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Nationalised commercial banks, which have so far maintained dominance in the money market, are gradually losing grounds to private banks in both deposit collections and loan disbursement.
   The Bangladesh Bank data showed that private commercial banks, offering innovative and competitive banking products, are attracting more deposits than the state-owned banks, still guided by traditional banking methods.
   Till September and disbursing higher credits than the nationalised commercial banks.
   up to the September 2005, share of the nationalised commercial banks on total loan disbursement was about 37 per cent.
   On the other hand, share of the private commercial banks on loan disbursement stood 48 per cent of the total loans disbursed during the period under review.
   In a similar vein, private banks share on total deposits in the banking sector stood about 46 per cent whereas share of the nationalised commercial banks was 40 per cent.
   Some Tk 58,647.30 crore were deposited with the four nationalised commercial banks—Sonali, Janata, Agrani and Rupali.
   On the other hand, total deposit of the 30 private commercial banks stood at Tk68,224 crore, revealed the central bank statistics.
   Deposits in the five specialised commercial banks amounted at Tk8,313.26 crore which was 5.6 per cent of the total deposit of the banking system.
   The 10 foreign commercial banks have Tk11,131.76 crore as gross deposit as on the end-September 2005 which was 7.6 per cent of the total bank deposits.
   Up to the September, 2005, commercial banks have disbursed some Tk 1,22,091.22 crore as credit to different sectors.
   Of the total disbursed loans, private banks share was 48.1 per cent whereas share of the nationalised commercial banks stood at 37 per cent.
   The specialised state-owned banks disbursed 8.5 per cent of the total credit while foreign banks share was 8.7 per cent.
   The trend shows that share of the nationalised commercial banks have declined around five percentage points from December 2004 when these banks have disbursed some 42.7 per cent of the total credit.
   On the other hand, share of the private banks increased by around seven percentage points from 41 per cent of the total disbursed loans at the end-December 2004.
   Growth of the credit disbursement by the private banks stood 16 per cent over the same period of the previous year whereas the rate was only 3.4 per cent for the nationalised commercial banks.
   During the fiscal year 2004-05, ended on June, term lending from the nationalised commercial banks declined by 40 per cent over the previous fiscal year.
   In the same period, term lending from the private banks increased by 158 per cent over the same period of the last fiscal.
   Credit disbursement from the foreign banks jumped by 10.3 per cent while it was 10.7 per cent for the specialised banks.

Pakistan’s leading home textiles and apparel manufacturers are eyeing Bangladesh for joint ventures and relocation of their units as rising cost of production is eating into the industry’s profit margin.
   A group of Pakistani textile and apparel makers will visit Bangladesh next week to look for partners for joint ventures and explore the possibility of relocating their units to reap the duty-free market access enjoyed by Bangladesh as a least developed country to developed countries.
   Shabir Ahmed, chairman of the Pakistan Bedwear Exporters Association, will lead the 10-member delegation for a four-day visit from November 19, the Dawn newspaper reports from Karachi.
   The textile industry had been complaining about rising cost of production, owing to costly export financing and higher mark-up rates. Beside there was a list of other irritants which the industry had been facing since long.
   Moreover, the home textiles industry had been cornered by the policies of the developed countries particularly the European Union that had imposed anti-dumping duties and also did not give Pakistan any worth mentioning market access and duty concessions.
   On the domestic front, high cost and erratic supply of utilities, electricity, gas and water have also forced Pakistani textile makers to look beyond the national borders through joint ventures or relocation of units.
   The industry leaders find Bangladesh as a suitable location for their ventures given the contacts they already have with trading partners here as well as the country’s special trade incentives to the developed markets, industry sources said.
   During a meeting with the commerce minister, Humayun Akhtar Khan last week, a delegation of Pakistan’s textile manufacturers repeated their concerns and the issues that impede the industry’s growth. Their leader Abdul Razzak Teli pointed to the labour laws, which need changes to help the export-oriented industries reduce cost and save time.
   ‘If we have to keep protecting ourselves from these parasites, then how the industry will face throat-cut competition ensued after the quota free market where such big players in textiles and clothing like China and India,’ Abdul Razzak Teli asserted.
   ‘Yes it is a wake up call and if we all keep indifferent attitude towards our issues ultimately Pakistan will end up as a supplier of yarn and fabrics and the entire value-added textile industry will shift to Bangladesh and other LDCs to benefit from concession given to them by the developed countries’, Shabir Ahmed said.

Top European trade official Peter Mandelson said Saturday there had been a development of thinking but ‘no breakthrough’ in talks in Rome with Brazil’s foreign minister Celso Amorim, aimed at ending a deadlock threatening next month’s trade negotiations.
   ‘A development of thinking yes, but no negotiating breakthrough,’ Mandelson told journalists after more than four hours of discussions with Amorim at Brazil’s embassy in Rome.
   Amorim said a breakthrough had ‘never been the objective’ of Saturday’s discussions, but that the meeting had led to a ‘better understanding’ of each side’s position.
   ‘It’s important to stress, that was never the objective in coming here,’ the Brazilian minister told a joint press conference after the talks.
   However, he indicated that there had been some flexibility in the Brazilian position.
   ‘It’s good to have a better understanding because sometimes you can’t get some of your objective by some means. But you may be able to get—not maybe exactly the same, but a similar—objective by other means.’
   Mandelson predicted on Friday that the coming round of World Trade Organisation negotiations in Hong Kong in December would fail to agree on a trade package, accusing Brazil among other major farm producers of intransigence.
   ‘We had a good and rich exchange of views,’ said Amorim. ‘It was productive in many respects, not least of which is the fact that it allows us to go deeper into questions like numbers, being able to check and to compare figures.’
   ‘Although we do have differences, we never hide that, but we I think have a common interest in having the round concluded,’ he added.
   The officials did not reveal the specifics of their negotiations, which aides said involved both private one-on-one talks and a lengthier session in which they were joined by advisers.
   Mandelson said both men had discussed Amorim’s offer, reportedly made earlier in the week, to scale back Brazil’s duties on industrial goods such as auto parts and televisions in return for cutbacks in rich nations’ agriculture aid.
   ‘We were able to explore that area yes like any other and I recognise that there are ideas, there are parameters to that discussion, and it was useful for me to explore those with Celso this morning,’ the EU trade commissioner said.
   But like Mandelson on Friday, Amorim was pessimistic about the prospects for an agreement being reached in the Hong Kong talks, which begin on December 13.
   ‘If you consider full agreement and let us say, final numbers, the time span we have to Hong Kong is rather short. But that should not prevent us from making progress to be somewhere hopefully closer to the end result,’ the Brazilian minister said.
   ‘I said we may need a Hong Kong Two that does not mean that Hong Kong is a failure, but is recognition that this is a very important question for many countries and we have to be very serious. We are really negotiating in a very serious manner and exploring.
   ‘It’s not only what I think the EU can do for Brazil or what Brazil can do for the European Union, but also it’s about how these things can influence the behaviour of others.’

