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Life and general insurance companies will soon be asked to raise their minimum paid-up capital to Tk 30 crore and Tk 40 crore respectively in five years, officials said.
   The government has planned to revise the insurers’ capital requirements upward to strengthen their financial footing and safeguard the interests of the insured.
   Paid-up capital requirement is now Tk 7.5 crore for a life and Tk 15 crore for a general insurer.
   The commerce ministry earlier suggested that the amounts should be raised to Tk 15 crore and Tk 25 crore. But the council of advisers in a meeting in February felt that insurers should have a bigger capital base.
   Currently, there are 18 life and 44 general insurance companies in the country.
   The law ministry last week gave the commerce ministry go-ahead for submitting the proposal for hiking capital requirements to the Cabinet Division, which will forward it to the council of advisers, officials said.
   ‘We are now almost ready to send the proposal to the Cabinet Division and expect to get it approved by the council of advisers,’ a high official in the commerce ministry told New Age.
   Insurance companies, now regulated by the commerce ministry, will be put under the finance ministry after raising their capital base and bringing some reforms in the sector.
    The planned reforms in the insurance sector include liquidation of office of the controller of insurance at the commerce ministry and formation of an insurance regulatory authority.
   Moreover, the general insurance companies are likely to be renamed as non-life insurance companies.
   The reforms in the insurance sector will be brought about by amending the insurance act 1938 and enacting the insurance ordinance 2008.
   ‘The long-awaited changes in the insurance sector will be made soon to safeguard the interests of the insured and bring transparency and accountability in the sector,’ said the commerce ministry official.
   An insurance regulatory authority will be established soon after the proposed insurance ordinance is promulgated, he added.
   The post of the chief controller of insurance would be changed to chief executive officer.

Titas Gas is going to apply tomorrow (Tuesday) to the stock exchanges for listing with the bourses to offload shares of Tk 200 crore under the direct listing regulations, said officials.
   ‘We will apply to the bourses for listing of Titas Gas Transmission and Distribution Company Ltd on Tuesday,’ said Md Iftikhar-uz-Zaman, chief executive officer of the ICB Capital Management Ltd, the issue manager of the state-owned company.
   He hoped that the company would complete the listing process with the Dhaka and the Chittagong stock exchanges soon. ‘Share offloading of the SoE will start this month.’ Earlier, it was expected that share offloading would start later in April, said ICB sources.
   In November last year, the government asked the Titas Gas Transmission and Distribution Company to offload 25 per cent of its shares by March this year.
   Iftikhar said, ‘The offloading process has been delayed due to procedural reasons.’
   The face value of the company’s shares would be Tk 100 each, he said.
   ‘We are also working to offload shares of the Bakhrabad Gas Systems Ltd and the Liquefied Petroleum Gas Ltd by the month of June this year,’ he added.
   He said Bakhrabad Gas would offload shares of Tk 100 crore and LP Gas Tk 3 crore.
   He said the government also decided to sell off shares of the Karnaphuli Paper Mills Ltd, the Bangladesh Insulator and Sanitaryware Factory Ltd, and Chatak Cement Factory Ltd on the bourses.
   The CEO of ICML said the government also decided to offload its holdings in the Atlas Bangladesh, the National Tubes and the Eastern Cables, which are already listed with the bourses.
   He said offloading of the shares of SoEs would bolster the capital markets.
   In last January, two other state-owned entities the Jamuna Oil Company Ltd and the Meghna Petroleum Ltd offloaded 30 per cent of their shares on the stock market under the direct listing regulations.
   Earlier in 2006, the Dhaka Electric Supply Company and the Power Grid Company Bangladesh, two SoEs, offloaded 25 per cent of their shares under the regulations.

Stocks gained on Sunday mainly due to buying spree from the investors for the mutual fund, bank and power shares, said market operators.
   The general index of the Dhaka Stock Exchange gained 29.09 points or 0.95 per cent to close at 3101.94, while its blue chips index, DSE20, advanced by 17.75 points or 0.75 per cent to close at 2372.99.
   A DSE stock broker said selective buying by investors pushed up the price indices in the market which remained flat with majority number of securities losing.
   Trading on the bourses resumed on Sunday ending a three-day closure. The DSE and the Chittagong Stock Exchange remained closed from
   Thursday to Saturday due to the May Day and a two-day weekly holidays.
   The CSE selective categories index gained 49.84 points or 0.89 per cent to close at 5644.21, while its blue chips index, CSE30, advanced by 121.63 points or 1.62 per cent to close at 7623.79.
   Of the total 243 issues traded at the DSE, 85 advanced, 154 declined and four remained unchanged, and out of 143 issues traded at the CSE, 54 posted gains, 88 dipped and one remained unchanged.
   Turnover at the DSE increased to Tk 281.40 crore from the Wednesday’s Tk 272.47 crore. The CSE turnover, however, went down to Tk 35.62 crore from Tk 43.53 crore.
   AB Bank topped the turnover leaders at the DSE with total transaction of Tk 36.51 crore.
   Other turnover leaders at the prime bourse were IFIC Bank, Apex Adelchi Footwear, Square Pharmaceuticals, United Commercial Bank, Aims 1st Mutual Fund, BRAC Bank, Trust Bank, ACI and Keya Cosmetics.

