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Country’s garment exporters said robust growth in volume that defeated the continuous falls in prices of products over the years will take their earnings to about $7.8 billion in the current fiscal.
   Export earning from apparel sector will be $7656 million in the current fiscal ending today (Friday), declared the Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association at a meeting with buyers on Thursday.
   The association calculated that woven wear that earned $3,256 million with 12 per cent growth during 10 months of the current fiscal, according to government statistics, would reach $3,980 million in total in
   the fiscal, while knitwear which earned $3,007 million in the same period with 33 per cent growth would reach $3,676 million.
   ‘A cumulative average growth rate of 20 per cent shows the contribution of the RMG industry to the economy. With this growing curve the sector had to accommodate capacity enhancement through investment and management of 2,00,000 new workers every year,’ the association said.
   The association’s record showed that in the fiscal 2000-2001, export earnings from apparel sector was $4.8 billion when woven wear earned $3,364 million and knitwear earned $1,496 million.
   The association in its presentation to buyers showed that over the past five years, prices of exported garment fallen significantly.
   The average price of woven wear, priced at $47.06 in the fiscal 2000-2001, declined by 20.27 per cent to $37.52 in the current fiscal 2005-2006.
   Per dozen knitwear priced at $28.48 on average in the 2000-2001 fiscal declined by 17.59 per cent to $23.12 in the current fiscal, the association said.
   ‘The decreasing price over the last few years was a massive blow to the sector.
   It was a challenging job always for the sector to accommodate the price decline vis-à-vis
   regular increase of the price of the raw materials,’ the association said.
   The Export Promotion Bureau, earlier showed that during the 10 months of the current fiscal, country’s apparel sector earned $6,263 million with more then 22 per cent growth on average.
   According to the Bureau, during the period Bangladeshi exporters shipped 80.68 million dozens of woven wear with 16.36 per cent increase in volume while price of the product declined by 3.77 per cent.
   In the same period, exporters shipped about 130 million dozens of knitwear with 34.81 per cent increase in volume while price declined by 1.45 per cent.
   Bangladesh’s apparel sector now employ 2.5 million in more than 5,000 factories and the largest industrial sector contribute more than 75 per cent to the country’s export earnings.

The Bangladesh Bank has raised the reverse repo rates by 0.25 percentage points in last week for mopping up additional liquidity from the market as fiscal years coming to end.
   The rate for 1-3 day tenure of reverse repo has been increased to 6.25 per cent from 6 per cent and rate for 4-9 day tenure increased to 6.5 per cent from 6.25 per cent.
   The Bangladesh Bank has also started mopping up large sum of liquidities from the money market by using reverse repo and treasury bill auctions.
   Only in four days, between June 25-28, 2006, the monetary authority has mopped up over Tk 10,079.5 crore from the market, showed the central bank data.
   ‘As the government borrowing from domestic sources surged in the last days of fiscal year, as it usually happened in the previous years, we mopped up excess liquidity form the market,’ said a senior official of the Bangladesh Bank.
   ‘The mopping up of huge liquidity will not be continued for long as it is a very temporary phenomenon,’ he added.
   The central bank official also said that excess liquidity in the money market may cause negative impact in the foreign exchange market if some players rushed for purchasing dollar after borrowing low-cost fund form the inter-bank money market.
   ‘The central bank is cautiously applying the monetary instruments to check any distortion in the market,’ he added.
   Through the rate hike, the central bank has shifted its position of ‘no rate hike’ in less than two months period and also signalled the market for further interest rate hike.
   In December 2005, reverse repo rates ranged between 5.50 and 5.72 per cent, which increased to 5.60 and 5.90 per cent in March 2006.
   The rates for treasury bills and bonds also increased very marginally, which means the central bank is not ready to accept any excessive rate hike by the banks and financial institutions.
   The rate hike in reverse repo and t-bills is also a reflection that monetary authority will continue its current monetary stance, what they dubbed as ‘cautious accommodative’ monetary stance.
   In reply to a question, the central bank official, however, said that revision of reverse repo rate would depend on inflationary trend.
   ‘The global inflation rate is increasing as well as interest rates and we can’t de-link ourselves from the global trend,’ he added.
   The Bangladesh Bank, in April last, sent signals to the commercial banks to stop the race of hiking deposit and lending rates, and keep them stable as the central bank found level of rate ‘optimal’ at that time.
   The reverse repo rate, one of the core policy rates, was unchanged since end-April as a part of the country’s monetary authority to maintain ‘status quo’ in the interest rate level.
   But in the mid-June, the central bank had to revise its position as market showed a huge inflow of liquidity mainly due to large disbursement of development funds in the last month of the current fiscal year.
   The monetary authority is actively using the repo and reverse repo operations to mop up excess liquidity and meet the quarterly reserve money target.
   The highest amount of money was mopped up on Wednesday worth Tk 2,950 crore through the reserve repo auction. On Sunday the central bank mopped up Tk crore 2,147, on Monday Tk 2,216.5 crore, and on Tuesday Tk 1,976 crore, showed the official data.
   Besides this, through the 26th auction of the treasury bills of 28-day, 91-day, 182-day, 364-day and 2-year tenures on Sunday last, the central bank also mopped up Tk 790 crore from the money market against the total face value of Tk 809.5 crore of these bills.
   The ranges of the implicit yield of the accepted bids were 7.10 per cent for 28-day t-bill, 7.40-7.45 per cent for 91-day, 7.75 per cent for 182-day, 8.30 per cent for 364-day, and 9.10-9.15 per cent for 2-year per annum.
   The bills worth Tk 425.15 crore will be retired in the current week and as a result, net issuance will increase by Tk 384.35 crore during this week.

The Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday went for yet another extension of the time limit for the corporatisation of the member companies of the Dhaka Stock Exchange to December 31.
   Earlier, the SEC set June 30 as the deadline, extending another time limit to bring the DSE member companies under corporatisation to ensure more transparency and accountability in the country’s capital market.
   The SEC executive director, Mansur Alam, said the commission extended the time frame to bring all the DSE companies under corporatisation that would increase transparency and accountability in the capital market.
   The corporatisation of the DSE member companies is required also to fulfil the condition of Asian Development Bank-funded ‘Capital Market Development Programme Loan’, implementation of which started from 1997, he said.
   Meanwhile, the DSE at a board meeting on Thursday gave approval to its 57 member companies to be corporatised upon the approval of the SEC.
   Under the corporatisation process, 57 companies would be transformed to limited companies from companies.
   The chief executive officer of the DSE, Salahuddin Ahmed Khan, said with the corporatisation of 57 companies, total corporatised companies of the DSE now rose to 154 from the 174 registered companies. Of the remaining 20 companies, most of them are processing themselves to be corporatised, he said.

The Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission earned around Tk 439 crore in the first 10 months of the current fiscal year through various charges from telecommunications service providers in the country.
   Sources in the regulatory commission said that the commission earned the amount through revenue sharing agreement with mobile phone operators, public switched telecom network operators, internet service providers and mobile phone vendors.
   According the officials, the income of the regulatory commission has increased nearly Tk 75 crore till April compared to the 2004-05 fiscal year.
   In the 2004-05 fiscal year, the commission earned around Tk 364 crore while it around Tk 146 crore in 2003-04.
   BTRC officials said that the income of the commission has been growing gradually because of the increase of the mobile phone subscribers in the country.
   As per revenue sharing agreement, the commission gets a significant amount from the mobile operators in collected line rent and call charge.
   ‘We are very glad to contribute significantly to the government exchequer,’ said an official of the commission on Thursday.
   The official said that the commission has taken various steps including changes in revenue sharing agreement with the mobile operators to increase the revenue of the commission.
   In the revised revenue sharing agreement, the commission will get around five per cent per annum of the total collected line rents and call charges from the mobile phone operators.
   The government established the BTRC in 2002 under the Bangladesh Telecommunications Act-2001 to oversee the telecommunications development in the country.

