Gulf leaders meeting in Muscat on Monday will discuss how to use the money in their bulging treasure chests to shore up their countries’ struggling economies in the face of the global economic crisis.
   The oil-rich nations can afford to splash money around after crude oil prices hit record levels this year, and leaders will try to agree a joint approach when they assemble for the Gulf Cooperation Council’s annual summit.
   ‘The oil countries of the Gulf will be able to cope with the crisis and to write off its impact on their economies for a year or a year and a half,’ said Kuwaiti expert Jassem Al-Saadoun.
   ‘They can finance their projected budget deficits in 2009 and probably 2010’ thanks to their currency reserves, said Saadoun, who heads the Al-Shall Economic Consultants think-tank.
   However, GCC leaders attending the two-day get-together will be conscious of the impact on future revenues of the recent plunge in international oil prices to less than a third of their July peaks above $147 a barrel.
   Saadoun projects an average oil price between $40 and $50 in 2009 and between $50 and $70 in 2010.
   In addition, Gulf governments have seen the value of their international investments shrink sharply as stock markets have plummeted amid the credit crunch.
   But analysts and officials agree that Gulf countries have plenty of money left to inject into their domestic economies if they want.
   ‘The GCC has the resources to weather this crisis,’ its secretary general Abdurrahman al-Attiyah told the daily Al-Hayat last week, noting that member countries have built up sizeable financial reserves over the past five years.

The interim government on Sunday signed an agreement with the World Bank’s concessionary lending window, International Development Association, to support the people with disabilities and the children at risks, particularly street children.
   The support of about $35m will be provided under a project styled ‘Disability and Children-At-Risk’ which is designed to promote equity and social inclusion for these vulnerable groups, according to a WB information note.
   The project will expand disability services, improve awareness, and build the capacity of the non-government organisations, disabled people’s organisations, and the government agencies to provide support to the people with disabilities and their families. It will support scaling up of Jatiyo Protibondhi Unnayan Foundation.
   The note said the project would focus on strengthening and scaling up of the integrated social work and care services for the vulnerable children below 18 years particularly the street children and orphans in the rapidly growing urban slums.
   The loan agreement was signed at the Economic Relations Division in the afternoon. Mohammad Mejbahuddin, additional secretary of the division, and Mohi Uz Zaman Quazia, acting country director of the WB, signed it on behalf of the two sides.

A crisis of small currency notes and coins of different denominations has been prevailing in Cox’s Bazar, tourist capital of the country, for a long time.
   The buyers and sellers are found every day locked in quarrels on the issue of different denominations of small currencies at shops and markets. People from all walks of the life are facing the problem in their daily transactions for paying prices of commodities in markets and to pay bus and rickshaw fares. Paper currency note of Tk 1 denomination is hardly found. Silver and copper coins of Tk 1 denomination are also rarely found though their demand is high.
   Sales and purchases are being greatly hampered for the dearth of different denominations of small currency notes and coins. In most cases, passengers of buses, rickshaws and rickshaw-vans have to pay Tk 2 or Tk 4 in place of Tk 1 and Tk 6 in place of Tk 5 for want of Tk 1 note or coins.
   Local people said they were incurring losses in purchasing vegetables, fishes and others commodities.
   The dearth of denominations of small currency is also prevailing in banks and post offices. Some officials of local branches of the Sonali Bank and the Janata Bank, while talking to New Age, admitted the fact and said they were regularly collecting torn notes and sending those to the Bangladesh bank.

Cuban president Raul Castro said Saturday that Cuba’s state finances ‘simply don’t add up’ and announced cost-cutting measures as the island posted an annual economic growth of 4.3 per cent for the year, barely half the original government forecast.
   Addressing parliament, Castro said he was cutting by half the budget for state travel abroad, apparently affecting everyone from Cabinet ministers to top executives at state-run firms, and reducing government-sponsored vacations used to reward employees.
   Without releasing specific figures, officials said 2008 saw Cuba spent 6.7 per cent more than it took in.