The country’s foreign currency incomes from tourism and related services are largely been outstripped by money spent by Bangladeshi travellers abroad.
   Impressive growth in foreign tourists even could not hold back the real drain on foreign exchange earnings as foreigners appear miserly with their money, spending half the amount Bangladeshis spend on tours abroad, available official statistics suggest.
   The number of outbound Bangladeshi travellers has doubled in seven years and they spend abroad more generously than foreign tourists coming to the country.
   Inbound foreign tourists are also growing in number, but at a slower rate than Bangladeshis going abroad.
   In 2000, about 1.13 lakh Bangladeshi travellers went abroad and their number more than doubled to 2.33 lakh in 2007, according to Bangladesh Parjatan Corporation study based on the special branch’s report.
   Outbound tourists spent foreign currencies worth about Tk 964 crore in 2006 and Tk 1,072 crore in 2007 abroad on tourism purpose, showed Bangladesh Bank figures compiled from records of foreign currencies endorsed by banks and exchange houses on travellers’ passports.
   The amounts would be much higher as tourists often take away more foreign currencies than endorsed in the passports, an official of BPC said.
   The official agency for tourism promotion collects information about the purposes of foreign tours of Bangladeshi nationals from the immigration department.
   The purposes stated in the document are in most cases different from the real reasons for going abroad, as travellers tend to hide reasons like treatment and job seeking from the travel documents to avoid procedural hassles, the tourism agency official said.
   He hoped that all kinds of tourism related information would be more accurate once the National Tourism Authority came into being.
   Major destinations of Bangladeshi tourists in 2007 were India, UK, USA, Oman, Saudi Arabia, China, Pakistan and Thailand.
   Besides, Malaysia, Singapore and United Arab Emirates have also emerged as major targets for Bangladeshi travellers in recent time. About 1.99 lakh foreign visitors arrived in Bangladesh in 2000 and the number grew to 2.89 lakh in 2007.
   The country’s foreign currency earnings from tourism and related services were about Tk 262 crore in 2000 and Tk 526 crore in 2007, or half the amounts spent abroad by Bangladeshi travellers.
   The growth in the numbers of leisure and business tourists was more than that in travellers with official, religious and study purposes, national tourism agency statistics showed.
   About 42 per cent of foreign visitors came on vacation in 2006 and their percentage grew to 49 per cent next year, while growth in business tourists was 39.35 per cent from 39.23 during the period.
   Inbound visitors came mainly from India, UK, USA, Pakistan, China, Canada, Australia, Malaysia, Korea and Japan.
   Hospitality industry sources said the overall growth in the sector was impressive in 2007 despite political uncertainty and major natural disasters like floods and cyclone Sidr. Domestic tourism also grew significantly with growing number of individuals and families travelling to the country’s natural and archaeological sites, private tour operators said.
   Higher occupancy rate at the private and public sector hotels and guesthouses also supports their claims.
   Cox’s Bazar, Teknaf and St Martin’s Island, Kuakata beach, Sundarbans, archaeological sites and places of pilgrimage attracted most of the travellers from both home and abroad.
   A survey is on to find out the country’s unexplored tourist spots apart from the government’s plan to make travels to and stay in the major tourist spots comfortable, BPC chairman Shafique Alam Mehedi said.
   A tourism act and a national tourism authority have been planned, while the government is set to privatise most of the BPC’s facilities, he said.
   The World Tourism Organisation predicts that global tourism industry will benefit from more than one billion tourists by 2010 and the number would grow to 1.6 billion by 2020. This will give tourism the status of the number one industry globally, it forecasts.
   According to the global tourism body’s index Bangladesh ranked 120 out of 124 member-countries.