OPEC is pleased that oil prices have fallen to a level more acceptable to consumers and now better reflect fundamental supply and demand factors, the president of the producers’ cartel said Saturday.
   ‘I think now everybody...is more satisfied with these prices than before,’ Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahd al-Sabah, also Kuwait’s oil minister, told Reuters while on a visit to Bangkok.
   ‘I think now the price...is the real price, related more to supply and demand than to any other factor like geopolitics or refining capacity,’ he added.
   OPEC has been pumping nearly flat out for most of this year, but says it has been powerless to restrain prices lifted by speculation of a supply squeeze and fears over the stability of exports from major producers such as Iran and Iraq.
   Crude from the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries has helped keep US inventories near their highest in six years, with recent stock builds weighing on prices.
   US crude futures closed at $57.72 a barrel on Friday, more than 18 per cent below their late-August record high.
   Higher energy costs and warm weather have also curbed demand, adding to the market’s tumble and refocusing attention on the cartel, which has yet to set a new price target to signal when it might begin cutting production to shore up prices.
   Sheikh Ahmad did not say whether OPEC wanted to sustain current prices in the coming years or whether the cartel needed to begin considering cutting production.
   At its last meeting in September, the 11-member cartel agreed to offer the market all its spare capacity, the lion’s share of which is held by Saudi Arabia, from Oct. 1 for three months, but says there have been no takers.
   OPEC meets again on Dec. 12 in Kuwait.
   Many OPEC members have said they believe a $40 basket price is now the minimum required to justify investing in the production and refining facilities needed to alleviate the capacity crunch that has constricted the supply chain.
   The OPEC price basket of mostly heavy crudes fell to $51.30 a barrel on Thursday.

The Bangladesh Bank governor, Salehuddin Ahmed, has underscored the need for enhanced cooperation among the SAARC member countries in financial and macroeconomic areas.
   The seven nations grouped in the regional bloc should have more exchanges of technical expertise and information on banking, finance, macroeconomic policymaking and related areas, he observed.
   The SAARCFINANCE committee needed to be more dynamic and efficient with increased contacts with ASEAN and other international networks, the governor said, while addressing a meeting of the committee organised on Friday as part of the 26th session of the council of ministers meeting.
   The meeting was attended by officials of central banks of SAARC member states. Salehuddin is the incumbent chairperson of the SAARCFINANCE.
   Referring to the 13th meeting of SAARCFINANCE held on September 25, in Washington DC, Salehuddin said 164 officers visited various institutions of member countries under staff exchange programme.
   It covered a broad range of issues from risk-based bank supervision to human resource management and forward marketing arrangements for agricultural product.
   Some important studies on oil price hike: implications for SAARC countries; Integration of Rural Commodity and Financial Markets and Contractual Savings are currently in progress, he added.
   Bangladesh Bank will organise a governors’ symposium on microfinance in early 2006. A policy seminar on the impacts of oil price increase on SAARC countries, based on a Reserve Bank of India study will be held in Sri Lanka in early 2006.
   A seminar on human resources development will be held in Nepal, while Pakistan will host another seminar on financing of small and medium enterprises and India will arrange a seminar on IT in commercial banks, said Salehuddin, the current chairperson of the SAARCFINANCE committee.
   He said the group also decided that the frequency of central bank coordinators’ meeting should be semi-annual with participation of two or three delegates from each country.
   The SAARCFINANCE was formed in October 1998, as a network of central bank governors and finance secretaries of the SAARC region that groups Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The forum aims to establish more integration among the financial watchdogs through dialogues and exchange of experiences and ideas.

A Brazilian-made car that burns both gasoline and alcohol processed from corn had its unveiling here ahead of the first shipment of thousands of vehicles to the United States.
    Brazil’s Obvio in partnership with US company ZAP made the car that stands for Zero Air Pollution.
   With gasoline prices high, the flex-fuel car uses have become a popular technology in South America’s largest market. Its first production phase will see 17,000 cars shipped in 2006. But Obvio president Rivardo Machado said ZAP “already has purchased 50,000 units in advance.”

Top US and Indian officials will discuss how to advance troubled world trade talks and strengthen bilateral trade ties when they meet in New Delhi Saturday, the US trade officials said.
   The meeting between US trade representative, Rob Portman and the Indian commerce minister, Kamal Nath, comes just days after a serious setback in World Trade Organisation talks.
   Leading WTO members failed at meetings this week in London and Geneva to make headway in agriculture, industrial goods and services—three key areas of the negotiations.
   Countries no longer expect to agree on a plan for finishing the four-year-old Doha Round of world trade talks when they hold a WTO ministerial meeting next month in Hong Kong.
   ‘Both (Portman and Nath) are concerned that they’re not going to get as much out of the Doha Round as they’d like,’ said Jeffrey Schott, a senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics.
   ‘They’ll probably be doing some planning on what can be done between now and Hong Kong to improve the negotiating environment for next year.’
   Although the United States and India are at odds on portions of the agricultural negotiations, they both share a goal of further services liberalisation, Schott said.
   At the same time, Indian demands that its software developers and other professional workers have more opportunities to take temporary assignments in the United States are a politically sensitive issue.
   Many members of the US Congress view temporary entry provisions as a backdoor form of immigration, Schott said.
   India and Brazil are leaders of the G-20 group of developing countries, which are seeking deep cuts in US and European Union farm subsidies and tariffs.
   But they have resisted opening their own agriculture markets as much as the United States would like. India argues it cannot make deep cuts in its high agricultural tariffs because that would threaten its 600 million to 700 million subsistence farmers.
   Portman and Nath will lead the first meeting of the US-India Trade Forum, which was launched in July when the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, visited the United States.

The earthquake that devastated parts of Pakistan last month will not significantly slow economic growth as donors will pay for much of the reconstruction, a senior World Bank official said Saturday.
   ‘Much of the impact of the damage would be sustained by the bilateral and multilateral donors over the period of the next few years,’ World Bank Vice President for South Asia Praful Patel told AFP.
   ‘In all probability Pakistan will not have to divert its public sector funding for reconstruction. The damage to the economy will not be more than 0.3 to 0.4 percent, and it is not going to dent the growth rate much.’
   Pakistan’s Central Bank has forecast 6.3 percent economic growth this fiscal year.
   International donors led by the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank say more than five billion dollars will be needed to rebuild Pakistani-ruled Kashmir and other areas hit by the 7.6 magnitude earthquake on October 8.
   Islamabad has said the country has received aid pledges of 2.4 billion dollars to help relief and reconstruct efforts following the worst natural disaster in the country’s history.
   A November 19 donors’ conference in Islamabad would set the tone for reconstruction, Patel said.
   ‘I am confident that the money needed for the reconstruction in the first year will be on the table during this donors’ conference,’ he said. ‘I am sure that apart from multilateral commitments, bilateral commitments will also be honoured.’
   By official count, the quake has killed 73,318 people and seriously injured 69,392. Officials fear the death toll will climb as more bodies are found.
   ‘I visited the area, and the nature of the tragedy and losses is very grave,’ Patel said, speaking at a World Bank meeting in Lahore.
   He also suggested that relief efforts should be planned for the next 12 months, not just until the end of winter, which has just started.