Panasonic Electric Works, the building materials unit of consumer electronics maker Panasonic Corp, has said it will close three additional plants in Japan and cut 800 workers as a slowing economy hits demand.
   The company, which sells lighting equipment, built-in kitchen systems and other building products, will carry out the plant closures and job cuts by the year ending March 2011, a Panasonic Electric spokesman said on Sunday.
   The latest streamlining measures come on top of two factory shutdowns and elimination of 200 jobs so far in the current business year to March 2009, the spokesman said. Of total job cuts of 1,000, 550 of them will be full-time positions.
   Panasonic Electric Works, owned 51 per cent by Panasonic Corp, the world’s No 1 plasma TV maker, has not decided which three of the remaining 13 domestic factories will be closed, he said. Housing starts in Japan, battered by a regulatory change last year, were flat in November compared with a year earlier, far below a median forecast for an 8 per cent rise. Panasonic Electric Works in October cut its net profit forecast for the year to March 2009 by 12 per cent to 38 billion yen ($419 million), which would be down 16 per cent on the year.

Abdul Muyeed Choudhury was elected chairman of the board of directors of Biman Bangladesh Airlines at a board meeting in Dhaka on Saturday.
   Earlier Mahbub Jamil, special assistant to the chief adviser, relinquished his position of chairman and member of the Biman board, said a press release.
   Muyeed Choudhury had been an adviser to the caretaker government in 2001, chairman of the National Board of Revenue, and managing director of Biman Bangladesh Airlines. He also worked as executive director of BRAC and chairman of the SME Foundation.

An arbitration tribunal of the Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry on Saturday asked the newly-formed presidium of Sylhet Chamber of Commerce and Industry to abstain from any activity until further ruling, SCCI sources said.
   The tribunal presided by SM Munsef Ali made the ruling on a petition filed by Hilkil Gulzar, an SCCI director, the sources said.
   Hilkil in his petition claimed that the representatives in the SCCI election held on December 16 were not elected as per section 12(K) 1994 of the SCCI constitution, which says the representatives will be elected according to specific categories of the institution.
   In response to an appeal also filed by Hilkil, the election appeal tribunal of SCCI also ruled on December 21 to hold a new election to the post of the chamber’s senior vice-president.

Mobile phone operator Grameenphone Ltd has recently signed an agreement with the Hotel Naz Garden in Bogra, a news release said.
   Under the agreement, Grameenphone Business Solutions & Xplore subscribers will enjoy 25 per cent discount on room rent. The offer will be valid till 31st December, 2009.
   Grameenphone deputy general manager (marketing) Fahad Saleh and Hotel Naz Garden manager (sales and marketing) Aamir Sadat Prince signed the agreement on behalf of their respective sides.
   To avail the discount Business Solutions and Xplore subscribers need to have an active connection of at least 180 days.

The Bank Asia gave higher studies scholarships to four successful students of Malkhanagor in Sirajdikhan Upazila of Munshiganj on Saturday, said a news release.
   The bank president and managing director, Syed Anisul Huq, handed over the scholarship money to the students. The Sirajdikhan UNO, Md Mahmudur Rahman Habib, was present as special guest. The bank director, AM Nurul Islam, and former director Shafiuddin Chowdhury, among others, were present.
   The Bank Asia has selected 50 successful students from rural areas across the country for the scholarships this year as a part of its corporate social responsibility, the release said.

Gas Transmission Company Limited held its 15th annual general meeting at a city hotel on Wednesday, said a news release on Saturday.
   The GTCL Board of Directors’ chairman, Jalal Ahmed, also the Petrobanlga chairman, chaired the meeting.
   At the meeting, reports of the board, audited report and auditor’s report on the 2007-2008 activities of the company were placed and approved.
   The meeting was told that the company realised Tk 417.81-crore revenue by transmitting gas and condensate in FY08, posting a 18.26 per cent rise than that of the previous fiscal.