Although branded as the most corrupt country, running business in Bangladesh without ‘bribe or corruption’ is possible as a Danish business experienced here for over four years.
   ‘You can do business without bribe or corruption if you want,’ Maersk Bangladesh Limited managing director Per Heisselberg told a press conference at his residence Wednesday night.
   He said the business process is delayed as his company does not bribe. Even then his company has 22 percent share of total export-import cargo to and from the country due to better services. Maersk’s global market share is 25 percent.
   The remarks emerged from a question about the business climate in Bangladesh as the Denmark-based company has been running their business here for long.
   Bangladesh Denmark Business Forum (BDBF), launched here in 2003, arranged the press conference to review the existing trade and investment relations as well as future business potentials between Bangladesh and Denmark.
   BDBF vice president Alamgir MZ Rahman, secretary general Maj (retd) Syed Mahmud Hasan and Al Kashif Group managing director Mujib Ur Rahman Khan were present.
   Heisselberg, who is the chairman of BDBF, sees an immense potential of the country’s economy on the basis of growth in export cargo. ‘Export cargo is growing at least by 15 percent,’ he said.
   He, however, expressed dissatisfaction over the condition of port and other infrastructure problems in Bangladesh like roads and power generation.
   ‘It’s absolutely horrible,’ he spoke about the port problem here, comparing the condition with the ports of Colombo and Singapore. He said container-unloading process takes eight days in Chittagong while only 12 hours in other ports. ‘The port operation should be run through private management,’ he said, replying to another question.
   To tap Bangladesh’s growth potential, the Danish businessman raised his finger to address the infrastructure problems
   as well as to attack the poten-
   tials in ICT, electrical and electronics, and pharmaceuticals
   sectors. He said the connectivity to the submarine cable has offered a tremendous opportunity to develop IT-related business while the country should now slowly go for manufacturing electronics like refrigerators and radios.

China has arranged a training programme for the managers and technicians of the textile industry of Bangladesh here.
   A group of 30 professionals including teachers, managers and technical experts from both public and private sectors is taking part in the training programme.
   The programme, sponsored by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce, is being conducted by the Institute of Political Develop-ment and Government Adminis-tration of Beijing University, according to a release from the Bangladesh Embassy here.
   The 20-day training programme would cover a wide range of topics like production, designing, dying, human resource management, marketing and brand strategy etc.

Both the inter-bank money market and inter-bank foreign exchange market were stable on Thursday.
   The inter-bank call money rate was steady due to sufficient liquidity flow, fund managers said.
   The rate touched its high at 21 per cent and ranged between 13 per cent and 18 per cent in most deals.
   The money market experienced higher liquidity flow and the demand for cash was low as every one had higher inflow of money, they said.
   Sonali, Agrani and Janata Bank led the inter-bank money market providing loan supports to more than 15 commercial banks and financial institutions, fund managers said.
   The Bangladesh taka was steady against the dollar due to higher inflow, while it remained firm against the euro ahead of a US interest rate decision, dealers said.
   The US dollar traded at Tk 69.15/28 in inter-bank trading in line with its previous closing, but in cash transactions, banks charged higher rates between
   Taka 69.15 and 70.00 for one unit of cash dollar, they said.
   The supply of dollar has improved since last month due to higher remittance earnings and export receipts, a dealer of a leading commercial bank said.

World Trade Organisation talks need a total overhaul to stifle the underhand tactics that rich member states use against developing nations, the campaign group Action Aid International said Thursday.
   In a new report released as WTO members gathered here to revitalise their struggling Doha Round trade liberalisation talks, Action Aid spotlighted what it said were major flaws at the organisation’s conference in Hong Kong last December.
   The British-based group warned that poor nations could be in for more of the same during the upcoming talks at the WTO’s Geneva base, which run officially from Friday and are expected to last until Sunday or Monday.
   In Hong Kong, the 149 trading nations in the WTO set a December 2006 target for completing the Doha Round, which was launched in 2001 in an effort to cut trade barriers and use commerce to help developing countries.
   The campaign group said that the loose deal worked out in Hong Kong was largely cosmetic.
   Vague offers of reductions in rich nations’ farm subsidies and tariff barriers would bring little real benefit to developing countries and could even hurt them, it added.