Singapore state investment agency Temasek Holdings Pte Ltd said Saturday it had scrapped its plan to invest in Indian airline company Spicejet Ltd, due to a disagreement on terms.
   In September, Spicejet said that a Temasek unit, MacRitchie Investments, and UAE private-equity firm Istithmar had agreed to invest $20 million in it.
   ‘We have decided not to proceed with the investment, as both parties could not come to an agreement on certain terms,’ Temasek spokeswoman Eva Ho told the news agency, but declined to provide further details.
   The agency has accelerated its expansion abroad, making S$13 billion ($7.6 billion) of new investments in the fiscal year ended March 2005, with more than S$10 billion of this in Asia.
   Temasek owns stakes in many of Singapore’s biggest businesses, including Singapore Telecommunications Ltd., Asia’s fifth-largest phone company, and DBS Group Holdings Ltd, Southeast Asia’s biggest lender.
   It has bought stakes in companies in China, South Korea, Indonesia, India, and Pakistan to boost its investment returns and diversify its portfolio.

Japan should raise its consumption taxes to bridge a still-burdensome budget deficit, a top International Monetary Fund official said.
   ‘The time has come for serious steps to address the budget deficit,’ Daniel Citrin, deputy director of the IMF’s Asia and Pacific Department, told the fund’s in-house magazine.
   Noting that Japan’s consumption tax is low compared with other countries, Citrin said underlying fiscal gaps needed reckoning for the country to sustain strong output growth.
   The Bank of Japan also will need to shift its monetary policy approach to target a short-term interest rate, Citrin said, urging ‘a gradual and transparent’ transition to ensure long-term rates aren’t overly disrupted.
   ‘Clear communication will be important, so that market participants are kept well informed of the (Bank of Japan’s) decision making,’ he said.
   The IMF, which acts as a watchdog for the global economy, has long urged Japan to overhaul its economy to spur
   faster growth and prepare for demographic shifts as the
   baby boom generation nears old age.
   Citrin praised the planned privatisation of Japan Post, a central pillar of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s economic policy, calling the shift ‘a big deal’ that should remove economic distortions over its 10-year transition.
   He said the end of the postal savings system’s cost advantages over private banks should help reduce public investment in wasteful projects and benefit the overall economy.
   ‘A combination of a shrinking deposit base and a decline in public works spending will help reallocate financial resources to more productive uses,’ he said.
   Rising oil prices are the biggest risk to Japanese prosperity in the short- term but the country should fare well as domestic demand rebounds and broad growth settles in, Citrin said, linking Koizumi’s most recent electoral victory to well- conceived labour and product market reforms.

The Australian government reacted angrily Saturday to a report that Baghdad had suspended wheat imports worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year over oil-for-food kickbacks paid to Saddam Hussein’s regime.
   The prime minister, John Howard, said contracts could not be disregarded ‘willy-nilly’, while the foreign minister, Alexander Downer, said Australians would be irritated by a boycott as they had contributed troops to the US-led invasion that ousted Saddam.
   The Australian newspaper quoted Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Chalabi as saying all future orders for Australian wheat had been suspended and Iraq was demanding compensation for kickbacks paid to Saddam’s regime under the UN’s oil-for-food programme.
   The Australian wheat orders are worth up to 800 million dollars ($600 million) a year.
   A spokesman for the trade minister, Mark Vaile, said the government had received no formal notification of the suspension and had asked its ambassador in Baghdad to seek clarification.
   Howard said that as far as the government was concerned, wheat trade with Iraq was proceeding as normal.
   ‘Australian Wheat Board does have a contract with the Iraqi government so there are obligations and those obligations just can’t be torn up willy- nilly,’ he told reporters.
   Downer said because of Australia’s active military role in removing Saddam from power, a boycott of the country’s wheat would annoy many Australians.
   ‘A lot of people certainly would make that argument,’ Downer said. Australia is one of the coalitions of the willing, one of the three countries that moved decisively to rid Saddam Hussein’s regime from Iraq so there’s no doubt about the principled position Australia has taken against Saddam Hussein and his regime.
   ‘Our wheat trade in Iraq has been progressing at a steady pace and we’ve heard nothing about it being disrupted.’
   Chalabi told the newspaper in a telephone interview from Washington that he expected the AWB to compensate the new Iraqi government for $290 million in kickbacks paid to the former regime.

National carrier Malaysian Airline System is accelerating a cost-cutting drive, including pay cuts for senior managers, to help its precarious financial performance, the carrier said in a note to its staff this week.
   ‘Our financial performance is precarious and has increasingly become a source for concern,’ the chairman, Munir Majid, said.
   A spokesman for the state-controlled airline, Malaysia’s biggest, said today he had no comment.
   Analysts expect the airline to post a net loss of 230 million ringgit for the year to end-March 2006, according to Reuters Estimates. This compares with a net profit of 326 million in the year ended March 2005.
   ‘There is now a need to extend the scope of the cost reduction focus and put in place more aggressive measures,’ Munir said in the staff memo.
   The carrier had put in place several measures to cut costs and boost revenue after it reported a first-quarter loss in August. After the loss, managing director Ahmad Fuaad Dahlan announced his retirement barely a year into the job.
   The airline is likely to detail its new cost-saving programme when it releases its second-quarter results later this month.
   In the note, Munir said the second-quarter results would not fully reflect the impact of existing company initiatives, including cutting its fuel bill by 10 per cent this fiscal year.
   He said division heads reporting to the top management would take a voluntary pay cut of between 15 and 30 per cent from December 1.

Peter F Drucker, revered as the father of modern management for his numerous books and articles stressing innovation, entrepreneurship and strategies for dealing with a changing world, died Friday. He was 95.
   Drucker died of natural causes at his home in Claremont, east of Los Angeles, said Bryan Schneider, a spokesman for Claremont Graduate University, where Drucker taught.
   ‘He is purely and simply the most important developer of effective management and of effective public policy in the 20th century,’ former US House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Friday. ‘In the more than 30 years that I’ve studied him, talked with him and learned from him, he has been invaluable and irreplaceable.’
   Drucker was considered a management visionary for his recognition that dedicated employees are key to the success of any corporation, and that marketing and innovation should come before worries about finances.

Pakistani cotton prices rose over the past week and are likely to remain firm as millers buy aggressively amid slow supplies, dealers said.
   ‘Mills are buying big quantities while supplies from growers are short,’ said Naseem Usman, a dealer in Karachi.
   ‘The arrival of fresh supplies is much slower than the demand,’ he said.
   Arrivals of the new crop began in the second week of August and started picking up pace last month. Pakistan’s cotton crop is planted in April and May and harvested between August and January.
   Another dealer said very few exporters were in the market as firm domestic prices were less competitive for them.

