Main Page «
Front Page «
Metro «
International «
Sports «
National «
Editorial «
Op-Ed «
Home «
Timeout «
Letters «

Archive «
Launch Supplement «
Special Supplements «

Indian exporters are dumping a large quantity of substandard sugar in Bangladesh, posing serious threat to consumers’ health, industry sources and consumer rights activists said.
   Violating the antidumping suits filed with the WTO by Australia and Thailand, they are exporting substandard sugar to different countries including Bangladesh, they said.
   Indian exporters have dumped 73,462 tonnes of sugar into Bangladesh market in the last five months from July-November. Import of sugar from India increased five times during the period compared to the same time in the pervious fiscal year, official figure showed.
   To save consumers and local industries, consumer right activists demanded immediate blocking of such kind of sugar, having intolerable level of hydrous, a deadly toxic chemical.
   ‘We urge the government to block the import of sugar that poses serious threat to human health,’ said Emdad Hossain Malek, chief of market monitoring cell of Consumers’ Association of Bangladesh.
   Attention to hazardous sugar was drawn a couple of months back after deadly chemical agent, hydrous, was found in several consignments. Hydrous causes many serious diseases, including cancer, health experts warned earlier.
   Industry people say Bangladeshi importers procure sugar mainly from small Indian mills which use toxic sulphur and hydrogen peroxide for whitening sugar and thus produce hydrous.
   The government also asked the customs authorities to carry out test on every consignment of sugar in laboratory.
   Sources in the Benapole land port said Bangladesh Standards and Testing Institution fails to do the tests properly as the land port has neither enough capacity to house all import consignments nor testing laboratories.
   The state-owned Bangladesh Sugar and Food Industries Corporation and private sector sugar refiners in the last week urged the National Board of Revenue to immediately ban on import of sugar from India through at least land ports.
   At a meeting with officials of the NBR in its headquarters in Dhaka, local sugar producers also said if the government did not immediately raise import duty on finished sugar, local sugar industry would collapse within next few months.
   An official of the BSFIC told the meeting that the Indian government was providing $65 subsidy on every tonne of sugar exported. Moreover, interest free export loans were being provided to make finished sugar cheaper even than that of raw sugar in international market, he added.
   A raw sugar refiner told the meeting that an increase in dumping of Indian sugar threatened the first generation refiners that started operations just one and a half years back.
   The government in the current fiscal has retained import duty on finished sugar at Tk 5,000 per tonne and lowered on raw sugar by Tk 1,750 per tonne to Tk 4,000.
   Industry owners said if the duty on finished sugar was not raised to Tk 10,000 per tonne immediately, local sugar industry would never be viable to fight importers who dump subsidised and substandard Indian sugar.
   Sugar exporters of Thailand and Australia, the world’s two leading sugar exporting countries, complained to the WTO that Indian exporters were dumping their sugar abroad.
   The exporters questioned India’s inland transport subsidy given to her exporters who had been struggling falling prices of sugar in global market, according to a report of Indian Express published early December.

Low-cost handsets of different brands were the main attraction of the 2nd Dhaka International Mobile Phone Fair which ended on Friday with huge crowd at the Bangladesh China Friendship Conference Centre in the city.
   Visitors who were not connected with the mobile network but seeking low-cost handset with a connection visited in the stalls and pavilions who offered low-cost handsets.
   Organisers on the closing day said the aim of the fair was to extend the cellular phone service to the maximum number of people who were still out of network.
   They said they got huge response from the visitors which indicated huge demand of low-cost and affordable handsets beside the multimedia sets.
   Sanaul Ahmed and his wife Munira entered the fair after waiting in a long queue on Friday. Sanaul said they bought two handsets — one at Tk 1,500 and the other at Tk 2,800 — with connection for his wife and his mother who lived in village.
   Around 30 thousand visitors visited the fair where they got not only the hand set but other services, including the mobile phone operators, said the organisers.
   The Bangladesh Mobile Phone Businessmen Association organised the five-day fair in association with the Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industries.
   Different mobile phone operator companies, handset importers and distributors, content providers, telecommunication accessories and telecommunication related institutions participated in the fair that housed 62 stalls and 21 pavilions.
   Demand of multi-media handsets was higher beside the low-cost handsets at the fair. Mainly the young and business users bought the multimedia phone, said a sells representative at the Sony Ericsson pavilion.
   He said Sony Ericsson brought different handsets the price of which ranged from Tk 8000 to more.
   Pavilion of Nokia N series got huge crowd where they exhibited different functions of Nokia multimedia phone.
   Almost all the stalls and pavilion gave special discount price for the fair, prizes in scratch card and other gifts on the products.
   A seminar was held on ending day of the fair where the speaker focused on some issues of mobile phone technology like present situation and future opportunities of mobile telephone sector, role and responsibilities of mobile telephone business association in the development of mobile telephone industry, necessity of establish a mobile handset industry and government role to develop the industry and strategies of stop misuse of mobile phone. Aminul Huq, managing director of Teletalk, was chief guest at the seminar.
   Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Venn got the best stall award. Teletalk, Integra and Maximus got the best seller prize at the closing ceremony.

