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The state-owned sugar mills corporation has sought Tk 26 crore urgently from the government to pay arrears to the farmers who had supplied sugarcanes to the mills during the last year’s crushing season.
   The industries ministry in a letter to the finance ministry on March 31 sought the money for the Bangladesh Sugar and Food Industries Corporation, which operates 14 sugar mills across the country, as subsidy to pay the dues amid fear that delay in clearing the dues could create resentment among the farmers.
   According to the ministry letter, the sugar mills actually owe Tk 50 crore to the sugarcane producers. Around five lakh farmers cultivate sugarcane in 2.26 lakh acres of land.
   ‘If the dues are not cleared in time, resentment may break out any time in the mill areas,’ said the letter, adding that the corporation was in financial crisis as it had incurred a loss of Tk 158 crore in the 2006-07 fiscal year.
   Moreover, the industry ministry’s letter said the persistent losses have forced the corporation to suspend the payment of post retirement benefits to officers and employees of the sugar mills as well as dues of seasonal labourers who were hired during the crushing season between February and April.
   The corporation officials said the sugar mills incurred the losses by selling the sweetener much lower than its production cost.
   ‘The loss was occurred because of mismatch in the production cost and the selling prices, said Lutfar Rahman Khan, secretary of the sugar corporation, on Friday.
   He said the production cost of one kilogram sugar was Tk 36 while the corporation sold it between Tk 25 and Tk 29 per kg in the immediate past financial year.
   Lufar said the corporation would incur a loss of Tk 88 crore in the current fiscal year as the selling price of the sugar was still below the production cost.
   The corporation is now selling per kilogram sugar at Tk 34.
   Although importers and refiners meet the bulk of the country’s annual demand for finished sugar, estimated at one million tonnes, operations of the state-owned sugar mills are vital for thousands of farmers, especially those of the northern districts, for whom sugarcane is still the main cash crop.
   Lutfar said the sugar mills had a target to produce around 1.73 lakh tonnes of sugar in the ongoing crushing season started from February which is more than 10 per cent of the total demand.
   The 14 state-owned sugar mills have already produced 1.63 tonnes of sugar altogether.

The Chittagong Port Authority is likely to back out from its move to impose additional charges against handling of containers in the face of protests by the association of shipping agents, port sources said.
   CPA chairman commodore MA Faruk said, ‘We have not yet taken any decision to impose additional charges against handling of containers here as it is subject to a detail discussion with the shipping agents who are supposed to pay the money.’
   ‘Actually, the problem came up as the private berth operator claimed the additional charges on containers. But we will sort out the problem after consulting with shipping agents,’ he added.
   ‘Already a meeting in this regard was held on last Wednesday between port officials and the leaders of shipping agents association, which ended inconclusive,’ he also said.
   Such a move for realising additional charges of Tk 250 per container as documentation fees was under consideration of the CPA, following a claim for the same by the private berth operator handling the container terminals at the port, port sources informed.
   But the port’s main user body, Bangladesh Shipping Agents Association, vehemently opposed the move, saying that it might prompt the shipping lines to increase freights on import and export goods for adjusting the additional charges, the sources said.
   Chairman of BSAA Pervez Sajjad Akter told New Age that any move for raising container handling charges would be unacceptable as it might leave negative impact on shipping business.
   ‘While we are thinking how to reduce the handling charges of containers, the CPA is trying to impose additional charges on containers. So, we voiced our protest against it,’ he said adding, ‘we approached the chairman to postpone the move’.
   Senior vice-chairman of BSAA Ahsanul Huq Chowdhury said, ‘We may go for legal battle if CPA unilaterally takes any decision to impose additional charges on containers. We will send a note of dissent in black and white to the CPA soon to back out from the move.’
   ‘We already communicated with our principals who disagreed to pay any additional charges on containers as it would force them to hike the freights’, he added, saying ‘if any freight is raised, it will automatically fall on the shoulders of importers and end users of products that may fuel price spiral.’
   Now CPA realises 15 dollars against handling of a 20-feet container and 22 dollars against 40-feet container, the port sources said.