The governor of the Central Bank of Kenya said Friday that the east African nation was on track to achieve or better its projected five per cent economic growth for the year to June 2006.
   Andrew Mullei said Kenya’s positive performance was seen in almost all sectors. But he singled out increased tourist arrivals, improved coffee and tea output, and strong activity in manufacturing, building, construction and service sectors.
   ‘Our projection of economic performance for this year suggests that the five per cent economic growth rate which the government has set will be achieved and probably exceeded,’ Mullei said in a speech to banking industry players.
   Growth, which Kenya traditionally measures in the 12 months to mid-year, was 4.3 per cent for the year to June 2005.
   The bank’s money supply growth target—of 7.8 per cent by June 2006—would support economic growth and see overall and underlying inflation contained at under five per cent, Mullei said.
   The annual inflation rate in October stood at 3.7 per cent, down from 4.3 per cent in September.
   Kenya is east Africa’s most developed and closely-watched economy.
   The government is committed to maintaining discipline in its domestic borrowing, the governor said.
   ‘I am pleased that on the fiscal front the government has given firm commitment to
   limiting its domestic borrowing to manageable levels,’ Mullei said.
   Before the June 2005-July 2006 fiscal budget reading, the government pledged to limit its domestic borrowing to 25 billion Kenya shillings ($329.2 million). Mullei said the Monetary Policy Advisory Committee—formed in August to advise the central bank on inflation, exchange rate and interest rates—was finishing work on introducing a Central Bank Rate.

Asian and Pacific countries held talks today focusing on the troubled state of global trade talks, attempts to prevent bird flu pandemic and efforts to combat terrorism.
   The officials from the 21 members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum met in the South Korean city of Busan to prepare for next week’s summit bringing together world leaders such as the US president, George W Bush and the Chinese president, Hu Jintao.
   Thousands of police have been deployed around the conference venue and at sensitive sites such as the airport and train station to prevent terrorist attacks and contain protests by farmers and anti-globalisation activists.
   The officials who attended Saturday’s opening talks said participants were working on a statement stressing the importance of progress at the December 13-18 World Trade Organisation talks in Hong Kong.
   Trade talks are deadlocked over subsidies to farmers in the rich nations of the European Union and the United States, and WTO secretary general Pascal Lamy warned this week that the goals of the Hong Kong meeting should be lowered.
   A senior Southeast Asian official who attended Saturday’s talks said APEC leaders wanted to make a strong political statement giving a final push for progress before the WTO meeting.
   ‘There’s a general feeling that there will be no breakthrough in Hong Kong because the Europeans are not giving in on agriculture,’ the official told the news agency, asking to remain anonymous.
   APEC officials were also due to discuss bird flu. The H5N1 strain of the virus has killed more than 60 people since 2003, but experts fear it could mutate into a more lethal strain that could cause a global pandemic.
   Another official involved in Saturday’s talks said discussions would focus on how APEC countries would respond to a pandemic and plans for an APEC-wide mock exercise simulating a human-to-human outbreak.
   Plans for the exercise were agreed at an APEC meeting in Australia last month but no date was set.
   According to a draft APEC initiative, leaders will call for intensified preparations for a pandemic in line with World Health Organisation guidelines and plans to protect commerce in times of crisis.
   A third APEC official said following the latest bombings in the Jordanian capital Amman, which killed at least 57 people and were blamed on the Muslim militant group Al-Qaeda, terrorism would also be discussed Saturday.
   The APEC forum was launched in 1989 with the goal of establishing a free trade area among its members by 2020, but in recent years its agenda has been expanded to include pressing global issues such as terrorism and public health.
   The forum groups Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, the United States and Vietnam.
   Protest organisers have vowed to bring over 100,000 people onto the streets of Busan next week to coincide with the APEC leaders’ summit. Police say demonstrations will be allowed, but kept away from the meeting venues.

The World Bank president, Paul Wolfowitz, travels to Paris on the weekend for talks with the WTO chief, Pascal Lamy, and the French president, Jacques Chirac, to push for progress in troubled world trade talks.
   He will also visit Brussels on Monday for trade and other discussions with the European Commission president, Jose Manuel Barroso, and the European Investment Bank.
   Weeks away from a World Trade Organisation ministerial meeting in Hong Kong, Wolfowitz is expected to encourage Europeans to make concessions to ensure progress in the talks.
   Leading WTO members failed at meetings this week in London and Geneva to make headway on agriculture, industrial goods and services—the stickiest issues in the trade negotiations.
   Countries no longer expect to agree on a plan for finishing the 4-year-old Doha Round of world trade talks when they meet in Hong Kong, with Brussels under pressure from France and other EU members not to make any more concessions on agriculture.
   Wolfowitz was a key player in rallying industrial nations to agree to debt relief for poor nations—a pact that was sealed in September meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in Washington.
   Failure to reach a deal in Hong Kong will harm millions of the world’s poorest people, Wolfowitz has said.
   ‘There are few things that could be more helpful right now to the 1.2 billion poor people living on less than a dollar a day than the chance to have a decent job,’ said Kevin Kellems, senior adviser to Wolfowitz.
   ‘These international trade negotiations could help provide just that for many of them—but only if those on all sides of the bargaining table are willing to do what it takes to make a difference and seize this opportunity,’ Kellems said.
   The World Bank has urged developed countries to slash their highest farm tariffs by 75 per cent if poor nations are to benefit from a WTO move to liberalize farm trade.
   The bank has said deep cuts are needed to make a real impact for poor nations, many of which depend on exports of agricultural goods to raise revenue.

The United States and European Union will renew a dogfight next week in negotiations to throw their skies open to unregulated competition among their airlines.
   The last round of the ‘open skies’ talks held in Brussels last month achieved ‘substantial progress’, the two sides said.
   But some of the thorniest questions in the lucrative but politically sensitive transatlantic aviation sector are still on the table as US and European Commission negotiators prepare to meet from Monday.
   The aim is to do away with the existing patchwork of bilateral agreements between various EU members and the United States and set up one system regulating transatlantic air transport. There are two major issues to resolve.
   One involves scrapping so-called cabotage arrangements so that a European airline could fly from any EU member state to a US airport and then on to another US destination.
   Whereas now British Airways, for example, can fly London to New York, it cannot then proceed to service domestic US routes such as Chicago or Atlanta.
   The US airlines can fly Washington to Paris, for instance, and then on to Rome. But they cannot then head beyond Europe to points east in Asia.
   At last month’s Brussels talks, Washington agreed to allow European carriers to fly from anywhere in the EU to any single point in the United States.