Bid for importing diesel from Indian oil corporation hit snag as the move taken by Bangladesh petroleum corporation to strike a deal in this regard flopped, sources inside BPC said.
   The move failed as IOC   declined to lower its premium against the supply of diesel to BPC, sources added.
   IOC demanded a premium of over six US dollars per barrel of   diesel while BPC tried to negotiate below six dollars, officials said.
   A delegation of IOC  which came on Tuesday to negotiate the premium for signing a deal to supply 100,000 metric tons of diesel, returned on Thursday   after holding an inconclusive talks with BPC officials, they added.
   “Our meeting with IOC delegation ended inconclusively as our attempt to negotiate the premium failed” said the director (operation) of BPC Mozammel Huq.
   “We held marathon meeting with IOC team after its arrival, but we could not reach any agreement” he added saying “IOC team stick to its demand for premium of six dollars which we could not afford”.
   “The IOC team however, assured us of reviewing the premium issue by the end of January, 2008” he also said.
   If IOC agrees to lower the premium, the diesel will be directly supplied to Daulatpur depot of BPC based in Khulna on board special barges from Haldia port of India, the BPC officials informed.
   Earlier, BPC imported 200,000 metric tons of diesel from IOC in the year 2006, officials said.
   Meanwhile, BPC signed a deal with another Indian company Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd by the end of May this year, to import 120,000 MT of diesel.
   BPC officials said that the premium in this deal was fixed at 5.49 US dollars per barrel.
   The first consignment of diesel from BPCL is expected to reach by next week, BPC officials said adding that every month it will supply a consignment of 10,000 MT of diesel.
   BPC imports about 3.7 million MT of fuel annually and most of those are supplied by Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, BPC officials said. EOM

OPEC on Friday raised its estimate for world oil demand growth in 2008, owing to fast-growing demand for transport and industrial fuel in developing countries, but kept unchanged its forecast for world oil demand this year.
   ‘The coming holiday season is keeping the kerosene jet fuel demand healthy worldwide,’ the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries said in its December monthly report. ‘Total world oil demand growth in 2007 is forecast at 1.2 million barrel per day or 1.42 per cent,’ the report said.
   Nevertheless, world oil demand next year was projected to rise by 1.3 million bpd or 1.54 per cent next year, a slight upward revision from the cartel’s previous forecast of 1.53 per cent.
   Increasing oil demand was driven largely by developing countries, which accounted for 80 per cent of demand growth, OPEC said.
   Between end-August and mid-November, prices jumped by almost 25 dollars a barrel and the OPEC’s own reference basket reached a record high of 91.91 dollars a barrel on November 21.
   ‘In addition to geopolitics, the main factors behind the upward trend were the ongoing US dollar weakness, persistent refinery outages and weather-related supply disruptions,’ OPEC said. ‘Increasing downside risks have not affected the overall strong growth performance in the global economy in 2007, estimated to have achieved 5.2 per cent,’ the report said.
   ‘However, prospects for 2008 are increasingly clouded by the expected slowdown in the US economy and other OECD regions, and by continued turbulence in financial markets in the wake of the deepening sub-prime mortgage crisis.’
   Falling interest rates may help avert a sharp slowdown in the US economy, but the world economy was projected to grow by 4.8 per cent in 2008 and there were ‘considerable downside risks are attached to this figure,’ OPEC warned.