Dhaka stocks bounced back last week with the DSE general index gaining 112.39 points after a bear run in the previous week.
   The general index of the Dhaka Stock Exchange advanced by 3.78 per cent last week to close at 3084.48 on Thursday, while its blue chips index, DSE20, went up by 54.93 points or 2.38 per cent to close at 2361.35.
   Stock market operators said selective buying from institutional and retail investors pushed up the share price indices.
   They said banking stocks performed well in a period of corporate disclosures from the financial institutions.
   The daily average turnover at the DSE was up by 20.61 per cent to Tk 317.30 crore from the previous week’s Tk 263.09 crore.
   However, majority of issues witnessed slide in their prices because of price corrections, said the market operators.
   Of the total 265 issues traded at the DSE last week, 114 advanced, 147 declined and four remained unchanged. Twenty issues recorded no transactions during the period.
   BEMCO was the top gainer of the week with 105.26 per cent rise in its share price. Other leading gainers were Metro Spinning, Stylecraft, Orion Infusion, Agrani Insurance, National Polymer, Aramit, Aramit Cement, Eastern Bank Limited and Dutch-Bangla Bank.
   Sonargaon Textiles, Dandy Dyeing, Bangas, Al-Amin Chemicals, Pharmaco International, Renwick Jajneswar, Dulamia Cotton, Metalex Corporation, Safko Spinning and Monno Stafflers were among the top losers of the week.
   The IFIC Bank topped the turnover leaders with transaction of Tk 108.54 crore which was 6.84 per cent of the total turnover of the bourse at Tk 1,586.51 crore last week.
   Other turnover leaders were AB Bank, Square Pharmaceuticals, Aims First Mutual Fund, Uttara Bank, Power Grid Company of Bangladesh, Beximco Pharmaceuticals, Heidelberg Cement, Lanka Bangla Finance and Grameen One Mutual Fund.
   ‘A’ category issues accounted for 85.65 per cent of the total turnover in last week, while ‘B’ category issues contributed 1.36 per cent, ‘G’ category 2.37 per cent, ‘N’ category 6.20 per cent and ‘Z’ category 4.42 per cent.

The prices of construction materials have increased by 31 per cent in the last three months, forcing many construction projects to stop work, construction industry leaders said at a press conference at the National Press Club on Saturday.
   The president of Bangladesh Association of Construction Industry, Syed Mosharraf Hossain, said construction industry would collapse totally and about one crore people who were involved with this industry directly or indirectly would be jobless if the uptrend of the price continues.
   Mosharraf said per tonne MS road which was Tk 47,000 in December 2007 reached to Tk 71,000 in March 2008 and one thousand first class brick which was Tk 4,200 in December 2007 reached to Tk 6,000.
   He blamed uptrend of construction material price in international market, high cost of fuel, devolution of taka and two floods and cyclone sidr for the price hike of construction materials in the local market.
   Mosharraf proposed that the government should consider price adjustment in all the next projects, making arrangement to give mobilisation advance, implementing the provision of cutting security deposit by five per cent and restricted performance security within 10 per cent in every project to face the soaring price of construction materials.
   Their other demands include subsidy to implement on going projects and strengthening publication wing of Bureau of Statistics to publish monthly bulletin timely.

Philippine president Gloria Arroyo on Friday announced major investments to overhaul the Philippine agriculture sector, as the country grapples with soaring rice prices that have raised fears of social unrest.
   A day after ordering the army to help deliver rice supplies in the capital Manila, Arroyo held a ‘food summit’ with top officials to work out a plan for reviving a sector that has long been inefficient and riddled with graft.
   The Philippines relies on imports for rice, the staple food of its 90 million people. Many rice farmers work small plots, have no money to invest and often have large families that leave them little rice to sell on the market.
   ‘We must work harder to grow what we need,’ Arroyo said, announcing hundreds of millions of dollars in projects for everything from high-yield seeds to irrigation to new roads and ports to transport farm produce.
   She said some of the projects would be funded by foreign governments in the form of development aid to the Philippines, which has been one of the countries hardest hit by the sharp rice increases. She did not provide a total cost.
   Rice is not the only key commodity whose price is going sharply up. The National Statistics Office said earlier Friday that rising food prices helped push the March inflation rate to a 20-month high of 6.4 per cent.
   It cited ‘upward movements in the prices of the heavily weighted food items such as rice, flour and flour products, pork, cooking oil, selected spices and seasonings, milk and milk products.’
   But as part of almost every Filipino meal, rice plays a central role in the economy — and the stark price hikes have made life tougher for the country’s millions of poor while wreaking havoc on the market.
   Arroyo said the government would keep cracking down on unscrupulous private traders amid allegations of hoarding as well as the illegal sale of government-subsidised rice at nearly double the recommended price.
   She said it was essential to eradicate corruption in the agriculture sector, and that ‘friend and foe alike are (being) brought to account for their actions.’
   There have been no major incidents of unrest in the Philippines over the rice situation, and Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap stressed earlier that the country had enough supplies for now.
   The government has announced plans to import 1.5 million tonnes of the staple cereal this year, of which 700,000 tonnes are expected to arrive in July.
   Yap said the government had the capacity to import ‘up to 2.7 million tonnes’ this year, but did not say if that figure will be reached.
   ‘With imports on the way and a bumper summer crop ... the country will have more than an adequate supply of rice for the rest of the year,’ he said.
   Yap said agricultural production had steadily been rising since 2001, with rice production hitting a record high of 16.24 million tonnes last year, but that population growth was still outstripping it.