Global food supplies may be at risk without new production methods because rising carbon dioxide (CO2) levels fail to compensate for drier conditions associated with global warming, a study said Thursday.
   Researchers used landmark open-field tests to study how the world’s main staples—such as corn, rice, sorghum, soybeans and wheat—would grow under conditions projected for 2050.
   The study, published in Science magazine, found that crop yields were about 50 per cent below those drawn from similar, earlier experiments conducted in enclosed test conditions.
   It assumed that CO2 rates in 2050 would be 1.5 times greater than now, while ozone levels were projected to rise by about a quarter.

The Bangladesh Agriculture Development Corporation (BADC) will import a total of two lakh tonnes of TSP and one lakh tonne of MOP fertilisers in the fiscal year 2006-07.
   High officials of the BADC said Thursday that they have already received official order from the ministry of agriculture to import fertiliser along with the BCIC (Bangladesh Chemical and Industries Corporation) and private enterprises during the new fiscal.
   They said the BADC is going to import fertiliser after a long 16 years with a view to establishing government’s control and ensuring transparency on fertiliser sector. BADC imported fertiliser last in 1990 as the government later stopped its import by the BADC, they said.
   The agriculture ministry, in a recent formal order, asked the BADC to import four lakh tonnes of TSP and three lakh tonnes of MOP for the FY 2006-07. But after a thorough evaluation of the international market and the availability of distribution infrastructure, the BADC decided to import two lakh tonnes of TSP and one Lakh tonne of MOP during the new fiscal through four shipments, BADC sources said.
   The sources, however, expre-ssed apprehension that it may be difficult to fulfil the ministry’s target successfully within the fiscal as the BADC is going to import fertiliser import and distribution operation after a long gap.

Agriculture Minister MK Anwar Thursday asked all concerned officials to take advance plan to ensure implementation of all projects under the Annual Development Programme timely.
   He said this while reviewing the progress of implementation of different projects undertaken for the agriculture development at a meeting at the conference room of the ministry, an official handout said.
   All chief executives of the organizations under the ministry, representatives from different ministries and high officials of the ministry attended the meeting.
   The meeting was informed that the Taka 610 crore was released out of Taka 632 crore allocated against 76 projects under the ADP of 2005-06 Fiscal.
   Taka 60.35 per cent was spent for the projects upto May of current year. It was also informed that Taka 98 percent would be spent at the end of June because the works of most of the projects were completed.
   The meeting further told that 11 new projects, like coordinated agriculture development, setting up of agriculture training institute, operating of inoperative tubewells and development of Brondra coordinated areas, would be taken in the next fiscal 2006-07.
   Anwar asked the concerned organisations to take preparations for undertaking different projects at the beginning of the year.

Ragib Ali, a founder life member of the North South University (NSU) Foundation and a distinguished industrialist of the country, has been unanimously elected the chairman of the foundation at its 14th annual general meeting held on Monday.
   In the past, several times, he served as the vice-chairman of the foundation, besides being its founder vice-chairman.
   Ali is also a leading person in business, commerce and industry.

Syed Shamim Ahsan has been elected chairman of the Social Marketing Company (SMC).
   He was a secretary to the Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh. He joined the Civil Service of Pakistan in 1961 and has served as the Secretary, Railway Division, Ministry of Communications; Member, Planning Commission; Secretary, Ministry of Irrigation, Water and Flood Control and Secretary, Ministry of Health and Family Planning.