The World Bank body that aids the poorest countries said Friday that its donors have pledged a record 41.6 billion dollars for its 2008-2011 budget.
   The International Development Association said at the end of a two-day donors’ conference in Berlin that the pledges marked a 9.5 per cent increase on contributions in the previous three-year period.
   The 185-nation World Bank said its growing field of IDA donors now included China as well as Cyprus, Egypt, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
   Created in 1960, the IDA grants aid and interest-free loans to the world’s 80
   poorest countries, home to 2.5 billion people, half of the total population of the developing world.
   About 1.5 billion people in the currently eligible countries subsist on incomes of two dollars a day or less.
   Thirty-nine of the countries are in Africa and about half the money goes to the impoverished continent.
   The donors’ meeting in Berlin covered contributions for the three years between July 1, 2008 and June 30, 2011.

Energy use by datacenters in the Asia-Pacific is set to double from 2005 to 2010 as growth in the region’s consumption outpaces the rest of the world’s, said a study released Thursday.
   The region excluding Japan will require electricity equal to output from two new 1,000-megawatt power plants by 2010 to run datacenters, which house computer systems, and telecommunications, storage and cooling systems, it said.
   The report, released by US chip giant Advanced Micro Devices, detailed what it called shifting patterns in worldwide datacenter energy use in the United States, Western Europe, Japan, the Asia-Pacific and the rest of the world.
   The US share of total world server electricity use from datacenters will likely decline from 40 per cent in 2000 to about one-third by 2010, while the Asia-Pacific region will increase its share from 10 per cent to about 16 per cent over that period, the study said.
   Electricity used by datacenters in the United States and Europe makes up about two-thirds of the world’s total, with Japan, Asia-Pacific and the rest of the world each at between 10 and 15 per cent.
   From 2000 to 2005, the study found that electricity use by datacenters in the Asia-Pacific region grew at a 23 per cent annual rate, outpacing a world average of 16 per cent a year.
   The report coincides with world climate talks in the Indonesian resort of Bali where more than 180 countries are discussing a framework for tackling global warming past 2012, when pledges under the Kyoto Protocol expire.
   Growing use of electricity by datacenters and Internet-related systems has been a subject of concern in the expanding information-technology industry amid worries over global warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels.
   ‘Coal provides 25 per cent of global primary energy needs and generates 40 per cent of the world’s electricity,’ said AMD environmental strategist Larry Vertal in a statement.
   ‘We must work harder than ever to not only deliver more efficient server and cooling technology, but also work with our industry and government partners in areas where we see the most dramatic increases in energy use,’ he said.

Oil prices jumped back above 93 dollars a barrel in London Friday on expectations of higher demand for crude in 2008, analysts said.
   Both the International Energy Agency and OPEC on Friday raised their estimates for global oil demand next year.
   Brent North Sea crude for January rallied 1.05 dollars to 93.17 dollars per barrel.
   New York’s main contract, light sweet crude for January delivery, gained 68 cents to 92.93 dollars per barrel.
   ‘Oil futures were higher boosted by an IEA report,’ Sucden analyst Andrey Kryuchenkov said.
   The International Energy Agency raised its forecast for world oil demand for next year by 115,000 barrels per day because of demand from emerging economies.
   But the agency, the developed world’s energy watchdog, lowered its 2007 world oil demand forecast owing to lower-than-expected heating fuel consumption in North America and in Europe.
   The IEA’s latest monthly report also said that supply-demand balances for winter had ‘clearly improved’ but warned that the market was still nervous, as indicated by oil prices, which are still around 90 dollars per barrel.
   ‘90 dollars a barrel oil makes clear that the market is still on edge and is unlikely to relax until the peak weather risks have subsided and a clear trend in OPEC supplies is apparent,’ the report said.
   Oil prices had tumbled on Thursday as traders turned sceptical about the success of a coordinated central bank action this week aimed at easing tight credit to avert a sharp economic slowdown.

Myanmar will hold a new auction of gems and jade in January, state media said Friday, amid calls for a boycott and sanctions against the junta following its bloody crackdown on protests.
   The auction will take place from January 15 to 19, the state-run Mirror newspaper said without giving further details.
   The poverty-stricken country is the source of up to 90 per cent of the world’s rubies, and each auction of precious stones rakes in more than 100 million dollars, making it a key source of revenue for the military regime.
   But robust demand from jade-crazed China, Thailand and Singapore continued to boost gem trading.