The head of South Korea’s largest business group Samsung on Saturday said he was ‘ashamed’ and would accept the results of an ongoing probe into corruption allegations.
   Chairman Lee Kun-Hee apparently softened his stance after undergoing 11 hours of intense questioning which lasted into early Saturday at a special prosecutor’s office.
   ‘I feel deeply ashamed before the people for causing this disturbance over the Samsung issue,’ he told journalists, leaving special prosecutor Cho Joon-Woong’s office.
   ‘I will humbly accept the results of the special probe and do my best not to let this kind of things happen again.’
   ‘I should be blamed and held responsible for all these things,’ he said.
   When he appeared for questioning on Friday, Lee had flatly rejected allegations that the group raised millions of dollars of bribery slush funds and illegally helped transfer control of the group to his son, Lee Jae-Yong.
   He also angrily rejected a suggestion that his group was now being seen by the public as a crime ring, blaming the media that ‘passed on such things.’
   But when he was leaving the office, he appeared to concede that the group might have committed some wrongs.

Indian inflation accelerated to a more than three-year high of seven per cent, data showed Friday, fanning fears of interest rate hikes that could slow growth further in Asia’s third-largest economy.
   Annual inflation quickened by over three-tenths of a per centage point for the week ended March 22, driven in part by higher food prices, according to the Wholesale Price Index, India’s most-tracked cost-of-living monitor.
   The country of 1.2 billion has been facing a daunting task in seeking to keep food and other goods affordable, especially for its poor masses, with inflation mainly propelled by soaring world prices for food, energy and metals.
   Inflation — which has more than doubled from a trough of 3.1 per cent in October — last touched seven per cent in early December 2004 and is way above the central bank’s declared tolerance level of five per cent.
   ‘The (inflation) hydra grows’ with higher global commodity prices ‘passing through to local prices’ being the primary cause, said Tushar Poddar, Goldman Sachs vice-president of Asia economic research.
   The surge is not a ‘temporary spike,’ Poddar added, warning India as a ‘large net importer of commodities, will continue to face elevated prices.’
   The numbers were alarming reading for the Congress-led government, which owes its upset 2004 election win to support from India’s teeming poor who have been hardest hit by inflation.
   Congress faces nearly a dozen state polls this year and general elections by May 2009.
   India’s benchmark 30-share Sensex index extended its losses after the inflation report, closing down 3.09 per cent or 489.43 points at 15,343.12, on worries about monetary tightening which could hit corporate profits and weaken economic growth further.

Singapore said a strategic dialogue has been set up with India to further cement the strong ties between the two countries which has reached new peaks since the signing of the Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement.
   The two sides involved in the strategic dialogue will meet in May, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said here last evening at a ceremony to mark Incredible India@60 campaign here.
   The 3-day event, showcasing a resurgent India’s entrepreneurship, investment prospects and tourism attractions, has been organised by the Government of India and the Confederation of Indian Industry.
   ‘We are lucky to be neighbours to India and China, the two fastest growing economies.’ ‘I believe India will overcome obstacles and change. The drive and desire of young Indians to succeed is palpable,’ lee told the gathering attended by Commerce Minister Kamal Nath, several CEOs of Indian companies, a large section of expatriate Indians and Singaporeans.
   He also said India’s soft power was steadily growing noting that bollywood had a wide following while Indian fashion industry is becoming popular.
   Trade between Singapore and India grew 20 per cent last year, and over 750,000 tourists from India visited Singapore, he said.
   Kamal Nath, in his address said the Incredible India@60 campaign was celebrating the country’s engagement with the world. He also launched the new website of the CII India Business Forum. This is a dedicated platform to enrich the partnership of Indian and Singapore businesses and evolve new ways to expand it.