Bangladesh Bank and all other scheduled banks will remain closed today on the occasion of the 9th Jatiya Sangsad elections, a BB press release said.
   — BSS

The European single currency, which turns 10 on Thursday, could face a painful adolescence if the economic crisis and demographic pressures wreck its family’s finances.
   The eurozone’s 16 members, once Slovakia joins on Thursday, can be grateful they did not suffer overwhelming foreign exchange turmoil along with widespread financial turbulence this year, experts said.
   ‘We would probably have had a series of currency crises’ that could have hammered some countries had they kept their national monies, former German central bank president Hans Tietmeyer told AFP last week.
   A leading actor in the euro’s launch, Tietmeyer stressed that an important element was the establishment of an independent European Central Bank that was modelled in large part on the German Bundesbank.
   ‘As a result, the single currency has without doubt benefited the people and the economy of Europe,’ he said.
   European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso also noted recently that ‘the euro is sheltering businesses from the exchange rate volatility which has battered them in previous downturns.’
   And ECB interest rates have even fallen sharply amid the financial crisis, something countries like Italy and Greece would have found nearly impossible to do by themselves.
   For Bank of America economist Gilles Moec, the past 10 years cannot be compared with the pre-euro period, especially with respect to the current economic recession and one in 1992-93.
   ‘Economic policies were completely sterilised then, you could do nothing,’ he said.
   ‘That was a time when you paid 14 per cent interest to buy a house.
   ‘We would never have gotten the interest rate cuts we have had in Europe over the past year,’ when the ECB slashed its benchmark lending rate to 2.50 per cent, with more to come in 2009.
   The euro has also been a buffer against the oil price spike, boosted trade among its members and helped to create at least 16 million jobs while gaining in stature as a global reserve currency.
   The eurozone accounts for 16.5 per cent of global economic output, while the single currency represents 27 per cent of official foreign reserves, up from 18 per cent just after its launch.
   The dollar has declined from 71.2 per cent to 62.5 per cent in the meantime.
   And European countries like Denmark and Sweden that initially spurned the euro have begun to wonder whether it is the best option now.
   But though the single currency has become a robust money used by 329 million eurozone residents and many more worldwide, the current economic crisis will be the biggest test yet of its member states’ divergent policies.
   The euro’s credibility is built on the EU’s Stability and Growth Pact, which binds governments to specific financial criteria, notably ceilings on public deficits and debt.
   Many countries preparing economic support packages to battle the crisis will likely violate the pact’s provisions however, and massive state borrowing next year could leave profligate nations forced to pay stiff rates on bond markets.
   Analysts expect the 16-nation zone will weather the strain, but if ECB monetary polices do not work for all members, ‘it could lead to conflict between member states, which could be very damaging’ internationally, Tietmeyer warned.
   Moec joked that the stability pact ‘has been in danger since its creation,’ and said recent decisions by EU members to increase spending were ‘basically to an agreement to demolish’ its fiscal limitations.
   And while some saw the start of a pan-European economic policy in responses to the economic crisis, the London-based economist highlighted the ‘confederal’ or ‘inter-governmental’ approach of nations like Britain, France and Germany.
   ‘European institutions that exist were completely sidelined,’ Moec said.
   In the coming years, he pointed to anticipated demographic shocks including pressure from spending on healthcare and pensions, and warned of a lack of credible sanctions that might force governments to get their finances in order.
   ‘In the years to come that is going to be very complicated,’ he forecast.
   Tietmeyer said diverging wage costs and varying levels of respect for fiscal discipline were problems ‘that we are seeing now in some countries’.
   And EU Monetary and Economic Affairs commissioner Joaquin Almunia stressed recently: ‘We must safeguard the sound budgetary and macroeconomic framework that has made the euro such a success.’
   Moec said the ‘monetary union is very solid, if only because there is no alternative,’ but added that with the probable integration of at least eight more members in the next decade, more regulatory coordination would be needed.
   Power would continue to shift from national central banks to the ECB in Frankfurt, he forecast.
   ‘From a political point of view that might be somewhat delicate to manage,’ the economist concluded.