Japan’s business confidence has sunk to the lowest level in over two years as executives fret over a shaky global economy, stronger yen and rising costs, a central bank survey showed Friday.
   The survey results underscored the patchy nature of a recovery in Asia’s largest economy after a decade-long slump, and supported the market view that the Bank of Japan will refrain from hiking interest rates again any time soon.
   But despite the cautious mood, major companies upgraded their plans for spending on new plants and equipment, allaying fears of cutbacks.
   The Bank of Japan said its sentiment index for big manufacturers slid to 19 in December from 23 in September, missing forecasts for a figure of 21.
   It was the first decline in the index in three quarters and showed sentiment at the lowest level since September 2005.
   Confidence among major non-manufacturers dropped to 16 from 20, according to the BoJ’s ‘Tankan’ survey of more than 10,000 firms.
   ‘The survey indicates that the Japanese economy is slowing,’ said Lehman Brothers economist Hiroshi Shiraishi.
   The sentiment indices for large manufacturers and non-manufacturers are both forecast to drop to 15 in the first quarter of 2008, the BoJ said.
   The big manufacturers’ index is still much higher than a low of minus 38 struck five years ago, even if it has fallen further from a two-year high of 25 seen in December 2006.
   The rising cost of energy and other commodities and a slowdown in the US economy caused by the sub-prime loan crisis appeared to be the main causes, said Mamoru Yamazaki, chief economist at RBS Securities in Tokyo.
   ‘Corporate activity will likely worsen throughout next year,’ he added. ‘The Japanese economy will remain in a growth lull during the first half of next year.’
   Even so major companies of all industries now expect to boost spending on new equipment and factories by 10.5 per cent in the current fiscal year to next March, compared with a gain of 8.7 per cent forecast in September.
   The report also showed that firms have raised their profit forecasts amid solid exports to emerging markets.
   Companies of all sizes now expected pretax profits to rise 1.1 per cent on average this fiscal year, up from an earlier forecast of a 0.5 per cent growth.
   Robust business investment has been a key driver of Japan’s economic recovery, but a drop in spending caused the Japanese economy to contract in the three months to June, and third-quarter growth was sluggish.
   ‘Despite the upward revision to large manufacturer’s intentions, the overall picture of business investment is one of fragility, not strength,’ said Glenn Maguire, chief Asia economist at Societe Generale.
   ‘The economy is crucially dependent on the investment activities of large manufacturers,’ he noted.
   The sluggish survey reinforced market expectations that the BoJ will leave its super-low interest rates on hold at 0.5 per cent well into next year.
   ‘There is absolutely nothing in the Tankan that could possibly justify a near-term tightening from the Bank of Japan,’ said Maguire.
   Yamazaki at RBS Securities agreed that it would be ‘very difficult for the BoJ to raise interest rates in the near future,’ predicting that the next rate hike would come in August 2008 at the earliest.
   The BoJ raised interest rates in 2006 for the first time in almost six years. It hiked rates again in February but has held them steady since then amid domestic political uncertainty and financial market turmoil.
   Inflation has also taken longer than expected to return after years of deflation, with consumers reluctant to splurge as companies continue to award only meagre pay rises despite bumper profits.

Australia faces an extended battle against inflation as China and India fuel an unprecedented economic boom in a period of global uncertainty, the country’s new treasurer Wayne Swan warned Friday.
   In his first major speech since taking office less than two weeks ago, Swan told business leaders the economy was running at close to capacity with demand firmly outstripping supply, creating inflation pressure in the next 18 months.
   ‘We have also come to office at a time when inflationary pressures have been building for some time, and interest rates have risen 10 consecutive times,’ he told an Australian Industry Group luncheon in Sydney.
   ‘Supply is simply not keeping up with demand. Inflation is a major threat to sustained Australian prosperity.
   ‘Let me be very clear, and very upfront with you today — even though we will start immediately to deliver the plan I’ll outline here today, I warn you we face an extended period of elevated inflation,’ Swan said.
   Swan was named treasurer by new prime minister Kevin Rudd last week shortly after their Labor party swept the 11-year-old conservative government of John Howard out of power.
   Outlining the challenges facing the new administration, Swan, who has just returned from the Bali climate change summit, said inflation and climate change were the government’s primary worries.
   Inflation has been building for some time and underlying inflation —which discounts the effect of volatile items — is now at around three per cent, Swan said. The central bank has set a two to three per cent inflation target for next year.
   ‘Inflationary pressures are likely to put further pressure on the underlying inflation rate over the next 18 months,’ Swan said warning that interest rates movements are used to control inflation.
   The key causes of inflation were China’s insatiable demand for resources that has fuelled an Australian minerals boom and India’s fast rising economy, coupled with ‘policy failures’ of the previous government, he said.
   The treasurer outlined plans to combat prices rises by launching an era of strict fiscal discipline to slash ‘wasteful spending’ and bolster the budget while also boosting economic capacity by developing Australians’ skills.