Major Japanese cosmetics companies have stepped up efforts to increase their presence in China, where foreign cosmetics firms, including L’Oreal of France, have been striving to gain a bigger share of the huge Chinese market.
   With domestic sales of cosmetics levelling off, securing a large share of the Chinese cosmetics market, which could become as big as Japan’s, is seen by cosmetics firms as indispensable for future expansion.
   At a press conference held Thursday (April 3) to announce its three-year business plan starting fiscal 2008, Shiseido Co President Shinzo Maeda said China’s cosmetics market has grown by 10 per cent a year, but Shiseido is aiming for annual growth of 20 per cent there.
   Shiseido this month revamped its Aupres range, which features skin care products designed for Chinese consumers, for the first time in 14 years, and raised the prices of products in the range by 20 per cent to 30 per cent.
   Aupres products, which are on sale at about 700 outlets of department stores across China, were approved by Beijing as Chinese athletes’ official cosmetics at the 2004 Athens Olympics.
   As Aupres has established itself as a recognised brand in China, Shiseido believes it can further increase its sales.
   Shiseido, L’Oreal, and Procter and Gamble of the United States each has a large market share in China, but unlike Europe and the United States where perfume is popular, most Chinese women prefer skin care and makeup products, a trend also found in Japan, which benefits Shiseido.
   Major foreign cosmetics firms began making advances into China between the late 1980s and the 1990s, but Shiseido started exporting its products to be sold at China’s state-run department stores in 1981, becoming the first to find a foothold in the Chinese market.
   With sales in China amounting to about 60 billion yen (US$588 million), the nation has become Shiseido’s largest overseas market, surpassing the United States.
   Sales of two other leading Japanese cosmetics firms—Kose Corp and Kanebo Cosmetics Inc—amounted to about 8 billion yen ($78 million) and less than 3 billion yen ($29 million), respectively.
   Kose will put on sale in June cosmetics made by the Rimmel brand that are favoured by Chinese women, a British firm with which Kose has a license contract.

It’s no longer a question of recession or not. Now it’s how deep and how long. Workers’ pink slips stacked ever higher in March as jittery employers slashed 80,000 jobs, the most in five years, and the national unemployment rate climbed to 5.1 per cent. Job losses are nearing the staggering level of a quarter-million this year in just three months.
   For the third month in a row total U.S. employment rolls shrank — often a telltale sign that the economy has jolted dangerously into reverse.
   At the same time, the jobless rate rose three-tenths of a percentage point, a sharp increase usually associated with times of deep economic stress.
   The grim picture described by the Labour Department on Friday provided stark evidence of just how much the jobs market has buckled under the weight of the housing, credit and financial crises. Businesses and jobseekers alike are feeling the pain.
   ‘It is now very clear that the fat lady has sung for the economic expansion. The country has slipped into a recession,’ said Stuart Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Financial Services Group. Indeed, there is widening agreement that the first recession since 2001 has arrived. Even Ben Bernanke, in a rare public utterance for a Federal Reserve chairman, used the ‘r’ word, acknowledging for the first time this week that a recession was possible.
   Job losses were widespread last month, hitting workers at factories, construction companies, retailers, banks, real-estate firms and even temporary-help agencies. Also mortgage brokers, hotels, computer design shops, accounting firms, architecture and engineering companies, legal services, airlines and other transportation as well as telecommunications companies.
   Those cuts swamped employment gains elsewhere, including at hospitals and other heath-care sites, educational services, child day-care providers, bars and restaurants, insurance companies, museums, zoos and parks. And the government, which is almost always up.
   In fact, private employers have shed jobs for four straight months, though December showed an overall gain for the economy because the government increase outweighed the private loss.
   March’s losses were the most since the same month in 2003, when companies were still struggling to recover from the last recession. Adding to the angst: Revised figures showed losses were actually deeper than first reported for both January and February.
   All told, the economy now has lost 232,000 jobs in the first three months of this year.
   On Wall Street, investors took the weak employment figures in stride. The Dow Jones industrials lost just 16.61 points, while other indexes edged higher.
   All the economy’s problems are forcing people and businesses to hunker down, crimping spending and hiring, a vicious cycle.
   ‘Across the board, businesses have become very, very conservative,’ said Joel Naroff, president of Naroff Economic Advisors. More downbeat about their own sales prospects because of cautious consumers, employers are cutting back. ‘It only makes sense for them to run leaner if we are going into a recession or already in one’ as Naroff now believes.
   The new employment figures were much weaker than economists were expecting. They were anticipating a drop of 50,000 payroll jobs.
   Michael Gregory, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets Economics, said the employment report was ‘emitting recession signals.’
   The national unemployment rate of 5.1 per cent, relatively modest by historical standards, is nonetheless the highest since September 2005, following the devastating blows of the Gulf Coast hurricanes.
   Some groups are feeling more of the strains from the economy’s current woes. The unemployment rate for Hispanics, for instance, jumped to 6.9 per cent in March, the highest in over four years. The rate for blacks climbed to 9 per cent, a two-month high.
   With the public on edge, Congress, the White House and presidential contenders are scrambling to come up with their own relief plans to stem record-high home foreclosures and stabilize housing — even as they engage in a political blame game.
   Democrats want more economic assistance, including extending unemployment benefits. The Bush administration has resisted, saying the government’s $168 billion stimulus package of tax rebates for people and tax breaks for businesses will be sufficient once it kicks in.
   ‘We don’t like to see one job lost, let alone 80,000,’ Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said in an interview with The Associated Press. ‘These are challenging times,’ he said. Gutierrez was hopeful the economy would turn around in the second half of this year, given the relief efforts by the government and the Federal Reserve. ‘We’ll get through this.’
   Democrats were skeptical of the administration’s efforts.
   ‘Our economy is spiraling downward,’ said presidential contender Hillary Rodham Clinton. ‘It is time for this administration to put ideology aside and get serious about stemming this crisis.’
   Barack Obama said, ‘Instead of doing nothing for out-of-work Americans, we need a second stimulus that extends unemployment insurance and helps communities that have been hit hard by this recession.’
   Republican John McCain said the unemployment news ‘underlines the need to focus on innovation, which grows the economy and creates an urgent need for effective worker retraining.’
   Given the worsening employment situation, the Federal Reserve probably will lower a key interest rate, now at 2.25 per cent, later this month.
   The Fed has taken a number of extraordinary actions recently — slashing interest rates, providing financial backing to JP Morgan’s takeover of troubled Bear Stearns and opening an emergency lending program for big investment houses. All the actions were aimed at limiting damage to the national economy.