World Trade Organisation nations were on Thursday bracing for a new attempt to break a deadlock in negotiations on a treaty that would tear down barriers to global commerce.
   A string of senior officials have issued dire warnings about any failure to bridge differences during several days of round-the-clock meetings here.
   WTO chief Pascal Lamy has warned that the organisation’s members cannot afford to duck a deal this time, after missing a host of deadlines during their stumbling Doha Round negotiations.
   Postponing a decision would be a ‘recipe for disaster,’ jeopardising efforts to reach a final accord by a cut-off date of December 2006, Lamy warned on Wednesday.
   Lamy has thrown down the gauntlet to the European Union, United States and developing-world powerhouses such as Brazil and India, urging them to make concessions in order to break the logjam after almost five years of negotiating.
   The three camps have been sparring for years, trading blame for the sluggishness in the Doha Round, which was launched in the Qatari capital in 2001 and was originally meant to end in 2004.
   The aim of the round is to dismantle trade barriers and harness global commerce to boost development in poor countries, who make up the majority at the 149-nation WTO.
   Lamy refers regularly to the ‘triangle’ needed to spur the talks.
   Washington should make wider concessions on farm subsidies, Brussels should offer more access for farm imports into the EU, while key emerging nations such as Brazil and India should in turn make deeper cuts to barriers on industrial goods, he says.
   The latest talks at the WTO’s Geneva base are officially due to begin on Friday, but trade ministers and other senior officials from around 60 countries were also set to hold a range of parallel meetings starting from Thursday.
   Top officials from Australia, Brazil, the EU, India, Japan and the US—the so-called G6, who are key WTO players—were scheduled to gather on Thursday evening.
   The Brazilian- and Indian-led G20 group of developing countries, and other blocs within the WTO, were also expected to hone their positions in closed-door sessions.
   The overall talks, which are expected to run into Sunday or Monday, centre on the mathematics for cutting subsidies and customs duties.

Political tensions have encouraged Arab investors to shift from depositing oil profits in US investments to Europe, India and China, the head of Citigroup’s emerging market bank said Wednesday.
   ‘Quite honestly today the investment going into the US is extremely limited,’ said Shirish Apte, chief executive officer of Citigroup’s Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa Corporate and Investment Banking unit.
   ‘9/11 was a very defining moment between the US and the region,’ he told the US-Arab economic forum in Houston, Texas.
   Travel has become very difficult for Arab investors and the recent scuttling of a deal with the United Arab Emirates to manage US ports due to pressure from US lawmakers has further undermined confidence, he said.
   ‘If there were no other places to invest, clearly the money would come into the US but when you look at what’s going on in China and India’ it’s clear there are attractive options elsewhere, Apte said.
   Europe is also an attractive destination for investments, he said.
   Today’s oil surplus funds are also being directed in a different way than those of the 1970s which were primarily directed towards passive investments such as government bonds, Apte said.
   A large portion of the surplus is being reinvested in the infrastructure of the region and expansion of refining capacities. Investors are also now looking to more active investments.
   At a session discussing security and free trade, a number of senior Arab officials decried the difficulties and humiliations involved in obtaining visas to enter the United States.
   ‘You say you want our oil and gas but not our business,’ said Hussein Al-Athel, secretary general of the Riyadh Chamber of Commerce.
   ‘We talk to US companies and business and at the end of the day they say sorry, the lawyers advised us against it there are security concerns.’

India Wednesday attacked developed nations for dragging their feet in addressing the development concerns in WTO talks and said the Mini-Ministerial beginning in Geneva tomorrow provided an opportunity to tackle the issue ‘frontally and substantially’.
   ‘There is a growing disquiet that the contours of the development dimension of the Doha Round are not yet apparent,’ Commerce Minister Kamal Nath said in a letter to trade ministers of WTO member countries.
   ‘What does development mean. Surely, it cannot mean displacement of subsistence farmers and de-industrialisation of developing economies,’ he said, emphasising that development challenges of Doha Round must be addressed if WTO talks are to succeed.
   Nath said WTO members must recognise the stark reality that the situations of developed and developing countries differed in crucial aspects.
   ‘While sensitivities of developed countries in matters of trade liberalisation involve commercial issues, for developing countries such sensitivities involve the survival of their poorest citizens, the bulk of whom depend on agriculture for their livelihood,’ Nath said.
   These two differing sets of concerns were not equal and could not be treated equally, he said, adding livelihood security and subsistence of the poor were not negotiable.
   The four-day meeting would attempt to agree on the contentious issues of agriculture and industrial tariffs so as to complete the Doha round of trade talks by the end of this year.
   But wide gaps have persisted between rich countries like the US and EU and deve- loping nations led by India and Brazil.
   Nath said India and other developing countries have been pressing for a very substantial reductions in farm subsidies by rich nations like the US and EU, besides insisting that farm tariff cuts by poor countries should be less steep.
   In industrial tariffs, known as Non-Agricultural Market Access in WTO jargon, Nath said developing countries should not be prevented from promoting their infant industries.
   ‘An over-ambitious programme of tariff liberalisation can permanently foreclose the possibility of industrial development in many developing countries - in some cases, actually leading to de-industrialisation,’ he said.