Russian Economic Development and Trade minister Elvira Nabiullina said on Thursday she was worried about inflation and outlined a draft plan for fighting the problem.
   ‘The government is concerned by the inflation problem and by the fact that we have not been able to contain it within the expected levels this year,’ Nabiullina was quoted as saying after a Cabinet meeting.
   The government is expecting inflation this year to average between 11 and 11.5 per cent, compared to an estimate of 7.5 to eight per cent given at the beginning of the year. Some analysts say it could reach as high as 12 per cent.
   The anti-inflation plan includes monetary measures as well as a programme to boost production and encourage more competition in sectors such as farming, where the rise in prices has been most noticeable.
   ‘Lowering inflation is a key issue and all our efforts must go towards lowering it to six or seven per cent and eventually three per cent,’ the minister added.

The International Monetary Fund called Thursday for a rapid assessment of the amount of bank losses related to the US housing crisis to help end the global credit squeeze.
   ‘I want to stress in particular that early and focused action to solving valuation problems is critical in moving forward to solve this crisis,’ IMF spokesman Masood Ahmed said.
   The IMF welcomed Wednesday’s massive coordinated action by five central banks to pump liquidity into the global banking system because it gave ‘an important signal to markets that these banks are working together to address the international nature of the problem,’ he told reporters.
   Ahmed recalled that the IMF had been saying for some time that the provision of liquidity to ensure the smooth functioning of financial markets is a ‘high priority.’
   ‘With continuing concerns about the extent of credit deterioration, central bank liquidity operations are only one part of addressing the ongoing problems in financial markets,’ he said.
   ‘Market participants and financial regulators need to keep the focus on solving issues of valuation. This requires active collaboration and coordination by auditors and supervisors and we believe that early recognition of losses is necessary and helpful,’ the IMF spokesman said.
   Financial institutions should raise capital and avoid reducing balance sheets sharply in the current circumstances, he warned.
   ‘Supervisors need to exercise judgment and not mechanically argue for stronger capital cushions.’

China’s urban fixed asset investments posted a robust rise in the first 11 months, the government said Friday, suggesting it was still a long way away from reining in Asia’s second-largest economy.
   Spending on fixed assets in the cities rose 26.8 per cent in the period from January to November compared with a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said.
   ‘There looks to be little sign of a cooling on the mainland, meaning it was business as usual on the growth front,’ said David Melser, an analyst with Moody’s Economy.com.
   Overall urban fixed assets investment — a key measure of spending on items such as plants, equipment and infrastructure — for the period was 10.1 trillion yuan ($1.4 trillion), the bureau said in a statement.
   No figure for November alone was given. However, the full 11-month data indicated no major change during the month, as the first 10 months had seen an increase of 26.9 per cent.
   ‘In our view, the underlying growth momentum... remains robust, which is consistent with the strong import data,’ investment bank Goldman Sachs said in a research note.
   Imports increased at a faster rate than exports in November, rising 25.3 per cent from a year earlier to 91.3 billion dollars, earlier customs data showed, suggesting strong demand derived from investment.
   The fixed asset data came at the end of a week of statistics releases in China that indicated to varying degrees continued strong growth.
   The most salient figure was a 6.9 per cent rise in the consumer price index, marking the highest inflation figure since December 1996. ‘The likelihood of a near-term interest rate move remains high,’ said Grace Ng, Hong Kong-based economist of JPMorgan Chase Bank.
   ‘This is so, especially considering the upside surprise in November... inflation and the authorities’ target to correct the negative real deposit rate condition.’
   China has already hiked the interest rate five times this year, while raising the amount banks must keep in reserve 10 times.
   These measures are all aimed at containing credit growth, which in turn is crucial in boosting investment.
   Investment spending is a key engine of growth, and along with net exports it is the main reason why China’s economy is likely to expand by about 11.5 per cent in 2007, marking the fifth consecutive year of double-digit growth.
   Policy makers led by premier Wen Jiabao have struggled to rein in investment spending — apparently with limited success.
   The data published Friday gave an indication of why this might be the case, showing that projects approved by local governments accounted for 90 per cent of total investment spending in the first 11 months.
   It is widely believed that Beijing has difficulties reining in growth because local officials tend to easily approve investment projects, as they are concerned about unemployment and the potential for social unrest.
   Fears have especially been mounting about a speculative bubble in the real estate sector, and Friday’s figures may reinforce these concerns, showing a 31.8 per cent rise in investment in property.
   Some economists suggested that China’s policy makers may gradually see some results from all their efforts.