EU finance chiefs agreed Friday to broad rules for cooperating across borders to avert financial crises but insisted that Europe’s banks were sound despite current distress in the sector.
   Concretely, EU finance ministers backed an updated version of guidelines for cooperating in the event that a big financial house with operations in numerous countries ran into serious trouble.
   ‘We have signed a memorandum of understanding on financial stability and cooperation in order to ensure stability,’ said Slovenian Finance Minister Andrej Bajuk after chairing a meeting with EU finance ministers and central bankers.
   Under the agreement, public bailouts would be sought only if an institution’s troubles threatened the broader economy and there were no private sector solution, according to the agreement.
   ‘The use of public money to resolve a crisis can never be taken for granted and will only be considered to remedy a serious disturbance in the economy,’ the document says.
   ‘The management of an ailing institution will be held accountable, shareholders will not be bailed out and creditors and uninsured depositors should expect to face losses,’ it says.
   ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet said that European central banks’ assistance to troubled institutions was limited to situations ‘where there is a liquidity problem and not a solvency problem.’
   In other words, central bankers would only extend loans to troubled banks, rather than actually injecting cash into them to shore up their balance sheets.
   In the case a bank needed a bailout with taxpayer money, Trichet said that would be the responsibility of finance ministries.
   Bajuk said ‘there is no sign at this time that there are solvency issues at play’ and ‘if something like this happened it would have to be on a case-by-case basis that it would have to be solved.’
   Huge new write-downs this week by Swiss bank UBS and Deutsche Bank of Germany added to the sense of urgency in working out a tougher response to turmoil in the sector.
   Despite broad recognition that more cooperation is needed on overseeing the sector, so far EU countries have struggled to agree on how far and fast any actions should go.

More than 160 nations agreed late Friday on the first step to drafting an ambitious new treaty on global warming after hours of haggling between rich and poor countries.
   The five-day conference in Bangkok also looked for the first time to consider regulating emissions from airplanes and ships, a rapidly growing source of the pollution blamed for heating up the planet.
   But rich and poor countries are sharply divided on how to tackle global warming, despite growing fears that rising temperatures could put millions of people at risk by the end of the century.
   The talks set a work plan of four meetings next year to complete a pact by the end of 2009 which would follow the landmark Kyoto Protocol, which requires rich nations to slash gas emissions blamed for warming.
   The Bangkok conference ended past midnight on the final day, hours after the scheduled close, with bickering over a Japanese proposal to hold talks soon on the so-called ‘sectoral approach,’ in which each industry is judged separately on eco-friendliness.
    ‘There were differences of opinion on different topics,’ UN climate chief Yvo de Boer told the news agency.
   ‘It takes time to find a way out and they did.’
   Poor nations fear the sectoral approach makes greenhouse gas cuts easier for rich countries because they have cleaner technology, and that it could be a backdoor way to legally require them for the first time to cut emissions.
   ‘I think it needs to be explained better,’ de Boer said of the Japanese proposal.
   ‘There was at one stage the perception that Japan was trying to replace national commitments by sectoral approaches and that freaked everyone out,’ he said.
   ‘But that view has since been corrected, so I think things have simmered down,’ he added.
   Japan’s chief delegate, Kyoji Komachi, said that the talks ‘went very well on the whole.’