Shanghai’s fames outdoor market, Xiangyang, a popular haunt for tourists eager to snap up fake goods, will close permanently Friday, an official said, as part of efforts to spruce up the city’s image.
   Workers will on Friday night move in to demolish the hundreds of stalls in the narrow alleys of the market after foreign trade officials singled it out as an example of China’s cavalier attitude towards copyright violations.
   ‘Tommorrow night at 9:30 pm the market will be completely torn down,’ said Jiu Jian, a spokesman for the government that is overseeing the operation.
   For more than six years the bazaar has tempted locals and tourists with all-manner of knock-off goods, from Levi jeans selling for eight dollars to Ray-Ban sunglasses for 10 dollars and fake Gucci handbags sold at a fraction of their usual 1,000-dollar price tag.
   City authorities have said measures have been taken to ensure the closure will not simply be a change of location, but a thorough shutdown.
   ‘This is not a temporary shutdown but a complete shutdown of the market,’ said Jiu.
   Beijing’s famous Silk Market, which closed in January last year, was moved to another building where most merchants were selling the exact same pirated goods as they were before.
   The Beijing Silk Market is now embroiled in a legal battle with Chanel, Prada, Burberry, Louis Vuitton and Gucci, after a court ordered the market to pay damages for selling counterfeit goods.
   In Shanghai more than 700 vendors will move to other markets around the city, with many having signed one year contracts, the Shanghai Evening Post reported earlier.
   ‘They have also promised not to sell fake goods to customers,’ the newspaper said.
   China produces around 70 per cent of the world’s counterfeit goods and major trade partners such as the United States say it costs their companies billions of dollars a year.

Singapore will host a brainstorming session on ways to develop a Silicon Valley-style research community to help drive economic development, the government said Thursday.
   Top executives from some of the world's leading firms including DuPont and Mitsui Chemicals will exchange ideas and proposals with key public officials involved with the project, the National Research Foundation said.
   ‘Everybody has heard about Silicon Valley, about Google, about the high-tech companies which have been built there,’ Tony Tan, chairman of the foundation, said of California's high-tech centre.
   ‘There will be plans to formalise it and how to set up international research centres that will be a magnet for research talent,’ he told a media briefing.
   During the four-day session next week, participants will also explore ways to grow three sectors that Singapore has listed as new growth drivers as it seeks to reach the level of industrial development found in resource-scarce European nations like Switzerland and Finland. Tiny Singapore has no natural resources.
   The three sectors are biomedical sciences, environmental and water technologies, and interactive digital media. The main aim is to further the economy's growth potential, Tan said.
   ‘At the end of the day, all the proposals must translate into jobs, into economic growth, into creating value added, more wealth for Singaporeans, better quality jobs,’ he said.
   Singapore has found itself and its key electronics sector under growing pressure from other Asian countries, especially China, where production costs are cheaper.
   To remain competitive, the government has poured billions of dollars into developing new growth engines for the economy with a strong focus on higher-value, research-intensive industries including biomedical science which now accounts for five percent of gross domestic product.