Employment in Hong Kong is at record levels. Salaries are rising in India and Thailand. Jobless rates in Taiwan and Japan have fallen to multi-year lows.
   In other words, the signs are clear: Asia’s jobs market is getting tighter.
   ‘Employment growth is pretty much regional with the exception of Indonesia and the Philippines to a certain extent,’ said Sailesh Jha, senior regional economist at Credit Suisse First Boston.
   This trend is expected to continue next year and could have huge implications for regional economies.
   On the one hand, tight labour markets boost inflation, giving central banks a reason to keep raising interest rates as they have done through 2005. On the other hand, strong job creation means disposable income and a boost to consumption.
   Jha says the trend is notable because it involves more than just new jobs. ‘This is the first time since the 1997 financial crisis that we are seeing an across-the-board rise in salaries.’
   In nominal terms, salaries are expected to rise an average 15 per cent this year from last year in China, 6.0 per cent in Thailand compared with 2.0 per cent in 2004 and 0.7 per cent in Hong Kong after a one per cent fall last year, CSFB says.
   Unemployment is structurally higher in many countries than it was in the pre-Asia crisis era when regional economies were booming, but it is coming down. Taiwan’s inflation rate, for instance, is at a 4-year low.
   ‘The Asian market is really good now to the point where it’s becoming difficult to find people, which isn’t necessarily the best for employers, because it is leading to some salary inflation,’ said Stefanie Cross-Wilson, a country manager for Singapore at Hudson Global Resources, a recruitment and human resource consultancy firm.
   Employment data in several Asian countries is patchy at best.
   But trends in salaries and reports by recruitment agencies offer economists a glimpse of the labour market, which has been hurt by the 1997/98 financial crisis, the bursting of the Internet bubble and the SARS epidemic in 2003.
   ‘In India, we don’t have proper employment and unemployment numbers. But we can tell that at least in the white-collar segment, there is clearly a boom in jobs,’ Deutsche Bank senior economist Sanjeev Sanyal said. ‘We can see that in terms of companies hiring. There is also a sharp increase in salaries.’
   Dhirendra Shantilal, vice-president for Asia Kelly Services says the recruitment firm has seen a pick-up in hiring across all major countries in Asia this year. ‘Some countries like India have seen 30-40 per cent growth in new jobs.
   The industries that are creating this new demand are in the areas of telecommunications and call centres, manufacturing, retail, aviation and of course technology,’ he said.

Developing countries should use some of their foreign exchange stockpiles to help domestic savers invest some savings overseas without triggering massive capital flight, the International Monetary Fund’s top economist said in a recent paper.
   The research paper, by IMF chief economist Raghuram Rajan and senior economist Eswar Prasad, said the plan would have several major benefits.
   It would allow domestic savers to seek some higher returns abroad without triggering destabilizing capital flight often happens when exchange controls are abolished.
   At the same time, by using the reserves to translate local currency funds into dollars, euros or yen for foreign investment, it would help remove inflationary, excess money from the banking system associated with currency intervention and reserve
   build-up in the first place.
   Under their proposal, a central bank would license a private fund management company, or use a foreign fund manager, to start a closed-end mutual fund.
   The fund would raise money by issuing shares to domestic investors in the local currency and then use the proceeds to purchase foreign exchange from the central bank for investing in overseas stocks and bonds.
   Without mentioning countries by name—but alluding to Asia’s large build up of reserves—the economists said the proposal could apply to countries with closed or partly closed capital accounts looking for ways to use their reserves and avoid sudden capital flight.
   Massive accumulation of foreign currency reserves, mainly by Asian central banks, is one reason for global imbalances in international accounts, reflected in the US current account deficit now at over 6 per cent of gross domestic product.
   ‘While foreign reserves in reasonable amounts can help insulate a country against external shocks...eventually reserves are enough to protect against everything except Armageddon,’ Rajan and Prasad said.
   A build-up of reserves could become a strain on government finances and create a perception of exchange rate manipulation in some cases, they said.
   China has long been under international pressure to loosen its grip on its yuan currency amid perceptions in the United States that it is purposefully keeping its currency undervalued.
   The economists argue their proposal could be seen as part of a ‘tool kit’ that would allow a country to liberalise its capital account in phases, at the same time training domestic investors in the country to invest abroad.
   Rajan and Prasad note the proposal would allow governments to control both the amount and timing of outflows—essentially opening the capital account with some control because the central bank could determine the outflows.
   ‘We emphasise that our proposal is not intended to be a substitute for other policies that developing economies should focus on, including strengthening of domestic financial markets and, in some cases, moving toward greater exchange rate flexibility,’ they said.
   ‘The proposal would have the benefit of allowing countries to make progress towards the goal of eventual full capital account convertibility in a carefully calibrated manner, without exposing the domestic financial system to risks associated with uncontrolled outflows.’
   They said it would be vital to maintain a clear gap between the government and the fund management companies.
   ‘Having a clearly defined legal arrangement that minimizes expropriation risk would be necessary to avoid the risk premium investors will demand if they feared that the fund’s assets could be taken over by the government at will,’ the economists said.

Better roads, smarter irrigation and new insurance tools could help Malawi overcome its long- running vulnerability to drought and hunger, a senior World Bank official said Friday.
   Hartwig Schafer, the development lender’s country director for Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe, said Malawi’s current food shortages were severe and the World Bank will look closely for signs of 2006 drought risks in early maize crop reports.
   ‘I don’t think Malawi should be drought-prone forever,’ Schafer told the news agency in an interview. He said the World Bank would focus aid on improving the southern African country’s agricultural output and easing budget shocks from drought.
   A crippling drought has slashed the country’s maize harvest to 1.25 million tonnes—about 37 per cent of the food staple needed for national consumption this year, according to government estimates.
   As many as five million people are believed to need food aid to get them through to the April maize harvest. More than three quarters of Malawi’s 12 million population live well below the World Bank’s poverty threshold of $1 a day.
   The World Bank in September approved $30 million to help replenish Malawi’s dwindling foreign exchange reserves as it imports maize to feed the needy.
   Schafer said the development lender’s executive board would soon consider a $40 million project focused on irrigation and rural livelihoods. ‘That is only the start of a major push in support by the bank’ in agriculture, he said.
   Other ways to ensure food security, Schafer said, include increasing access to weather risk insurance ‘so that if the weather is not working out, farmers are not being wiped out.’
   The World Bank is also helping Malawi’s government reduce import price volatility through forward-buying contracts for agricultural commodities like maize.
   Malawi also needs to make better use of the landlocked country’s water resources, Schafer said.
   ‘Lake Malawi is the third-largest lake in Africa, and along the lakeshore you don’t see much small-scale irrigation.

Soaring rents and knock-on inflation in the United Arab Emirates—which is gripped by an oil and real estate boom—have shaken expatriates and foreign investors making it hard for them to budget businesses.
   Huge rent increases of up to 50 per cent a year are becoming the norm and feeding into other costs of living such as schooling, food, utilities, leisure and salaries.
   Most worrying, many foreign company executives say, is the lack of a UAE regulatory environment and the rule of law.
   Landlords and real estate owners can impose whatever level of increase on commercial and residential property they choose. And as things stand there is no legal recourse, they add.
   ‘Today the most discussed topic among employees is the out- of-control inflation,’ said Joseph Hanania, Managing-Director for Hewlett-Packard HPQ N, which provides housing for its 300 UAE- based employees.
   ‘The increase in rent is becoming a key concern for us and unfortunately it is impacting employees of mid-level and below extensively. It’s not just rent, everything has gone up by significant amount,’ he told the news agency.
   ‘It is becoming extremely difficult for us. We don’t know where the solution will come from. The increase in costs is eating up many of the operational advantages.’
   High oil prices in recent years have fuelled an economic boom in the UAE, an OPEC member that has almost 10 per cent of the world’s oil reserves.
   This has caused an influx of expatriate workers, from labourers to professionals, driving up demand for housing.
   In its latest research, the National Bank of Dubai said UAE consumer price inflation could reach between 15 and 20 per cent in 2005, driven by higher rents, which form the single largest constituent of the CPI at 36.1 per cent, and fuel prices.
   It said rents in Dubai, the UAE’s trade hub, increased by an average 40 per cent in the first half of 2005. In September, the federal UAE government increased petrol prices by 31.5 per cent.