The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, unveiled plans Friday to slash billions of euros of public spending in a bid to start reining in France’s chronic deficits as the country prepares to assume the European Union presidency.
   Sarkozy rejected opposition claims his right-wing government was planning ‘austerity’ measures that would hit the poor hardest, insisting savings would come from reforming the civil and diplomatic services and rooting out waste.
   ‘This is not a question of left or right,’ the president said after chairing a council on public policy reform at the finance ministry.
   ‘The time for reform of the state has come ... Savings alone do not amount to reform, but reform will lead to savings. That is the difference between austerity and reform,’ Sarkozy argued.
   Finance ministry figures predict the 166-point cost-cutting plan will generate seven billion euros ($11b) in savings by 2011.
   France is facing mounting pressure from its European partners to slash its total public deficit — which stood at 1.2 trillion euros at end 2007 — as it prepares to take over the six-month presidency of the European Union in July.
   The savings would represent a small first step towards balancing the French budget, which Paris has pledged to do by 2012 — two years later than the eurozone target of 2010.
   According to an Opinionway poll published in Le Figaro newspaper Friday, 79 per cent of French people believe in the need for a ‘strong reduction in public spending.’
   But the Socialist opposition accuses the government of bringing in painful austerity measures after devoting 13.6 billion euros last year to a tax package it says benefited the middle and upper classes.
   ‘Everyone knows this is a creeping form of austerity,’ said the Socialist deputy Jean-Christophe Cambadelis, who said the measures ‘affect every aspect of French people’s everyday lives.’
   France’s biggest union, the CGT, accused the government of ‘amputating seven billion euros of means from essential sectors,’ calling it ‘a real step backwards.’
   Sarkozy insisted the 2012 budget target was ‘within reach without jeopardising the quality and efficiency of our public policies.’

US treasury secretary Henry Paulson will host a meeting of finance chiefs of the Group of Seven richest countries next week in Washington, the government said Friday.
   Finance ministers and central bank governors of the leading industrialized nations gather for talks April 11, the eve of the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
   The meetings come
   against the backdrop of a global credit market crisis and a sharp slowdown in the US economy that is weighing on other countries.
   The G7 groups Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States.

Low-cost carrier Skybus Airlines is shutting down Saturday and plans to file for bankruptcy protection next week, becoming the latest of the nation’s airlines to fall because of rising fuel costs and a slowing economy.
   The announcement Friday came less than a year after Skybus started up at Port Columbus International Airport, offering several $10 flights. The airline’s situation worsened in recent weeks, said Skybus spokesman Bob Tenenbaum.
   Fuel prices and the worsening economy combined to be insurmountable for a new carrier, said chief executive Michael Hodge.
   ‘We deeply regret this decision, and the impact this will have on our employees and their families, our customers, our vendors and other partners, and the communities in which we have been operating,’ Hodge said in a statement.
   The airline makes 74 daily flights to 15 US cities, Tenenbaum said. It has about 350 employees in Columbus and 100 at a second hub at Piedmont-Triad International airport in Greensboro, NC Employees learned of the shutdown Friday night.
   The final flight, taking off from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., was scheduled to touch down in Columbus just before 1:00am Saturday, Tenenbaum said.

The First Security Bank Limited held the ‘Quarterly Manager’s Conference-2008’ at its head office in the Dhaka city on Saturday.
   AAM Zakaria, managing director of the bank presided over conference, said a press release.
   Among others, the deputy managing directors, the branch managers and the divisional heads of the head office attended the conference.
   The conference reviewed the quarterly performance of the individual branches for the period of ‘January-March 2008’.
    The bank will emphasis on recovery of the classified loans, deposit, mobilisation, and disbursement of SME and the Agri-loan, in the coming months, the conference revealed.

The Export Import Bank of Bangladesh Limited has extended an investment facility of Tk 10 crore to the LankaBangla Finance Limited on Monday.
   Kazi Masihur Rahman, managing director of the Export Import Bank of Bangladesh Limited, and Mafizuddin Sarker, managing director of LankaBangla Finance Limited, signed the investment deal through a function held at the head office of the bank in the Dhaka city, said a press release. Ekramul Hoque, additional managing director, Md Sirajul Islam Bhuiyan, deputy managing director, and Zakir Anam, branch manager, of the Export Import Bank of Bangladesh Limited and A Malek Shamsher, senior executive vice-president, Quamrul Islam, vice-president, and chief finance officer, of the LankaBangla Finance Limited, were present on the signing occasion.