China will launch Saturday the world’s highest railway, linking the scenically spectacular but politically sensitive Himalayan region of Tibet with the rest of the country.
   Along with a second manned space flight in October and the completion of the Three Gorges Dam in May, the railway to the ‘Roof of the World’ highlights China’s fierce ambitions in keeping with the Communist nation’s remarkable economic rise.
   Work on the Tibet railway, which runs dizzily at heights of above 5,000 metres (16,400 feet), was launched in the 1950s but suspended after the extention of the line to the western town of Golmud in 1984.
   Work was relaunched in 2001, with 34 billion yuan (4.2 billion dollars) since being poured into the project, according to government figures.
   From Saturday, passengers will be able to travel the 4,561 kilometres (2,890 miles) from Beijing to Lhasa in pressurized rail cars far more cheaply than a plane flight—less than 50 dollars for a ‘hard seat’ and 158 dollars for a bed.
   In a letter to those who had worked on the project sent upon its completion in October, Chinese President Hu Jintao hailed ‘a colossal work unprecedented in railway history’.
   In the past few weeks, the state-controlled press has repeatedly praised the technical prowess that allowed more than 1,000 kilometers of final track to be laid in just four years.
   The railway cuts through permanently frozen terrain as it passes over the Tibetan plateau, snaking around snow-peaked mountains, deserts, lakes and prairies.
   Beijing hopes the rail line will provide the key to the economic development of the west of the country, which lags behind the richer coastal provinces of the east.
   The track should lead to an influx of tourists to Tibet—a region moulded by its Buddhist spirituality that remained isolated until half-way through the last century—and allow for the easier export of its mineral resources.
   But more controversially, opponents of the multi-billion dollar project say it will lead to a flood of Han Chinese that will further erode Tibet’s unique Buddhist culture.
   Tibet has been ruled by China since its troops ‘liberated’ the region in 1950. The region’s spirutual leader, the Dalai Lama, fled to India in 1959 as a Tibetan uprising failed and established his government-in-exile in Dharamsala.

The European Union’s chief agricultural trade negotiator urged Washington Thursday to make new concessions on subsidies to US farmers, saying the move was crucial to reviving stalled talks on liberalising global commerce.
   Ahead of crunch World Trade Organisation talks here, EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel challenged the United States to come forward with deeper cuts than it has already put on the table.
   ‘We will be very cautious, because cosmetic offers are not enough,’ Fischer Boel told journalists.
   ‘We need real offers, specifically on domestic support, from the US. Domestic support is crucial.’
   Critics have claimed that an existing US subsidy-cutting proposal does not go far enough, alleging that it will do little to bite into real payouts and allow American farmers to continue undercutting their competitors.
   Washington rejects such assertions as wrongheaded and says that its offer will have a real impact on world trade.

The United Nations averted a financial crisis Wednesday by deciding to lift a temporary spending cap on its 2006
   budget so that the world governing body would not have to shut down.
   Despite objections from the United States, the UN budget commission lifted a 950-million-dollar spending cap on the two- year 3.798-billion- dollar budget agreed last December by consensus without resorting to a vote.
   Only three nations among the UN’s 192 member states—the United States, Australia and Japan—refused to endorse the decision.
   The UN General Assembly is widely expected to approve the decision during a plenary session Friday.

The dollar extended gains in Asian trade Thursday as the market waited for a widely expected US interest rate hike and a clear lead on the prospects for further rises, dealers said.
   The dollar inched up to 116.49 yen in Tokyo afternoon trade from 116.44 in New York late Wednesday.
   The euro was slightly lower at 1.2546 dollars after 1.2555 and at 146.14 yen from 146.21.
   The market is anticipating a quarter-point rate hike from the US central bank later Thursday, the 17th in a row, to take the federal funds rate to 5.25 per cent. Some even see a possible half-point hike.
   ‘The dollar remained firm ahead of an expected 0.25-per cent age-point Fed rate hike,’ said Shigetake Nakayama, foreign exchange trading manager at the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ.
   ‘The market consensus is also for another rate hike in August and players are waiting to see whether the accompanying Fed statement supports that view,’ he added.
   In the meantime, weaker-than-expected Japanese industrial data spurred some yen-selling, Nakayama said.
   Japan’s industrial output fell 1.0 per cent in May from April, the first decline in three months, but was up 4.2 per cent year-on-year, the trade ministry said.
   Although market attention is now focused on the outlook for US interest rates, attention is soon expected to shift back to Japan, Nakayama said.
   The Bank of Japan (BoJ) is scheduled to release its closely watched quarterly Tankan survey on business confidence next Monday which is expected to be key to the timing of the end of the zero interest rate policy.
   Mitsubishi UFJ Securities currency analyst Minoru Shioiri said that if Japan’s consumer price data Friday and the Tankan survey are robust enough, expectations of an end to Japan’s zero interest rates in July should resurface, weighing on the dollar.
   Against the euro, the dollar was little changed ahead of next week’s European Central Bank meeting.
   ‘While there are expectations for a rate hike at next week’s ECB meeting, the deterioration of supply and demand conditions may limit any rebound of the euro against the dollar due to talks of massive redemption of euro-denominated bonds,’ Shioiri said.
   The dollar rose to 960.15 South Korean won from 957.3 on Wednesday, to 1.5978 Singapore dollars from 1.5960, to 53.605 Philippine pesos from 53.505 and to 38.460 Thai baht from 38.435.