Turkey’s parliament on Saturday reduced the budget allocations of most ministries by up to 16 per cent to cut overall spending as the country seeks a loan deal with the International Monetary Fund.
   Parliament voted 324-117 to save around 5.5 billion liras ($3.6 billion) in the 2009 budget. That is expected to please an IMF delegation due to arrive in Ankara early January. The IMF has long been urging Turkey to cut spending.
   The budgets of the defence, justice and transportation ministries were excluded.
   Turkey hopes to complete the talks with the IMF during January and secure a loan of some $25 billion. Turkey has to repay around $50 billion of foreign debt within a year.
   Central Bank governor Durmus Yilmaz on Saturday said Turkey’s banking sector was sound thanks to an overhaul of the banking system following a deep financial crisis in 2001. But authorities were pondering how to address a sharp slowdown in the economy amid layoffs and production halts particularly in the country’s leading automotive and textile industries.
   ‘Today, the debate is whether Turkey needs to use its resources to help producers,’ Yilmaz said.
   The slowdown may push the central bank to further cut interest rates. The overnight lending interest rate between banks now stands at 17.5 per cent.
   However, the Parliament on Saturday did not revise some key official projections for 2009, including a target of a 27 per cent rise in exports and an ambitious 4 per cent growth in gross domestic product.
   A recent report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said Turkey’s growth rate was expected to decline to below 2 per cent next year.
   ‘The budget projections are based on the assumption that there will be no recession in the economy,’ said Esfender Korkmaz, a lawmaker from the main opposition Republican People’s Party. ‘The global crisis has not been taken into account.’
   Korkmaz criticised the government for basing budget calculations on an exchange rate of 1.41 liras to the dollar, which he said could cause problems if the lira slides further. One dollar traded at 1.49 liras on Saturday.
   Turkey’s economy has been plagued by a current account deficit, and GDP growth slowed in the third quarter to a rate of only 0.5 per cent. Still, the growth rate in the first nine months reached 3 per cent. The jobless rate stood at 10.3 per cent in September.
   On the other hand, the Turks have been increasingly complaining about price hikes, including a more than 22 per cent increase in the price of natural gas, which is widely used for heating homes in winter.
   Thousands of leftists carrying torches on Saturday protested against the government in 14 cities across the country, the state-run Anatolia news agency reported.

Malaysian budget carrier AirAsia X said it could weather the storm of a sharply deteriorating global economy and was hiring pilots to expand its routes to China, India, South Korea, and Japan.
   Chief executive Azran Osman Rani told AFP that while it was a challenging period for the aviation industry as many countries slipped into a recession and carriers went bust, there were ‘a lot of business opportunities for us’.
   Bookings for its direct London flight on its leased Airbus 340-300, due to begin March 11, were overwhelming, he said, with 30,000 seats sold.
   Demand was great as ticket prices cost about 2,000 ringgit ($580), less than half the price of a regular non-budget flight.
   AirAsia X will fly five times a week between the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur and Stansted Airport on the outskirts of London.
   Azran said AirAsia X was looking to expand its routes in 2009 into northern India including New Delhi, Amritsar and Mumbai, and to Beijing. In 2010 it aims to target South Korea and to Tokyo, Hokkaido in northern Japan and Kyushu in the south.
   Azran said it was taking on new staff for its expansion. ‘We are still hiring pilots and cabin crew despite the tough economic outlook next year,’ he said.
   AirAsia X, which currently flies to Australia’s Gold Coast, Perth and Melbourne, and Hangzhou in China, will end the year with about 362 million ringgit in sales.

Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Group Holdings and its two rivals are considering an integration of their operation to become Japan’s biggest non-life insurer, a news report said Sunday.
   Mitsui Sumitomo, the nation’s second largest non-life insurer, is negotiating with Aioi Insurance and Nissay Dowa General Insurance on the integration, Japan’s public broadcaster NHK said, quoting unnamed sources.

