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Posts tagged About World
Pakistan 10th most failed state of the world
Jun 22nd
Just three places below Afghanistan, Pakistan has been ranked the 10th most failed state in the 2010 Failed State Index released by the prestigious Foreign Policy magazine on Monday.
The list is topped by Somalia, followed by Zimbabwe, Sudan, and Chad.
India is ranked 87 in a list of 177 countries. In India’s immediate neighbourhood, Burma has been placed at 13, Sri Lanka (22) and Nepal 25. China is ranked at 57th place. Norway is ranked at the bottom of the list.
“Shattered Somalia has been the No.1 failed state for three years running, and none of the current top 10 has shown much improvement, if any, since FOREIGN POLICY and the Fund for Peace began publishing the index in 2005,” it said.
“Altogether, the top 10 slots have rotated among just 15 unhappy countries in the index’s six years. State failure, it seems, is a chronic condition,” the magazine said.
The magazine said Somalia saw yet another year plagued by lawlessness and chaos, with pirates plying the coast while radical Islamist militias tightened their grip on the streets of Mogadishu.
“Across the Gulf of Aden, long-ignored Yemen leapt into the news when a would-be suicide bomber who had trained there tried to blow up a commercial flight bound for Detroit,” it said.
Afghanistan and Iraq traded places on the index as both states contemplated the exit of US combat troops, while already isolated Sudan saw its dictator, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, defy an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court and the war-ravaged Democratic Republic of the Congo once again proved itself a country in little more than name, the magazine said. [See original story]
Vijay Mallya-led UB Group says it’s world’s second largest liquor maker now
Apr 7th
BANGALORE: Vijay Mallya-led UB Group said it has become the world’s second largest liquor maker after Diageo with sales of over 100 million cases in the last 12 months and is certain to be the number one by next fiscal.
In the process, group firm United Spirits has overtaken France’s Pernod Ricard, Mallya told reporters here, adding the company has set its eyes on the number one spot.
“We are now clearly the second largest spirits company in the world and we have outperformed our global competitors,” he said, adding the firm has done “extremely well despite the economic slowdown”.
United Spirits Ltd (USL) in the last 25 years sold over 740 million cases of spirits products making a total of 26 billion bottles of alcohol beverages of different pack sizes, he added.
“We are certain that our additional sales in the next financial year will take us to the number one position globally,” he said.
Mallya said it took USL 12 years to cross the first 100 million cases, another five years for the next 100 million cases and four years for the third 100 million cases.
It took three years for the company to cross the fourth, fifth and sixth million cases and “finally we achieved 100 million cases sales in just 12 months”.
“Our three years compounded annual growth rate is 15 per cent plus. If you take the two other large spirits companies in the world — Diageo and Pernord Ricard, they have achieved only single digits,” he said.
The company today announced that it has achieved a sale of over 100 million cases of nine litres each in last 12 months, thus replacing Pernod Ricard as the second largest spirits firm globally while its another firm engaged in beer manufacturing has also achieved a sale of 100 million cases in the financial year ended on March 31, 2010.
The retail sales value of the spirits portfolio sales of United Spirits for the 100 million cases sold is over Rs 36,000 crore, USL said.