March 2020: In this episode of the Curionomist Podcast, I take a brief look at some of the economic relief measures that different countries have announced. In the previous edition of the COVID-19 special series, I talked about the macro-level economics impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak for the world economy. I briefly touched on the fact that the economic recovery of countries and the world at large would depend a lot on the relief measures that countries adopt and how effective they would be. Of course, as I mentioned last time, unlike the response to the Global Financial Crisis, this Coronavirus crisis is not seeing any sort of coordination global action with regard to economic recovery. There is no real G-20 action, no real cooperation or coordination. Every country for itself, seems to largely be the motto. Several of the most affected countries have announced different combinations of relief measures, mainly aimed at giving financial relief to people and businesses.

March 2020: Hi everyone, and welcome to the latest edition of The Curionomist Podcasts. It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these. With current curfew and work from home, I thought it’s a great time to get back into it. It is a COVID-19 special podcast, one of several I will publish over the next few days and weeks. In this first episode, I take a look at the economic impacts of the novel coronavirus outbreak.

October, 2018: In this episode of The Curionomist Podcasts, I interview Eric Miller, Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center, to get his insights on the US-China trade frictions, the dynamics between the US and Europe when it comes to dealing with China, and the implications for country's like Sri Lanka. Eric is the President of Rideau Potomac Strategy Group and serves on the external advisory committee on international trade policy to Canada’s Deputy Minister of International Trade.

October, 2018: We recently launched the ‘Multi Country Consolidation’ (MCC) initiative in Sri Lanka under a new project by the Global Alliance for Trade Facilitation where Sri Lanka is only the second country in Asia to be selected for such project. The aim is to provide a new dimension of competitive advantage for the Colombo Port, which despite its fast growth, natural geographic advantages, efficient terminal operations, and impressive liner connectivity, is facing fresh challenges from other ports in the region. For the launch of the  project, the GATF’s lead for Sri Lanka visited the country and I caught up with him in this latest edition of The Curionomist Podcasts to discuss Sri Lanka’s logistics potential.

June 2017: When David Irwin joined the UK Small Business Service as its first Chief Executive he had an uphill task - getting civil servants to understand enterprise promotion. One of the first things he did was to get all the bureaucrats in the agency to visit small businesses across the UK for several days each year to better understand their needs, their concerns, and their pains. In just two years, the Small Business Service had emerged as a strong voice for small business at the heart of government, and was at the forefront of advocating the case for an improved regulatory environment. In recognition of his continued efforts to support SMEs, David was awarded the Queen's Award for Enterprise Promotion in 2009. I was privileged to have spoken with him on the sidelines of a recent workshop. We talked about how a public agency can support enterprise development and what the role of government is in helping SMEs. Our chat is captured in this latest edition of 'The Curionomist Podcasts'.

August 2016: It was great to catch up with Mike Orgill, head of Public Policy for AirBnB Asia-Pacific, who was in town for the Sri Lanka Economic Summit 2016 and we did this podcast on the sidelines of the event. We talked about AirBnB and its role in global travel, the public policy tensions the platform has to contend with, whether the sharing economy has led to the emergence of ‘crowd regulation’, and how AirBnB is growing in Sri Lanka. I last met him when he visited Colombo in his previous role at Google and it was a pleasure catching up with him again. A longer post on my blog reflecting on AirBnB and crowd-sourced or distributed regulation is here - https://thecurionomist.wordpress.com/2016/08/04/podcast-airbnb-mikeorgill/