World oil prices Thursday extended gains won a day earlier on data that revealed steep falls in US energy stockpiles.
   New York’s main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in August, climbed 28 cents to 72.47 dollars per barrel in electronic deals before the official opening of the US
   market.
   In London, Brent North Sea crude for August delivery rose 41 cents to 71.82 dollars per barrel in electronic trading.
   Crude futures had risen on Wednesday after the Department of Energy (DoE) said that US reserves of gasoline, or petrol, had fallen by one million barrels to 212.4 million last week. Analysts’ consensus forecast had been for a rise of 450,000 barrels.
   Crude oil reserves meanwhile fell by 3.4 million barrels to 343.7 million over the week ended June 23, DoE added in its weekly market update.

Increased revenue accounts
   As per audited accounts as on December 31, 2005, Fareast Life Insurance has reported an increase in life revenue account of Tk 56.70 crore with total life insurance fund of Tk 144.58 crore as against Tk 41.22 crore and Tk 87.89 crore respectively as on December 31, 2004.
   Progressive Life Insurance has reported an increase in life revenue account of Tk 8.59 crore with total life insurance fund of Tk. 15.93 crore as against Tk 4.55 crore and Tk 7.35 crore respectively as on December 31, 2004.
   
   Trade resumption
   Trading of the shares of Padma Textiles will resume on July 2 after Record Date.
   
   Transaction
   SM Abu Mohsin, one of the sponsors of NCC Bank Ltd, has reported his intention to sell 5,000 shares out of his holdings of 1,82,574 shares while, another sponsor Abdus Salam, has reported his intention to buy 5,000 shares in addition to his holdings of 2,08,846 shares of the bank through stock exchange within next 30 working days.
   Source: DSE, CSE

Bangladesh tops foreign patients
list in S’pore
Bangladeshi has included in the top 10 list of foreign patients in Singapore in 2005, said a press release of the Singapore Medicine. A rising number of foreigners are coming to Singapore for medical treatment where share of Bangladeshi patients are rising. ‘In 2005, some 3,74,000 patients came in the island state, posting a 17 per cent growth over the 3,20,000 patients in 2004,’ said Jason Yap, Singapore Tourism Board’s director of healthcare services. Raffles Hospital and the Parkway Group, which runs the Mounf Elizabeth and Gleneagles Hospitals, has offices in Bangladesh. Parkway Group Healthcare Pvt Ltd took part in MEDEXPO 2003.
— New Age

Taiwan-China trade up 15.1pc
Trade between Taiwan and China in the four months to April rose 15.1 per cent to 26.65 billion US dollars, Taiwan’s Board of Foreign Trade said Thursday. The figure accounted for 20.2 per cent of Taiwan’s total external trade during the period, compared with 19.4 per cent a year earlier, it said. For the January-April period, Taiwan registered a trade surplus with China of 11.99 billion US dollars, up 10.9 per cent from a year earlier. Taiswn’s exports to the mainland rose 13.8 per cent to 19.32 billion US dollars and imports there were up 18.7 per cent at 7.33 billion dollars.
— AFP