Volatility gripped commodity markets this week as traders reacted to the dollar’s performance and stretched global supplies of raw materials, analysts said.
   Maize was the star performer, hitting a record high of six dollars a bushel.
   Oil: World oil prices surged close to 107 dollars a barrel this week as investors took their cue from tightening world energy supplies and strengthening global demand, before ending subdued.
   Prices found solid support as news of dwindling gasoline (petrol) inventories in key consumer the United States jangled supply fears.
   The market is closely studying gasoline reserves ahead of the US peak demand season for motor fuel, which begins in May when Americans kick-start their summer vacations.
   Prices soared Wednesday as official data showed that US gasoline reserves tumbled by 4.5 million barrels last week, compared with forecasts for a drop of 2.5 million barrels.
   Traders shrugged off news that US crude inventories were up 7.4 million barrels in the week ending March 28, well above analyst consensus forecasts for a gain of 2.25 million barrels.
   However, prices dipped Thursday after US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke said that the US economy may be in recession, and the International Monetary Fund said it would cut its global growth forecast by a substantial half a per centage point.
   ‘Despite expectations for declining oil demand growth amid a US-led global slowdown, supply and demand factors are still tight ... (and) any supply shocks are still likely to have a large effect on crude prices,’ said Sucden analyst Nimit Khamar.
   Crude futures were also supported by the weak US currency, which tends to encourage demand for dollar-priced crude because it becomes cheaper for foreign buyers.
   The US unit sank further against the euro on Friday after news that US employers cut a surprisingly large 80,000 jobs in March, the biggest decline in employment in five years, according to a government report.
   By Friday, New York’s main oil futures contract, light sweet crude for delivery in May,
   eased to 105.75 dollars per barrel from 105.85 dollars a week earlier.
   Brent North Sea crude for May rose to 104.30 dollars per barrel from 103.94.
   PRECIOUS METALS: Gold, silver, platinum and palladium prices all fell on profit-taking after recently reaching record and multi-year high points.
   Gold fell under 900 dollars an ounce to reach the lowest point for more than two months.
   On the London Bullion Market, gold dropped to 905.50 dollars per ounce at Friday’s late fixing from 934.25 dollars a week earlier.
   Silver dropped to 17.45 dollars per ounce from 18.36 dollars.
   On the London Platinum and Palladium Market, platinum dipped to 1,988 dollars per ounce at the late fixing on Friday from 1,990 dollars a week earlier.
   Palladium declined to 438 dollars per ounce from 444 dollars.
   BASE METALS: Base metals mostly fell but losses were limited thanks to tight global supplies and the weak US currency.
   ‘Prices are consolidating and could ease back further in the short term,’ said Barclays Capital analyst Gayle Berry.
   ‘Recent builds in base metals inventories have led some in the market to question just how tight the underlying fundamentals of base metals really are. ‘We have argued for a long while that, despite the fog of economic uncertainty and US consumption weakness, broadly speaking base metals markets are incredibly tight and, by our calculations are on their way to becoming even tighter,’ Berry added.
   By Friday, copper for delivery in three months rose to
   8,500 dollars per tonne on the LME from 8,455 dollars a week earlier.
   Three-month aluminium prices fell to 2,898 dollars per tonne from 2,996 dollars.
   Three-month nickel dropped to 28,912 dollars per tonne from 31,495 dollars.
   Three-month lead climbed to 2,915 dollars per tonne from 2,885 dollars.
   Three-month zinc prices declined to 2,302 dollars per tonne from 2,358 dollars.
   Three-month tin slipped to 20,025 dollars per tonne from 20,650 dollars.
   GRAINS AND SOYA: Maize prices struck historic highs of six dollars a bushel after the US government forecast a drop in production.
   By Friday on the Chicago Board of Trade, maize for May delivery jumped to 5.96 dollars per bushel from 5.60 dollars a week earlier.
   May-dated soyabean meal — used in animal feed — fell to 12.60 dollars from 12.67 dollars.
   Wheat for May delivery dropped to 9.40 dollars per bushel from 9.89 dollars.
   On LIFFE, London’s futures exchange, the price per tonne of wheat for November delivery rose to 152 pounds from 150 pounds a week earlier.
   COCOA: Cocoa prices declined in London after
   recent multi-year highs caused by unrest in major producer Ivory Coast.
   By Friday on LIFFE, the price of cocoa for May delivery declined to 1,291 pounds per tonne from 1,320 pounds a week earlier.
   On the New York Board of Trade (NYBOT), the May cocoa contract fell to 2,275 dollars per tonne from 2,408 dollars.
   Coffee: Coffee prices slid in much the same way as cocoa after also striking multi-year highs recently.
   By Friday on LIFFE, Robusta for July delivery recoiled
   to 2,263 dollars per tonne
   from 2,339 dollars the previous week.
   On the NYBOT, Arabica for May delivery decreased to 131.85 US cents per pound from 132.50 cents.
   Sugar: Sugar prices steadied.
   By Friday on LIFFE, the price per tonne of white sugar for August delivery grew to 339 pounds from 337.50 pounds the previous week.
   On NYBOT, the price of unrefined sugar for May delivery dipped to 11.87 US cents per pound from 11.96 cents.
   Rubber: Rubber prices were unchanged as key buyer China remained on the sidelines.
   ‘Trading during the week was quiet. China is not buying,’ said an official with a rubber producing firm who requested anonymity.
   ‘With China having ample rubber stocks in their warehouses, they will continue to remain on the sidelines. Trading will remain dull.’
   On Friday, the Malaysian Rubber Board’s benchmark SMR20 remained unchanged at 264.25 US cents per kilogramme from the previous week.
   Wool: Wool prices rose in major producer Australia as trading resumed after a two-week break.
   ‘The market opened on a good basis after the Easter break,’ said the Australian Wool Industries Secretariat, adding that buyers from China were dominant, followed by those from Europe.
   The Eastern Index rose to 9.67 Australian dollars a kilo, from 9.61 Australian dollars two weeks previously.