Hong Kong urged members of the World Trade Organisation Thursday to be flexible to try and secure progress towards a global trade pact, saying a credible package must be on offer by the end of the year.
   The WTO said this week it would not be able to meet its goal of concluding an outline for the pact at a ministerial meeting in Hong Kong next month as talks on agriculture were deadlocked.
   ‘This is a time for statesmanship, not brinkmanship,’ the commerce secretary, John Tsang, said in a speech to the Foreign Correspondents’ Club.
   Tsang, who will chair the meeting, said a package needed to be agreed by the end of the year as it would take all of 2006 to flesh out the details.

South Korea will invite Pacific rim nations to invest in an industrial park in North Korea during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum here.
   South Korean Minister of Commerce, Industry and Energy Lee Hee-Beom will discuss investment opportunities in the Kaesong industrial park during a forum on the sidelines of APEC’s annual meeting, the ministry said.
   ‘It will be the first time Kaesong’s investment environment is introduced at an international setting,’ the ministry said in a statement.

Ukrainian authorities need to tighten monetary policy and resist temptations to boost spending if the emerging Eastern European country is to thrive, the IMF said Friday.
   In an annual economic health check, the IMF said political uncertainty that culminated in Viktor Yushchenko’s dramatic sweep to presidential power last year had made investors nervous and stalled economic progress. ‘Ukraine’s lagging growth rate relative to that of most other transition economies, reflects long-standing difficulties in reaching a political consensus to build the more market-friendly institutions that would allow Ukraine to use its resources more efficiently,’ the IMF said.

World oil prices plummeted to a near-four month low point this week, below 57 dollars per barrel, mainly owing to the absence of wintry weather in the United States’ northeastern region.
   Copper hit a historic high amid tight supplies, while platinum struck the highest level for more than 25 years on buying from speculators.
   The Commodities Research Bureau’s index of 17 commodities fell to 314.77 points on Friday from 319.48 points the previous week.
   GOLD: Gold had fallen by 10 dollars the week before as US inflation concerns eased.
   On the London Bullion Market, gold prices rose to 466.75 dollars per ounce at the late fixing on Friday from 460.50 dollars the previous week.
   SILVER: Silver prices rallied, mirroring sister metal gold.
   On the London Bullion Market, silver prices climbed to 7.698 dollars per ounce at the late fixing Friday from 7.55 dollars the previous week.
   PLATINUM AND PALLADIUM: Platinum prices reached the highest level for more than 25 years, while palladium had the best showing for 18 months, also on buying from speculators.
   Platinum reached 961.50 dollars per ounce on Friday, the highest point since March 1980, when it struck 1,000 dollars.
   On the London Platinum and Palladium Market, an ounce of platinum advanced to 955.50 dollars per ounce at the late fixing Friday, from 936 dollars the previous week.
   Palladium gained to 239 dollars per ounce, from 227 dollars.
   BASE METALS: Three-month aluminium prices climbed to 2,044 dollars per tonne from 2,021 dollars.
   Three-month nickel prices gained to 11,830 dollars per tonne from 11,650 dollars.
   Three-month lead prices increased to 987 dollars per tonne from 981 dollars.
   Three-month zinc prices jumped to 1,609.50 dollars per tonne from 1,573 dollars.
   Three-month tin prices stood at 6,300 dollars per tonne from 6,395 dollars.
   OIL: By Friday, New York’s light sweet crude for December delivery slumped to 57.60 dollars per barrel from 61.20 dollars the previous week.
   In London, Brent North Sea crude for December delivery dived to 55.40 dollars per barrel from 59.85 dollars.
   RUBBER: On TOCOM, Tokyo’s commodity exchange, natural rubber for December delivery fell to 183.40 yen on Friday, from 188.50 yen a week earlier.
   Singapore’s RSS 3 December contract dropped to 157.50 cents on Friday, from 162.50 cents the previous week.
   COCOA: On the New York Board of Trade (NYBoT), the December contract eased to 1,326 dollars per tonne on Friday from 1,351 dollars.
   COFFEE: On the LIFFE, Robusta quality for January delivery rose to 1,052 dollars per tonne on Friday, from 989 dollars a week earlier.
   On the NYBoT, Arabica for December delivery climbed to 106.90 cents per pound, from 103.90 cents.
   SUGAR: Sugar futures fell less sharply.
   By Friday on LIFFE, the price of a tonne of white sugar for December delivery eased to 276.50 dollars, from 277.20 dollars a week earlier.
   GRAINS AND SOYA: On the LIFFE, the price of a tonne of wheat for November delivery dipped to 68.75 pounds late on Thursday, from 69 pounds the previous Friday.
   On the Chicago Board of Trade, the price of wheat for December delivery eased to 311 US cents per bushel on Friday, from 314 cents the previous week.
   COTTON: On the New York Cotton Exchange (NYCE), the December contract slid to 50.30 US cents per pound on Friday, from 51.60 cents a week earlier.
   The Cotton Outlook Index of physical cotton dropped to 56.80 cents on Thursday, from 57.40 cents a week earlier.
   WOOL: The Australian Eastern index dropped to 6.28 Australian dollars per kilo on Thursday from 6.52 dollars the previous week.
   The British Wooltops index stood at 393 pence on Thursday, from 400 pence the previous week.

Wall Street leaped over some key hurdles over the past week as fears receded about inflation and an economic slowdown, helping build a case for a positive finish for 2005 for the stock market.
   The main US indexes rallied for a third straight week, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average of blue chips climbing 1.47 per cent to end Friday at 10,686.04.
   The broad-market Standard and Poor’s 500 broad-market index added 1.2 per cent to 1,234.72 and the technology-heavy Nasdaq composite index tacked on 1.5 per cent to 2,202.47.
   The Nasdaq has now joined the S and P in positive territory for the year and the Dow is within striking distance of its starting point for 2005 of 10,783.01.
   ‘The mood of the market remains positive as the year-end advance continues,’ said Al Goldman at AG Edwards, citing ‘the biggest three- week rally in a year.’
   The retreat in oil prices—with New York crude near $57 a barrel after peaking at over $70—has calmed those on Wall Street claiming inflation would get out of control and lead to a host of problems including higher interest rates and lower corporate profits.

