversely with price. In other words, the higher the price, the lower the quantity demanded.

Market

It’s a place where the exchange of goods and services takes place as a result of buyers and sellers being in contact with one another, either directly or through mediating agents or institutions.

Money

It’s a medium of exchange; it allows people to obtain what they need to live. Bartering was one way that people exchanged goods for other goods before money was created. Money has worth because for most people it represents something valuable. The units of measurement are dollars or another currency, with no time dimension.

Market capitalization

It’s the aggregate valuation of the company based on its current share price and the total number of outstanding stocks. It is calculated by multiplying the current market price of the company’s share with the total outstanding shares of the company.

Marginal utility

It refers to the amount of satisfaction a consumer gets by consuming a good or service. Marginal utility can be used by economists to measure how much of a good or service a consumer would buy in a given period of time.

Macroeconomics

Macroeconomics is a branch of economics dealing with performance, structure, behaviour, and decision-making of an economy as a whole; for example using interest rates, taxes, and government spending to regulate an economy’s growth and stability. This includes regional, national, and global economies.

Microeconomics

It’s a branch of mainstream economics that studies the behaviour of individuals and firms in making decisions regarding the allocation of scarce resources and the interactions among these individuals and firms.

Monopoly

It’s a market situation where there is a single seller in the market. In conventional economic analysis, the monopoly case is taken as the polar opposite of perfect competition. By definition, the demand curve facing the monopolist is the industry demand curve which is downward sloping.

Micro Economics

Microeconomics is the study of decisions made by people and businesses regarding the allocation of resources, and prices.

Macro Economics

Macroeconomics focuses on the performance of economies; changes in economic output, inflation, interest and foreign exchange rates, and the balance of payments. 

Opportunity cost

What a business firm misses out on when selecting one option over another. It’s a way to quantify the benefits and risks of each option, leading to more profitable decision-making overall.

Oligopoly

An oligopoly is a market characterized by a small number of firms who realize they are interdependent in their pricing and output policies. The number of firms is small enough to give each firm some market power.

Optimization

It’s the process of making a trading system more effective by adjusting the variables used for technical analysis. A trading system can be optimized by reducing certain transaction costs or risks, or by targeting assets with greater expected returns.

Purple Economy

Purple Economy takes into account the ethnic, cultural, and sociological aspects of the place they operate in. Concepts such as racial equality, cultural transmission, and economic anthropology are the core tenets of this principle which draws from the ideas of both politics and capitalism. It is about looking beyond the economic value of cultural outputs to include the cultural dimension of any asset or service. Purple economy is part of a wider ethical approach.

Repo Rate

It’s the rate at which the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) lends money to commercial banks or financial institutions in India against government securities. Repo Rate in 2022 is 4.40%

Recession

In economics, a recession is a business cycle contraction when there is a general decline in economic activity. Recessions generally occur when there is a widespread drop in spending.

Red Economy

It’s related to the economy that is ruled by a government with style of communism.

Supply

 In economics, supply is the amount of a resource that firms, producers, labourers, providers of financial assets, or other economic agents are willing and able to provide to the marketplace or to an individual. Supply can be in produced goods, labour time, raw materials, or any other scarce or valuable object.

Scarcity

The gap between limited resources and theoretically limitless wants.

Sovereign bond

It’s a debt security issued by a national government to raise money for financing government programs, paying down old debt, paying interest on current debt, and any other government spending needs. Sovereign bonds can be denominated in a foreign currency or the government’s domestic currency.

Silver Economy

Silver economy is the system and structure of production, distribution and consumption of goods and services aimed at using the purchasing potential of older and ageing people and satisfying their needs, wants and consumption for a well living and health needs. All strategies are driven to face new challenges related to an ageing population (geriatrics), especially regarding technology services for wellbeing and health monitoring such as robotic assistance, electrical mobility, or health sports, including health tourism and green care.

Time value of money

It’s the concept that a sum of money is worth more now than the same sum will be at a future date due to its earnings potential in the short-term.

Unemployment

It’s a term referring to individuals who are employable and actively seeking a job but are unable to find a job. Included in this group are those people in the workforce who are working but do not have an appropriate job.

White economy

Focuses on Digital Economy and how it changed business and trading for start-ups and entrepreneurs via digital.

Green economy is defined as an economy which sustains development by reducing environmental risks and ecological paucities. It grows without degrading environment. The 2011 UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) says that to be Green Economy, an economy must not only be efficient, but also fair. Fairness implies recognizing global and country level fairness dimensions, particularly in assuring a just transition to an economy that is low on carbon emission, resource efficient, and socially inclusive. In green economy, overall economic growth and employment is driven by public and private investments that aim at reducing carbon emissions and pollution, enhance energy and resource efficiency, and prevent the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services. These investments need to be catalyzed and supported by targeted public expenditure, policy reforms and regulation changes. This development path should maintain, enhance and, wherever necessary, rebuild natural capital as a critical economic asset and source of public benefits. This is especially for poor people whose livelihoods and security depend strongly on nature. Germany, Brazil, Singapore, South Africa, France and Ukraine are among those countries that follow the Green Economy norms strictly.

“Rio+20” is the short name for the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development which took place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in June 2012, twenty years after the landmark 1992 Earth Summit in Rio. On the way to Rio+20, the Pacific Small Island Developing States (Pacific SIDS) started promoting “Blue Economy” which focuses on the marine environment. For the Pacific SIDS, “green economy” is a “blue economy” that prominently features oceans, which account for almost 71 percent of the earth’s surface. Some concerns of the Pacific SIDS are increasing their share of benefits from the use of their marine living resources and building the flexibility of marine ecosystems to the impact of climate change and ocean acidification.