The government should allocate Tk 600 crore in the upcoming budget to save the jute industry from ruin.
   The demand was made at a press conference organised by the Jute and Jute Industry Protection Committee of Khulna at the Dhaka Reporters’ Unity on Sunday.
   Khalid Hossain, member of the protection committee, said allocation should be made to run the existing jute mills and pay all the dues of jute industry workers — on service, fired or retired. The jute mills workers have a due of Tk 144.36 crore.
   Out of 77 jute mills, 59 have been closed and the rest 18 are also on the verge of closure, Khalid said, adding that the closures were due to mismanagement and corruption, coupled with intervention of the World Bank and the IMF during the regimes of different governments.
   ‘If the government lay off jute mills one by one, the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of people will be affected. At present, out of eight, seven jute mills are in the Khulna zone,’ he said.
   The state-run jutes mills of the country are divided into three zones — Dhaka, Chittagong and Khulna.
   Of the three zones, at least 32,000 workers work in seven jute mills in Khulna and about two lakh families are dependent on the income of these workers, Khalid said.
   When the demand for jute-based products was increasing across the globe, the jute mills of Bangladesh have been closed one by one as per prescription of the WB and the IMF, he said. On the other, in the neighbouring India, new jute mills were established, he added.
   The Bangladesh Trade Union Kendra executive president, Shahidullah Chowdhury, said, ‘The export demand for jute on international market is five lakh tonnes while we can produce only one lakh tonnes, with domestic demand of one lakh tonnes.’
   Shahidullah, criticising the role of bureaucrats, said, ‘Our bureaucrats do not treat workers as human being. That’s why they can do anything they will to the workers.’
   ‘The jute workers are passing a miserable life, with nominal wage amid skyrocketing prices of essentials. Everything has gone beyond the limit of tolerance,’ he said, warning of outburst anytime.
   Their other demands include keeping Peoples Jute Mill School open under monthly payment order and forming a national committee comprising experts and policy makers to save the ruining jute sector.
   They also demanded reintroduction of the appointment of skilled workers on a temporary basis instead of unskilled workers on a daily basis and increase in the wage of workers.
   Among others, Liakat Ali, editor of the daily Purbanchal, and Haider Gazi Salauddin, adviser to the jute industry protection committee, were present at the conference.

Asian nations are in talks over the creation of a multinational 80 billion dollars foreign exchange pool to be used in case of another regional financial crisis, Japanese finance minister Fukushiro Nukaga said Sunday in Spain.
   ‘We are negotiating in that direction,’ he told reporters at the annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank in Madrid when asked about the amount of funds which are reportedly going to be set aside for the currency swap scheme.
   Nukaga met earlier on Sunday with his Chinese counterpart Xie Xuran and South Korean finance minister Kang Man-soo on the sidelines of the gathering, which is held outside of Asia every two years.
   An agreement is expected to be announced after the finance ministers from the so-called ASEAN+3 group — the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations plus Japan, China and South Korea — meet later on Sunday at the gathering.

The National Board of Revenue is heading towards the online tax payment system for bringing efficiency and transparency in tax administration.
   The first step for the introduction of online payment of tax- automation work was launched Sunday at the tax offices.
   NBR chairman Muhammad Abdul Mazid formally launched the programme at tax zone-1 by handing over a computer to the income tax officials.
   Convener of the automation steering committee Kanon Kumar Roy expressed his gratitude to the government for allocation of fund for automation in tax administration. He said: ‘It is the formal starting of automation work, but major portion of the work, which needs proper planning, still remains to be done.’

The index committee of the Chittagong Stock Exchange recently revised the composition of its blue chips index, CSE30 index, with effect from today, said a press release.
   The index comprises Meghna Life Insurance Company, Square Textiles, Square Pharmaceuticals, Advanced Chemical Industries, Beximco Pharmaceuticals, Agricultural Marketing Company, Heidelberg Cement Bangladesh, Singer Bangladesh, Apex Tannery, Apex Adelchi Footwear, Bata Shoe Company (BD), Miracle Industries, Padma Oil Company, BOC Bangladesh, AB Bank, National Bank, Pubali Bank, Islami Bank Bangladesh, Al-Arafah Islami Bank, Prime Bank, Dhaka Bank, Southeast Bank, Mutual Trust Bank, Uttara Bank, Eastern Bank, Bangladesh Online, Industrial Development and Leasing Company, Uttara Finance and Investment, Usmania Glass Sheet Factory and GQ Ball Pen Industries. Currently, the 30 companies hold 26.5 per cent of the total paid up capital of the CSE and 39 per cent of the total market capitalistion of the port city bourse.