European stocks rose in the week, helping the Dow Jones Stoxx 50 Index erase its October losses. Shares rallied amid better-than-expected earnings from companies including ING Groep NV and Bayer AG and a drop in oil prices.
   Good company results and a decline in oil will underpin a year-end rally,’’ said Michael Molzar, a fund manager who helps oversee about $351 million at Epicon Investment AG in Vienna. ‘These are reasons to remain positive on equities.’’ He said his company has a ‘high exposure’ in European stocks.
   Companies that depend on the US for part of their revenue, such as Royal Ahold NV, also gained as the dollar climbed to a two-year high against the euro. Energy stocks including Statoil ASA limited market gains.
   The Stoxx 50 added 1.2 per cent to 3296.75 in the five days, climbing to a 41-month high. The broader Stoxx 600 rose 1.5 per cent and the Euro Stoxx 50, a gauge for the 12 countries using the euro, advanced 1.5 per cent.
   Earnings reports that beat analysts’ expectations helped allay concern that rising interest rates in the US may damp consumer demand. So far this quarter, about two-thirds of the Stoxx 50 members that reported earnings or sales have beaten analysts’ estimates.
   Indexes gained in all the 18 western European markets in the week except Austria, Denmark and Norway. Measures in Switzerland, Greece, Sweden, and the Benelux region ended the week at the highest in at least three years.
   The U.K.’s FTSE 100 Index added 0.8 per cent, as did France’s CAC 40 Index. Germany’s DAX Index climbed 1.9 per cent.
   Financial Companies
   ING rose 9.1 per cent to 26.83 euros, the biggest gain on the Stoxx 50. The largest Dutch financial-services company reported on Nov. 10 an unexpected 21 per cent increase in third-quarter profit as earnings at the online banking unit rose and provisions for risky loans fell.
   Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg were expecting on average a decline in profit.
   The same day, Aegon NV, the second-biggest Dutch insurer, said third-quarter profit rose 25 per cent, bolstered by higher earnings from life insurance in the US Profit also surpassed analysts’ estimates. The shares gained 3.9 per cent to 13.46 euros.
   UniCredito Italiano SpA rose 4.9 per cent to 5.22 euros. Italy’s second-largest bank by assets also said on Nov. 10 that third-quarter profit gained 33 per cent as it earned more from consumer and corporate lending. Net income rose to 676 million euros ($791 million), higher than the 558 million-euro median estimate of six analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News.
   ING, Aegon and UniCredito joined financial companies Deutsche Bank AG, ABN Amro Holding NV, UBS AG and Credit Suisse Group, which in recent weeks have reported earnings that beat estimates.
   In other industries, Bayer, Germany’s biggest health-care company, on Nov. 9 raised its profit forecast after third-quarter earnings jumped. Net income in the three months rose to 493 million euros, beating the 298 million euros expected by analysts. The shares added 8.8 per cent to 31.87 euros.
   Not all company statements were seen as positive. Deutsche Telekom AG, Europe’s largest telephone company, on Nov. 9 reported it had a third-quarter profit compared with a loss a year earlier as wireless customers increased in the US The stock had its biggest drop in more than one year that day after the company said extra spending will hurt earnings next year.

UK bank customers could pay up to £250m to withdraw their own money from cash machines in 2006, the Nationwide building society has predicted.
   In 2004 the private companies who install and operate charging ATMs made £140m in withdrawal fees.
   In total, nearly 22,000 of the UK’s 54,000 ATMs levy a cash withdrawal fee and increasing numbers are being put in newsagents and convenience stores.
   Operators argue customers can choose whether or not to use their machines.
   The spread of fee-charging ATMs has been rapid. Last year alone the number of machines rose 16 per cent.
   At the same time, the number of free-to-use ATMs has remained static.
   This is partly due to some banks selling off their non-branch-based ATM sites to fee-charging providers.
   ‘If this pattern continues, there is a real possibility
   that free access to cash will
   not survive other than at bank and building society branches and a few other locations such as main post offices,’ said Stuart Bernau, Nationwide executive director.
   There has been a long-running controversy over the spread of fee-charging ATMs.
   Opponents, including Which? and Citizens Advice, argue that charges hit people on low incomes hardest, as these people are more likely to make smaller, more frequent withdrawals and are therefore bearing a disproportionately large share of the charges.
   Claire Whyley, of the National Consumer Council, said: ‘ It is essential that people have easy and cost-free access to their money.
   ‘ATM charges are simply another example of the poor paying more - in this case they are paying a high price just to access their own money.’
   But fee-charging ATM firms have argued that they are providing a service and that consumers have a choice to use their machines or not.
   Last March, the parliamentary Treasury Select Committee issued a report calling for clearer warnings on fee-charging cash machines.
   But in its response to the committee’s report, the government gave charging ATMs the all-clear, pointing out that the vast majority of fee-charging ATMs were in locations where there had never been a free cash machine.

Buoyed by the dramatic FIIs comeback and a sharp slide in crude price, the Sensex made a repeat of its last week’s performance rising by another five per cent, creating sort of a record of biggest rise in two consecutive weekly rallies.
   The Sensex scored unprecedented gains of 785.40 points or 10.2 per cent during the two-week strong price rally.
   Even as domestic mutual funds focused on booking
   profits at a time when stocks witnessed a sharp rally after October gloom, Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) pumped in Rs 1,189 crore into equity in the first four sessions of the week.
   This repose confidence in the growing economy, which is expected to sustain seven per cent growth in the fiscal.
   In addition, Foreign Institutional Investors also made heavy net purchases of more than Rs 2,000 crore in the futures in the initial six trading days of November.
   During the week ended November 12, the BSE Benchmark 30-share index
   after resuming on a promising note gradually moved upwards to a high of 8,483.68 before ending the week at one-month high of 8,471.04 as against last week end’s close of 8,072.75, a net gain of 398.29 points or 4.93 per cent.
   A sharp fall in global oil prices to below $58 a barrel level and a faster-than-expected growth in industrial production were considered to be main triggers for the market’s rapid upsurge.
   The country’s industrial production, which accounts for a quarter of the economy, recorded good growth at 7.3 per cent in September 2005.

Pakistan now plans to enter the international equity market after a successful entry in the international capital market, disclosed Dr Ashfaque Hasan Khan, director general of the debt office and economic adviser to the government, here on Friday.
   In reply to a query during his lecture on ‘Pakistan’s Economic Future: Challenges and Opportunities’, Dr Ashfaque said irrespective of any government, Pakistan was now under an obligation to maintain financial discipline and live within the budget so that the value of its bond in the international capital market was not impacted adversely.
   The lecture was organised by the South Asia Forum.
   ‘Even otherwise, there is now a law which makes it mandatory for the government to show fiscal responsibility and maintain a strict discipline,’ he pointed out. Pakistan, he said, was one of the few countries in the world to have such a law on its statute books.
   ‘Five years ago we struggled to revive our growth and have now reached a stage when we want to sustain the growth tempo for the next five years so that the fruits of economic benefits trickle down to poorer section of the population,’ he said.
   He called budget deficit and current account gap ‘mothers of all economic problems’ that plagued Pakistan’s economy during the 1990s. ‘Pakistan was reduced to a desperate borrower in the decade of nineties,’ he recalled while pointing out that growing budgetary deficits left no option but to borrow from the domestic market and to seek foreign debts for narrowing current account gaps.
   ‘This added to debt burden and pushed up debt servicing to intolerable limits.’
   Structural reforms were taken up to address the economic problems during the last five years which has narrowed down the budgetary deficit within sustainable limits, and Pakistan’s current account showed surplus for three consecutive years since 2001.
   ‘Investors’ confidence has been restored, economy has picked up, showing a high growth in 2003-04 and 2004-05, and government’s revenue — both tax and non-tax — has increased considerably,’ he added.
   But high growth had a price, Ashfaque said while pointing towards the inflation, but added that the government had taken measures both on the demand management as well as on supply side to tackle the issue. He claimed that food inflation was being brought under control.
   He also dispelled the general prevailing notion that the volume of Pakistan’s debt was on the rise despite government’s claim of reducing the debt burden.
   ‘The debt will continue to rise because there is a perpetual need to borrow to enhance our infrastructure facilities,’ he explained, but asserted that the debt burden would remain within a stipulated prescribed ratio.
   Under the law, he said, the government was bound to maintain a debt burden ratio of 60 with the GDP by 2008. A loan that expands the size of economy creates an affordable burden.
   In another context, Ashfaque said the unemployment problem was blown out of proportion. He quoted press reports according to which the production of manufacturing and construction industry in Karachi suffered a severe setback after a large number of Kashmiri and Pashtun workers left for their homes in the aftermath of the Oct 8 earthquake. ‘The labour market is tight,’ he concluded.