The world’s biggest bank Citigroup is taking on board 49 billion dollars’ worth of hugely devalued sub-prime loans to reassure markets amid a credit downgrading on concern about its capital base.
   The announcement by Citigroup late Thursday insisted that the bank was dealing with the damage done by the US home-loan crisis, just as financial markets showed renewed alarm about the fallout and scepticism over central bank measures to shore up confidence.
   Saying that the assets concerned had fallen from 87 billion dollars in August to 49 billion dollars, the bank insisted it was ‘maintaining the overall high credit quality of the portfolio.’
   It expected to make ‘orderly asset reductions’ which would be enough ‘to meet liquidity requirements’ until the end of next year, which currently stood at 35 billion dollars.
   ‘As assets continue to be sold, Citi’s risk exposure, and the capital ratio impact from consolidation, will be reduced accordingly,’ it said.
   But Citigroup’s statement contrasted with concern by Moody’s investors Services which downgraded several of the bank’s credit ratings on Thursday, warning that ‘Citigroup’s capital rations will remain low’.
   Moody’s senior vice president Sean Jones said that this was likely because the bank ‘will need to take sizable write-downs.’
   Moody’s also said it expected the bank to make ‘significant sustained provisions against its residential mortgage book, which is over 200 billion dollars’ and that these charges would occur ‘when Citigroup’s normal earnings power is depressed.’
   Furthermore ‘Citigroup’s weak earnings should prohibit the bank from rapidly restoring capital ratios, despite its recent issuance of 7.5 billion dollars of hybrid capital.’
   And Moody’s warned: ‘The company’s failure to restore its capital ratios in the medium term would possible lead to a further downgrade.’

India’s annual inflation rate jumped unexpectedly nearly three-quarters of a point to 3.75 per cent on rising fuel and food prices, official data on Friday showed.
   Inflation rose to 3.75 per cent for the week ended December 1 from 3.01 per cent the previous week, according to the wholesale price index, India’s most watched cost of living monitor.
   The rise was driven by a 16 per cent hike in aviation fuel, price hikes in other fuels as well as smaller increases in some food items.
   Annual inflation stood at 5.56 per cent a year ago. Inflation has fluctuated in recent weeks but is still well below the central bank’s target of close to five per cent for the fiscal year to March 31, 2008.
   ‘Although there is no hike in domestic fuel prices, the inflation is expected to rise in coming months due to a continuous rise in money supply which is currently at above 23 per cent,’ India’s Institute of Economic Growth said in a report.
   But the sharp week-on-rise has left economists sticking by their forecast of no swift cut in interest rates as the central bank fears high global oil prices could trigger a rise in state-set domestic fuel prices and is concerned about strong world commodity prices.
   The central bank held its short-term lending repo rate steady at 7.75 per cent in October, citing excess money supply that fuels inflation, and global energy costs.

HSBC Holdings said Friday it will acquire The Chinese Bank in Taiwan after winning a government auction Taipei, substantially boosting its operations on the island.
   After the acquisition, the number of HSBC branches in Taiwan will increase to 47 from eight with a presence in all major cities, HSBC said in a statement.
   The government’s Central Deposit Insurance Corporation took control of The Chinese Bank in January 2007 after a massive run caused by deteriorating financial conditions at its parent Rebar group.
   Under the agreement, HSBC will assume The Chinese Bank’s assets, liabilities and operations and accept an undisclosed payment from the CDIC.
   As at September 30, 2007, gross assets of The Chinese Bank totaled 100.16 billion Taiwan dollars (US$3.10b).
   HSBC said it would provide additional capital of between 300 million and 400 million US dollars to ensure enlarged operations in Taiwan maintain appropriate financial ratios.
   The Chinese Bank had 36 branches on the island with more than one million customers and provides a full range of services to retail customers as well as small-to-medium size enterprises and large corporate, HSBC said.
   Under the terms of the transaction, HSBC will also convert three business offices of The Chinese Bank into new branches, it added.
   ‘Taiwan is a key component of HSBC’s Greater China positioning,’ Vincent Cheng, chairman of The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, said in the statement.