European stock exchanges posted modest gains Friday on the strength of positive corporate news in the energy and technology sectors and despite a further loss of jobs in the fragile US economy.
   In London the FTSE 100 index rose 0.95 per cent to end the week at 5,947.10, while in Paris the CAC 40 added 0.27 per cent to close at 4,900.88. The Frankfurt Dax gained 0.32 per cent to reach 6,763.39 points.
   The Euro Stoxx 50 index of leading eurozone shares added 0.54 per cent to reach 3,795.20.
   On Wall Street stocks traded higher at mid-day as investor sentiment appeared to be holding up under dismal US employment news.
   The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.21 per cent to 12,652.98 while the the tech-rich Nasdaq composite index rose 0.85 per cent to 2,383.39.
   Two days after Fed chairman Ben Bernanke for the first time publicly raised the possibility of a recession in the first half of the year, concerns about economic contraction were renewed by a government report showing US employers shed jobs in March for the third consecutive month.
   A weakening employment market, which pressures household income, raises alarms for an economy that depends mainly on consumer spending.
   The Labor Department said 80,000 nonfarm jobs disappeared in March, the biggest monthly loss in five years and far deeper than market expectations of 50,000 jobs.
   HThis isn’t a good number from an economic standpoint, but again, it needs to be stated that it isn’t a number either that fits the recession label,’ said Patrick O’Hare, an analyst at Briefing.com.
   ‘In recessions, payrolls decline 150,000 to 200,000 per month,’ he added.
   But Frederic Dickson at DA Davidson & Company underscored that the employment report ‘pointed to a decline in employment in the critical services area which makes up 70 per cent of the activity in the US economy.’
   Dickson said a three-month decline in employment signalled a contraction in economic growth for the first quarter of 2008.
   ‘In the past, we have only seen a streak of three declining months of non-farm payrolls occur during recessions,’ he said.
   In London British Energy shot up 7.32 per cent to 711 pence on rumours it could be taken over by French power giant EDF.
   Mining issues were bouyed by favorable commentary on the sector from brokers Sanford Bernstein. Xstrata added 3.55 per cent to finish at 3,707 pence while Rio Tinto rose 4.63 per cent to 5,694.
   In Paris reports that France could decide against attributing a fourth mobile telephone license boosted the three current holders. Bouygues rose 3.91 per cent to 44.40 euros, Vivendi gained 0.31 per cent to reach 25.76 and France Telecom added 0.78 per cent to finish at 22.05 euros.
   In Frankfurt SAP, the world’s leading professional software group, shot up 4.14 per cent to 33.22 euros after management reaffirmed targets for 2008 and over the medium term.
   Elsewhere there were gains of 1.21 per cent to 460.81 on the AEX in Amsterdam, 1.04 per cent to 3,822.80 on Bel-20 in Brussels, 0.73 per cent to 33,346 on the SP/Mib in Milan, 0.78 per cent to 13,846.4 on the Ibex-35 in Madrid and 0.76 per cent to 7,573.59 on the Swiss Market Index.

Hong Kong gold closes higher
Hong Kong gold prices closed sharply higher on Thursday at 903.25-904.00 US dollars an ounce, up from Wednesday’s close of 887.00-888.00 dollars. It opened at 903.00-903.50 dollars. The market will be closed for a public holiday Friday.
— AFP