The Pacific is a diverse region made up of countries and territories with varying land sizes, populations, natural resources, economies and cultures. The main economic sectors in the region are tourism, fisheries, forestry and agriculture. Income from ocean plays an increasingly important role in the economies of Pacific SIDS, contributing towards economic growth and sustaining livelihoods, including meeting education and basic needs.

Geographic isolation and the small land area and population sizes of SIDS result in unique challenges for sustainable development. Pacific SIDS suffers from diseconomies of scale in production and exchange of goods and services: mainly because of remoteness from export markets and high vulnerability to natural disasters and climate change. Despite these challenges, the environment, culture and uniqueness produced by isolation has created a strong tourism industry with prospects for continued growth for SIDS. Isolation has also produced flexible communities with strong traditions, cultures and coping capacity.

The sustainable development agenda is a broad one, aiming to ensure inclusive economic growth for current and future generations. Economic, social and environmental dimensions comprise the pillars of a holistic and integrated approach. The single most important area where international and regional cooperation has become most urgent is climate change. Reducing the risks associated with the impacts of climate change including extreme weather and climate variability and accelerated sea level rise is a fundamental developmental challenge faced by Pacific SIDS. This must be urgently addressed in order to contribute to improving livelihoods, economic wellbeing and health, as well as maintaining biodiversity, culture and security.

Like “green economy,” which is not limited to the green ecosystem, the “blue economy” is not limited to the marine ecosystem. It is the economy that responds to the basic needs of all with what we have. As such, it stands for a new way of designing business: using the resources available in flowing systems, where the waste of one product becomes the input to create a new cash flow. Dr. Catia Bastioli, Chief Executive Officer at Novamont S.p.A which produces bioplastics in Italy, and European Inventor of the Year 2007, sums up Blue Economy: “The blue economy fosters our transition from a product-based economy to a system-based economy.”

Gunter Pauli is a Belgian entrepreneur who started a project to find the best nature-inspired technologies that could affect the economies of the world. The result is his Report which states “Blue Economy: 100 Innovations – 10 years – 100 million jobs.” His project started the transformation of the “green economy” to “blue economy,” which is now attracting the interest of creative entrepreneurs in various countries.

Some of the basic principles of “blue economy” are: substitute something with nothing; challenge a resource regarding its necessity for production; natural systems pour nutrients, matter and energy; waste does not exist; any by-product is the source for a new product; and sustainable business evolves with reverence, not only for local resources, but also for culture and tradition.

For flourishing the Blue Economy a beginning needs to be made from educating and motivating our youth to go into the study of the marine environment. Most of them have a limited view of opportunities in marine business which is far beyond only fishing. Youngsters think that with traditional fishing most fishermen remain poor; therefore this field does not interest them. Hence most high school students prefer courses in criminology, medicine, nursing, and engineering computer technology. Today, developing marine technology is need of the hour for protecting our oceans. Many young people need to take up careers in marine sciences and technology to begin with.

Developing a blue economy in our coastal and aquatic areas, as well as in our entire country, requires public and private sector partnership. The World Wide Fund for nature (WWF) has started project ‘The coral triangle’ for the global centre for marine biodiversity. It’s a 6 million square kilometers area spanning Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Timor Leste and the Solomon Islands. Within this area of the sea, world’s 76% coral species which include 6 of the world’s 7 marine turtle species and 2,228 reef fish species live. WWF is doing its best to protect this marine wealth. It is engaging entrepreneurs and innovators to help display the blue economy approach through the “adoption of new technology and finance schemes and facilitating Public-Private Partnerships” in the Coral Triangle.

One example of a blue economy initiative focused on the blue ecosystem is aquaponics which is the combination of fish farming and vegetable farming. Gunter Pauli’s case study reports that aquaponics represents the highest growth in the aqua culture business, which is now the world’s fastest growing farming sector with an average worldwide growth rate of 6 to 8 percent and a worldwide value of $86 billion in 2009. Aquaponics produces cultured fish in a controlled environment. Hence, it does not deplete natural aquatic resources but only taps them for the initial stock. As per Pauli’s project report, the leading producers of cultured fish are produced 70 percent by China, India, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and Bangladesh. Australia leads in providing technologies for backyard aqua or hydroponics. Another blue economy initiative in Pauli’s project is the design of ecological sound fishing boat that does not use fossil fuel. Actually, every step of the whole value chain of fishing which starts from the fishing vessel to the processing and delivering of products offers opportunities for blue economy initiatives.

In his recent trip to Bangladesh on 6^th June 2015, India’s Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi expressed his happiness that India and Bagladesh are working together in the area of cosmography at academic levels. In his speech Mr. Modi spoke about Blue Economy and its relevance for developing nations such as India and Bangladesh.  He said that according to the UN, the ocean is the heart of our planet. Like our heart pumps blood to every part of our body, the ocean connects people across the Earth, no matter where we live. The ocean regulates the climate, feeds millions of people every year, produces oxygen and is the home to an incredible assortment of wildlife, provides us with important medicines, and so much more. In order to ensure the health and safety of our communities and future generations, it’s imperative that we take the responsibility to care for the ocean as it cares for us. Indeed the world is moving from Green Economy to Blue Economy.