Oil prices, which hit record highs above $147 a barrel this year before plunging under $33, risk slumping more in 2009 as recession curbs the world’s appetite for energy, analysts say.
   ‘We expect oil prices in early 2009 to remain under pressure given the weakening demand outlook and as global economies continue to slow,’ said Nimit Khamar, analyst at the Sucden brokerage in London.
   ‘By the end of the second quarter, we expect prices should stabilise and find a floor, provided OPEC can comply with their recent cuts and continue cutting output.’
   The crude market plunged in late December to reach the lowest points for almost five years as weak economic data around the world stoked concerns that a sharp global slowdown will ravage the market.
   The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries oil producers’ cartel, which pumps 40 per cent of the world’s crude, is keen to prevent prices sliding further, as member nations look to protect their incomes.
   However, OPEC production cuts agreed in September, October and December have failed to stop the market sliding under $33 earlier this month.
   The market scaled record heights earlier this year on supply worries in key producing nations, sparking fears about runaway inflation globally.
   But economists now fear that a plunging crude market will spark deflation – a prolonged drop in prices – that will further damage a global economy that is reeling from the impact of a credit crunch.
   ‘2008 will go down as one of the most volatile and difficult years, ever’ for oil, said Peter Beutel, analyst at energy consultancy Cameron Hanover.
   The market has plunged by as much as 78 per cent since hitting record heights five months ago.
   The oil market began 2008 by vaulting above $100 a barrel for the first time.
   Prices hurtled past $100 on January 2, 2008, as traders fretted over violence in oil exporter Nigeria, and supply problems in the key US market.
   The assassination of former Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto in late 2007 also stoked geopolitical jitters.
   Crude futures subsequently rocketed above 120, 130 and 140 dollars a barrel on their way to setting all-time highs in July.
   Over the last two years, oil prices have also soared owing to rampant energy demand from emerging economic giants China and India, and friction between key crude producer Iran and the Western world over Tehran’s nuclear programme.
   Prices also fizzed higher in 2008 because of a weak dollar, which encouraged demand for dollar-priced commodities as they became cheaper for foreign buyers.
   The market set historic highs on July 11 as traders seized on simmering geopolitical tensions in Iran and Nigeria. That day, New York crude struck $147.27 a barrel and London Brent touched $147.50.
   Since then, crude futures have plummeted by more than $114 to below $33 a barrel in New York in December. London’s Brent North Sea crude for February delivery traded at under $37 a barrel last week.
   US investment bank Merrill Lynch forecasts oil prices to average $50 a barrel in 2009, as energy demand tumbles in the face of shrinking economic growth.
   Deutsche Bank predicts prices to average $47.50 in 2009, cutting its previous forecast of $60.
   The market had doubled in value over the course of 2007 from a low point of just under $50 per barrel.

Ecuador is looking to buy back its bonds at a steep discount after defaulting on part of its foreign debt.
   The Ecuador president, Rafael Correa, says Ecuador may attempt to buy back its foreign debt in January, without specifying which bonds it might purchase.
   In his Saturday radio address, the president said, ‘Let’s make a proposal: at the beginning of January, to repurchase this foreign debt, but obviously at a substantially lower value than the face value’ of the bonds.