A freighter carrying North Korean zinc arrived in South Korea Friday in the communist country’s first-ever repayment of economic assistance provided by Seoul, officials said.
   The South’s unification ministry said workers in the western port of Incheon began unloading 500 tonnes of zinc worth 1.2 million dollars.
   Over the years Seoul has shipped rice, fuel oil, fertiliser and raw materials worth hundreds of millions of dollars to its impoverished communist neighbour, officially in the form of loans.
   But this is the first time Pyongyang has redeemed any of its debt, the ministry said.
   ‘It was North Korea’s first ever repayment of debt,’ a ministry official in charge of economic cooperation told AFP on condition of anonymity.
   This year South Korea provided the impoverished North with materials worth 80 million dollars to help it produce clothing, footwear and soap.
   In return, the North agreed to provide the South with minerals such as zinc and magnesite. It was supposed to pay back three per cent of the total, or 2.4 million dollars, in the form of mineral shipments by the end of December.
   Talks are under way to agree the type and amount of a second shipment of minerals.
   At an inter-Korean prime ministerial meeting in November, the two nations agreed to work out concrete projects in the first half of 2008 to develop the North’s potentially rich mineral resources.

German airline Lufthansa will buy a 19 per cent stake in US budget carrier JetBlue Airways for about 300 million dollars, the companies said in a statement Thursday.
   ‘This transaction represents the first significant investment by a European air carrier in a US point-to-point air carrier,’ the companies said.
   The New York-based JetBlue is a low-cost carrier that serves 53 US cities with up to 550 daily flights.
   Lufthansa, Germany’s largest airline, announced in October it was planning a major investment drive over the next three years and is currently eyeing for acquisition Iberia, the Spanish airline that is the leading carrier linking Europe and Latin America.
   Last week Lufthansa declared it would not to make an offer for Italy’s ailing carrier Alitalia because the risks were too great.
   Under the terms of Thursday’s agreement, Lufthansa will purchase about 42 million newly issued JetBlue common shares, or 19 per cent of JetBlue’s equity after issuing the new shares.

BURO gets ICAB national award
The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Bangladesh has awarded BURO Bangladesh for the best presented accounts of 2006 in NGO category on the basis of evaluation of BURO’s audited annual report for the year. The Finance Adviser ABM Mirza Azizul Islam presented the award to M Mosharrof Hossain, finance director of BURO, Bangladesh at a function arranged by the ICAB in a local hotel in the capital recently. BURO Bangladesh has working for a policy of management efficiency, quality asset and corporate governance since its inception in 1990, said a press release. Recently, the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor of the World Bank has awarded the ‘Financial Transparency Award 2005; to the BURO Bangladesh.

SIA to begin
Houston flights
Singapore Airlines said Thursday it will begin flights to the Texas city of Houston next March. The service will leave Singapore four times a week and fly non-stop to Moscow before continuing on to Houston, the airline said. SIA will use the Boeing 777-300ER aircraft, with service starting March 20, it said. With the commencement of flights to Houston via Moscow, SIA will have a daily service to the Russian city. The carrier already flies to Moscow three times a week via Dubai. Houston becomes SIA’s fifth destination in the United States.
— AFP

Thai exports to up 12.5pc next year
Thailand’s exports, the main pillar of the kingdom’s economy, are expected to grow by 12.5 per cent next year on the back of steady global demand, the commerce ministry said Friday. ‘We have forecast our exports will rise between 10 and 12.5 per cent next year and generate around 165-169 billion dollars,’ Commerce minister Krik-krai Jirapaet told reporters. Exports, which account for 60 per cent of the Thai economy, will continue to grow thanks to strong demand from the country’s key markets including the United States, Japan and the European Union, the minister said. Thailand is the world’s biggest exporter of rice and also a major producer of cars, textiles, electrical appliances, fruit and shrimp.
— AFP