Finance and development ministers from around the world next week will warn of considerable downside risks to the global economy, and call for an effort to protect the world's poor, according to the draft of a communique they plan to issue after a meeting on Saturday.

For the leaders of the Brics countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, andSouth Africa), the announcement in July of their agreement to establish a "New Development Bank" (NDB) and a "Contingent Reserve Arrangement" (CRA) was a public-relations coup.

Leaders of the five largest emerging economies will meet July 13-16 to finalize their first joint project: a new international development bank. The countries, known as BRICS (Brazil, Russia,India, China, and South Africa) have spent many years trying to find a common goal. Together they have more than 40 percent of the world’s population. And they share an interest in challenging many of the norms set by the West. Yet each nation is quite different in governance and ambition.

New investments from the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank’s private-sector investment arm, may perpetuate economic inequality rather than alleviate poverty in Myanmar, critics here are warning.  The IFC has proposed five new investment projects for Myanmar (also known as Burma). But the U.S. Campaign for Burma, a rights group here, is calling on the multilateral funder to slow down these projects and analyse their potential social effects.

Asia marked International Women’s Day on Saturday with little to celebrate. Despite mooted reforms, the region’s slow progress has been estimated to cost up to $50 billion a year in lost economic opportunities alone, in addition to huge social costs.

Brazil is known worldwide for its soccer players and supermodels, its lively parties and an appreciation for living life passionately. Another well-known characteristic of the country is its high inequality spurred on by ineffective income distribution practices and clientelistic political systems.

As an aide to the prime minister of Bhutan, Takao Takahashi helped deepen people’s understanding of the need to manage their money in the rapidly growing South Asian country valuing “gross national happiness.” The 31-year-old, who now works for the World Bank in Washington, said that although Bhutan’s consumption is surging amid rapid economic growth, its people have little knowledge about how to manage their money.

Patterns of global migration and remittances have shifted in recent decades, even as both the number of immigrants and the amount of money they send home have grown, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of data from the United Nations and the World Bank. A rising share of international migrants now lives in today’s high-income countries such as the United States and Germany, while a growing share was born in today’s middle-income nations such as India and Mexico, the analysis finds.