Pakistani stocks will take their lead next week from negotiations between the government and the United Arab Emirates over a deadlocked multi-billion-dollar telecom deal, dealers said.
   Pakistan was seeking fresh talks with the United Arab Emirates to salvage a 2.6-
   billion-dollar deal with Etisalat for the sale of a controlling stake in its largest telecom company.
   The Emirates firm had deposited 30 per cent of the sum agreed in the deal, but the remaining funds had not reached Pakistan by the first deadline of September 28 or by an extended deadline a month later.
   ‘Investors eyes’ are on the government’s negotiations with Etisalat and a positive result would drive the market further otherwise some depression may take over the market,’ said Humaira Zaheer, chief analyst at Capital One Equities.

GM’s health cuts not enough: analysts
Union workers at General Motors Corp. ratified a deal to help the automaker cut billions of dollars in health-care costs, but analysts said the move was far from enough to turn things around at the struggling auto giant. Welcoming the ratification, which was announced by the United Auto Workers union on Friday, GM said the deal would slash its long-term health-care liability by $15 billion, cut its hourly health-care liability by 25 per cent, and reduce health-care expenses by about $3 billion annually, before taxes.
— Reuters

Halliburton violated pension law
An investigation by the US Labour Department found that Halliburton Co’s pension plans violated the law three times and the company paid more than $8.6 million to correct the violations, the New York Times reported on Friday, citing correspondence from the department. The abuses included charging some costs of the company’s executive pension and bonus plans to a workers’ pension fund, the paper said, and the company was found to have violated federal pension law prohibitions against self-dealing and using pension money for the benefit of the company.
— Reuters

Sony stops making anti-piracy CDs
Sony has said it will suspend the production of music CDs with anti-piracy technology which can leave computers vulnerable to viruses. The move came after security firms said hackers were exploiting the software to hide their creations. The software has been used by viruses to evade detection by anti-virus programs and infect computers. Sony said it had a right to stop people illegally copying music, but added that the halt was precautionary. ‘We also intend to re-examine all aspects of our content protection initiative to be sure that it continues to meet our goals of security and ease of consumer use,’ the company said in a statement.
— BBC

Tesco in e-mail marketing assault
Tesco is bombarding UK consumers with a massive e-mail marketing campaign. Way ahead of its supermarket rivals, it issued 44 separate e-mail campaigns last month, more than Sainsbury, Asda, Waitrose and Somerfield put together. According to e-mail marketing firm Interactive Prospect Targeting Services, Tesco is blitzing the nation with 16-20 million e-mails per month. Tesco e-mail campaigns offer deals on everthing from DVDs, books and flowers to wine, gardening kit and gym gear. Targeted ‘Tesco has more information on more people than its rivals, thanks to one of the most sophisticated customer data-collection operations in the UK,’ said Mark Smith, chief executive of marketing company themutual.net. Tesco.com sales were up 31per cent at £401m in the first half of this year.
— BBC

FedEx, pilots contract mediated talks proceed
FedEx Corp. and the union representing its 4,500 pilots opened federally mediated negotiations this week to try to break a stalemate after 20 months of talks, spokesmen from both sides said on Friday. FedEx and the Air Line Pilots Association started Monday with contract talks overseen by the National Mediation Board, concluding a first round of discussions Thursday. No new dates have been set, though Memphis, Tennessee-based FedEx expects a meeting in December. FedEx went to the NMB after the pilots union rejected two contract offers without a vote, spokesman Maury Lane said. The proposals would have raised the average pilot salary to more than $200,000 per year, from about $176,000, he said.
— Reuters

Siemens to cut 3,000 IT jobs outside Germany
German engineering conglomerate Siemens plans to cut 3,000 jobs abroad at loss-making IT services unit SBS in addition to 2,400 it is cutting in Germany, its chief executive said on Friday. ‘If you look to the rest of the world, you can roughly add another 3,000,’ Klaus Kleinfeld told analysts a day after Siemens reported a drop in third-quarter operating profit partly due to a loss of 427 million euros ($500 million) at SBS. Kleinfeld added that he was ready to restructure the company further if necessary. ‘Nothing is sacrosanct and nothing is carved in stone so nobody should assume that they have the right to live with us for ever,’ he said.
— Reuters

BP, Hindustan Petroleum JV talks delayed
Talks between oil major BP Plc and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd. to finalise a joint venture proposed last month have been prolonged as the two differ on its structure, HPCL sources said on Friday. The two companies had signed a letter of intent on Oct. 13 to form an equal joint venture covering refining and marketing, but they were to finalise a binding, detailed agreement within a month. The Indian state-run refiner is, however, insisting BP take only a 26 per cent stake in the joint venture, one source said, adding that HPCL also wanted to rope in a third partner for the refinery in Bhatinda in Punjab.
— Reuters

Serena to be acquired by Silver Lake
Serena Software Inc said on Friday it had agreed to be acquired by private equity firm Silver Lake Partners in a deal valued at about $1.2 billion. The infrastructure software provider said Serena stockholders will receive $24 in cash per share. ‘Our decision to partner with Silver Lake to take the company private represents the culmination of a thorough review of our standalone plan and strategic alternatives,’ said Serena chief executive Mark Woodward, in a statement.
— Reuters

Virtual resort sells for $1,00,000
For a guy who just spent a ton of money for a piece of property that has no physical attributes, Jon Jacobs feels upbeat about the investment and is confident it will pay off in short order. Jacobs, an independent filmmaker from Miami, recently paid $1,00,000 for a virtual ‘space resort’ in the online role-playing game ‘Project Entropia,’ a virtual universe with a real cash economy. ‘I have invested in a business that offers numerous opportunities for generating revenue,’ Jacobs said, pointing out that the digital resort includes 1,000 hotel rooms that could be sold for $100 each, a stadium for hosting hunting or combat competitions, and a nightclub, among its amenities. As in other online role-playing games, Project Entropia has characters that can obtain virtual items like weapons, tools, or property.
— newsfactor.com