If you thought 2008 was bad for the world economy, just wait for 2009. After a year when leading economies slid into recession, the forecasts paint an even grimmer picture for the 12 months ahead.
   The slowdown in global demand will mean more job cuts, factory closures and bankruptcies, as well as budget-stretching rescue plans and government bailouts running into the hundreds of billions of dollars (euros), economists said.
   ‘We see 2009 as really being a bad year, with recession for most advanced economies and growth decreasing for emerging economies,’ the head of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, said earlier this month.
   The IMF’s chief economist, Olivier Blanchard, urged world governments to spend more in order to boost domestic demand ‘if we want to prevent this recession developing into a Great Depression’ like the downturn of the 1930s.
   In the past 12 months, the OPEC oil cartel has implemented record cuts in production amid plummeting demand, stock markets have plunged and the world financial and auto sectors have been reshaped by state intervention.
   The Institute of International Finance, a Washington-based association of 375 leading world banks and financial institutions, has predicted a contraction for the world economy in 2009 for the first time since at least the 1950s.
   The IIF said the global economy will shrink 0.4 per cent in 2009 after 2.0 per cent growth this year, with IIF managing director Charles Dallara calling it ‘the most severe, globally synchronized recession in modern economic history’.
   A report on Friday by the Centre for Economic and Business Research in London forecast contraction of 2.9 per cent for the British economy over 2009 – the worst full-year growth figure for Britain since the end of World War II.
   It was just the latest in a relentless round of depressing 2009 forecasts.
   The world’s biggest economy, the United States, will shrink by 0.9 per cent, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said this month despite hopes that US president-elect Barack Obama will help stimulate growth.
   Obama has promised a ‘bold’ stimulus plan of vast public works to pull the US economy out of recession after he takes office on January 20, drawing parallels to the 1930s New Deal that helped end the Great Depression.
   Germany’s Ifo economic institute said Europe’s largest economy would contract by 2.2 per cent and the Japanese government has forecast zero growth for 2009 as Japan’s export-oriented economy takes a hard hit from the slump in demand.
   ‘We need to take unprecedented measures when in an extraordinary economic situation,’ Japanese prime minister, Taro Aso, said this week, soon after his cabinet approved a record-high budget aimed at stimulating the ailing economy.
   While all the growth forecasts remain positive for the world’s leading developing economies – Brazil, Russia, India and China – these recently booming giants have also been hit hard by the decline in global demand.
   The Russian government is forecasting a budget deficit for 2009 for the first time since the chaotic 1998 financial crisis and wage arrears and layoffs have prompted Russian officials to warn about the prospect of popular unrest.
   In a rare admission of trouble ahead, China’s top economic planner, Zhang Ping, said this month: ‘We are confronted with great challenges resulting from a dramatic change in the world economic and financial situation.’
   In Iceland and Ukraine, the two European countries worst hit by the economic and financial crisis, 2008 has seen street protests and bank closures.
   Both countries are predicting their economies will shrink massively in 2009 despite getting IMF loans, with Iceland forecasting a contraction of 10 per cent.
   ‘We are protesting against the arbitrariness of the government,’ said Irina Kulich, 46, in a crowd in Kiev this month as protesters held placards reading: ‘No to the Impoverishment of the People!’ and ‘Patience is not Unlimited!’

Scandals surrounding poisoned Chinese foods have taken a heavy toll on Taiwan’s bakeries and makers of dairy products in recent months, but could provide a long-term boost for local food makers.
   Liu Li-chien, who produces dried persimmons according to a 150-year tradition, thought his days in business were numbered when the island lifted restrictions on Chinese imports.
   In 2004, to conform with World Trade Organisation rules, Taiwan lifted its long-term ban on imports of Chinese-made products, and cheaper – and generally poorer quality – goods flooded in.
   Persimmons were no exception. Customs figures showed imports of China-made dried persimmon surged to 1,009 tonnes last year, from 919 tonnes in 2005.
   ‘I have been highly suspicious about their quality although importers claimed Chinese-made dried persimmons passed Taiwan’s food safety tests,’ Liu said.
   The problem, he said, was the price. ‘It costs local makers at least 80 Taiwan dollars (2.4 US) to make half a pound of dried persimmons. But China-made dried persimmons cost half that.’
   As a result, the number of small dried persimmon makers in northern Hsinpu town, centre of the Taiwanese industry, has dropped to 17 from a peak of 25 in recent years.
   The persimmon growers have felt the pinch, too.
   Orchardists in Fanlu, a township in southern Taiwan supply around 10,000 tonnes of fresh persimmons each year, accounting for 30 per cent of all persimmons produced in Taiwan.
   Lin Wen-ching, of the Fanlu farmers’ association, said incomes have been slashed thanks to the influx of Chinese produce.
   ‘It is pretty hard for the growers as the sale price is very close to the production cost,’ he said.
   But a decisive twist developed in the wake of China’s tainted milk scandal earlier this year when three Taiwanese toddlers and one woman developed kidney stones after drinking Chinese milk products containing the industrial chemical melamine.
   As the scandal deepened – with Chinese dairy products being removed from shop shelves across the world and hundreds of thousands of children in China sickened by the poisoned milk – Taiwanese began to look with wariness at products from across the water.
   China and Taiwan have been foes for 60 years, since the communists won the civil war in 1949 and the losing nationalists fled to the island.
   But since the president, Ma Ying-jeou, took office in May, there has been a thaw in relations, as his government regards closer ties with China as a solution to economic troubles on the island
   Many Taiwanese fear the negative effects of this growing closeness. Many jobs have already disappeared as the manufacturing sector has largely moved to China to take advantage of a huge, cheap labour pool.
   There are concerns that more jobs will go as Chinese workers and students are permitted in.
   But the milk scandal appears to have awoken many Taiwanese to the weaknesses of China’s economic growth, in which the race for profit has often undermined regard for consumer safety.
   As Chinese dairy products were removed from Taiwanese shops – and news stories reminded consumers problems have been detected in a wide range of food and other products from China – the island’s own producers took heart.
   Their optimism has been backed up by the Council of Agriculture, which says the milk scandal has prompted consumers to turn to local produce.
   ‘When shopping, I used to pay no attention to where products were made. But now after the milk scandal, I refuse to buy anything from China, especially food,’ said a man surnamed Lin who was visiting Liu’s persimmon orchard.
   Taiwan’s once-troubled dairy farmers, too, say business is coming back, with sales of local milk up by 250 tonnes per day, with a total surge of 20 per cent since October.
   ‘There is no surplus milk this winter,’ said Wang Cheng-taung, vice-chairman of the Agriculture Council.

Five senior Church of England bishops slammed the British government over the financial crisis, accusing it of being ‘morally corrupt’, in comments published Sunday.
   The leading bishops delivered a withering assessment of the centre-left Labour Party’s 11 years in office under prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, in separate interviews with The Sunday Telegraph newspaper.
   The bishops of Manchester, Durham, Winchester, Carlisle and Hulme warned that Britain was suffering from an addiction to debt, family breakdown and a widening gap between rich and poor.
   They accused ministers of pursuing ‘scandalous’ policies and reneging on promises. The attack came as Brown – the son of a Church of Scotland minister – prepared to tell the public in his New Year message that Britain would meet the ‘enormous challenge’ of the financial crisis in 2009.
   The prime minister was to say that his plan to spend more money to tackle the looming recession was a much better option than not taking any action.
   Last week Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the leader of the world’s Anglicans, said Brown’s plans were like an ‘addict returning to the drug’.
   Nigel McCulloch, the Bishop of Manchester, said the government was ‘beguiled by money’ and had acted ‘scandalously’ over the financial crisis by encouraging further debt.
   ‘This is not just an economic issue, but a moral one,’ he said.
   ‘The government believes that money can answer all of the problems and has encouraged greed and a love of money that the Bible says is the root of all evil.
   ‘It’s morally corrupt because it encourages people to get into a lifestyle of believing they can always get what they want.
   ‘We have the poor feeling they have been betrayed and the gap is getting ever greater. Any government of integrity would have exercised restraint, but this has been sadly lacking.’
   The Sunday Telegraph, a conservative weekly broadsheet, said the comments reflected a deepening rift on social and moral issues between the government and the Church of England, which is the established state church in the country.
   Stephen Lowe, the Bishop of Hulme, said: ‘The government isn’t telling people who are already deep in debt to stop overextending themselves, but instead is urging us to spend more. That is morally suspect and morally feeble.
   ‘It is unfair and irresponsible of the government to put pressure on the public to spend in order to revive the economy.’
   Bishop of Winchester Michael Scott-Joynt said: ‘The government hasn’t done anything like enough to help those less well off, particularly in terms of tax redistribution.

Temporary workers like Toshie Helena Oguihara were a driving force behind Japan’s economic recovery in recent years, but when the recession returned they found themselves first in the firing line.
   Japanese companies have announced thousands of lay-offs among contract or temporary employees in recent weeks in response to the economic crisis.
   The wave of job cuts has shattered the myth that a job is for life in Asia’s largest economy, which traditionally prided itself on a middle-class lifestyle.
   When auto plants slowed their assembly lines due to slumping demand, Oguihara – a 50-year-old Japanese-Brazilian – was among those out of a job.
   The small subcontractor plant producing air-conditioning compressors for Japan’s leading automaker, Toyota Motor Corp, no longer needed her.
   ‘I was fired because I was a Brazilian, and a temporary employee, even though I had been a hard worker for the past three years,’ said Oguihara, one of some 300,000 Japanese Brazilians in Japan who are allowed to stay longer than most unskilled foreign workers because of their ancestral ties.
   ‘I may have to return to Brazil if I can’t find a new job,’ Oguihara lamented.
   She has been in Japan for most of the time since 1997, working for auto plants scattered around Toyota city in central Japan – home to mighty Toyota and a number of smaller subcontractors.
   Many other Japanese Brazilians, including her cousin who has worked at a plant for the electronics titan Sony, have also lost their jobs amid the recession, leaving them with the problem of finding somewhere to live and education for their children who are used to living in Japan, she said.
   It is not just foreigners losing their jobs. Japanese temporary workers – who make up an increasingly large share of the workforce following the deregulation of the labour market in recent years – have also been affected.
   ‘It’s outrageous. I’ve been working hard to one day become a permanent worker, but that dream was crushed,’ said Hidetomo Kita, 37, a temporary worker who lost his job at truck maker Hino Motors in November.
   ‘They’ve exploited us when they were busy, then shed us even though we worked as much as permanent employees did. It’s so unfair,’ Kita said, adding that he was worried as his wife, a temporary worker for another manufacturer, was also on the verge of losing her job.
   Toyota, which expects to post its first-ever operating loss this year, is cutting 3,000 temporary jobs at its domestic plants. Honda Motor Co is eliminating 1,210 non-regular jobs, while Nissan Motor Co is axing all of its 1,000 temporary jobs in Japan. Mitsubishi Motors is cutting 1,100 posts. Japanese have traditionally seen themselves as an equitable, middle-class society thanks to life-time employment and a narrow gap between the rich and the poor.
   But critics say those days are gone, largely because of free-market reforms including deregulation in 2004 that allowed the manufacturing industry to use temporary staff in their plants.
   Today, roughly one in three workers in Japan are non-regular employees, including temporary workers who generally receive lower wages than permanent workers – a group often described as ‘the working poor’.
   Many workers find themselves with nowhere to live when they lose their jobs – and with it the cheap company dormitory they were living in, said Yoshimitsu Wada, a trade union leader for temporary workers.
   ‘Can this country have this kind of cruel society?’ Wada said.
   Some temporary workers began fighting against company managers with demonstrations and lawsuits, but legal battles are tough for workers to win, said Wada.
   ‘We eventually need to reform a labour law,’ he said.
   In one novel solution, the small city of Kitsuki in southern Japan has offered jobs and even cabins at campsites to the 1,100 contract workers axed locally by a subsidiary of office equipment and camera maker Canon Inc.
   But the problem keeps growing. The latest government survey out last Friday said that more than 85,000 temporary workers have lost or know they will lose their jobs by next March.
   ‘Japan’s deregulation has gone too far,’ said Toshiaki Tachibanaki, professor of economics at Doshisha University.
   ‘It has changed the employment structure in favour of corporate management, which in turn stirred anxiety among the public over their everyday lives,’ he said.
   Prime Minister Taro Aso’s government in November submitted a revision to the law on temporary workers to parliament to tighten the rules. The opposition bloc is also seeking tougher regulations.
   ‘Now, the problem of a free-market model is under scrutiny even in the United States. It’s time to review the past policy in Japan, too,’ Tachibanaki said.