The Shahjalal Islami Bank Limited has declared 20 per cent stock dividend for its shareholders for the year ended on December 31, 2007.
   The declaration was made at the 7th annual general meeting and 8th extraordinary general meeting of the bank held in the Dhaka city on Sunday, said a press release.
   Sajjatuz Jumma, Mohammad Farooq, Harun Miah of Shamsuddin Khan and Harun Miah Ltd, Abdul Halim, AK Azad and Mohammad Younus were elected directors in the AGM.
   The shareholders also approved increase in authorised capital from Tk 200 crore to Tk 400 crore in the EGM.
   Akkas Uddin Mollah, chairman of the board of directors of the bank, presided over both the meetings.
   Among others, directors, sponsor shareholders, managing director and other high officials of the bank attended the meetings.

India must boost infrastructure spending and reform its labour market as China has done if it wants its economy to grow as fast as that of its Asian neighbour, participants at the Asian Development Bank’s annual meeting in Spain said Saturday.
   ‘The Chinese manufacturing success story has a lot to do with a physical infrastructure that is better,’ said economist Bibek Debroy, who has studied both economies, of New Delhi-based think tank Centre for Policy Research.
   In 2005 Indian spending on infrastructure was equivalent to 5.9 per cent of its gross domestic product compared to 14.6 per cent for China, according to India’s Infrastructure Development Finance Co chief executive Rajiv Lall.
   But just over half of the funding for China’s infrastructure projects came from state-owned enterprises, a model which he said could not be copied by India, he added.
   ‘China has very peculiar and unorthodox institutional arrangement,’ he said.
   Debroy said China has also benefited from reforms of its labour market carried out in the mid-1990s which allowed for the greater use of contract workers.
   ‘China has a very flexible labour market, India’s labour market is very rigid,’ said Debroy who prepared a study comparing China and India’s labour markets for the ADB.
   ‘Labour market reforms in India are very often talked about but are rarely implemented,’ he added.
   China’s economy grew 11.9 per cent in 2007 compared to growth of 9.4 per cent for India that year, according to Standard & Poor’s.
   While India attracted a record 24.6 billion dollars in foreign direct investment in the fiscal year to March 31, China captured 74.7 billion dollars of foreign investment in 2007.

European oil groups Royal Dutch Shell and Repsol YPF are under pressure from the United States to end talks with Iran about a multi-billion dollar natural gas deal, the Expansion newspaper reported Saturday.
   It said that Russia’s Gazprom, Indian Oil Corporation and Chinese groups could be waiting to move in if British-Dutch group Shell and Spain’s Repsol pulled out.
   The European firms are in talks with Iran over running part of the South Pars field natural gas operation.
   The Spanish business daily said Shell and Repsol have until the end of May to tell Iran whether they are ready to take part in the 10 billion dollar project.
   But they could face sanctions from the United States, which has already imposed sanctions on Iran, and the two European firms now want to walk away from the deal, said Expansion, which did not quote sources.
   The US government told Royal Dutch Shell and Repsol, which both have major interests in the United States, in January 2007 that their project in Iran would probably infringe US law.
   Shell and Repsol may sell their 50 percent interest in bloc 14. The rest of the shares are held by Iran’s state oil company NIOC. But they want to make sure that they can keep their interest in blocs 23 and 24, hoping that these can be developed when Iranian-US tensions have eased.

Centre will take initiatives to export tea grown in the gardens of north Bengal to countries like Pakistan, Iran and Egypt.
   In a press conference at Hasimara near Jalpaiguri, minister of state for commerce Jairam Ramesh said, ‘Demand for Indian tea is quite high in Pakistan, Iran and Egypt and tea of north Bengal will be exported to these countries.’ ‘Though north Bengal produces about 250 million kg tea every year, but the export volume is inadequate. Only nine per cent of Darjeeling tea is exported,’ he said.
   Ramesh and other officials of Tea Board of India will visit the countries to promote the export market. Centre has also promised to take special measures for the development of three hundred tea gardens in north Bengal.
   The minister said the closed tea gardens of Kathalguri and Ramjhora will be opened in two-and-a-half month.

Growing concerns over soaring food prices which threaten to push millions deeper into poverty overshadowed the start of the Asian Development Bank annual meeting in Madrid Saturday.
   Bank director general Rajat Nag said the surging cost of food affects one billion poor in Asia who spend a lot of their wages on food.
   ‘I think at this meeting there will be lots of discussion on the food situation,’ he said ahead of the start of the four-day gathering.
   The ADB, which last year handed out just over 10 billion dollars in loans, has offered to lend money to Asian governments so that they can subsidise the price of food staples for the poor.
   In the long term, the ADB is looking to boost investments in agriculture infrastructure projects such as rural roads and irrigation systems that will help increase farm output and make it easier to get goods to market.
   On the eve of the meeting, donors pledged 11.3 billion dollars to the bank’s Asian Development Fund, its key poverty alleviation mechanism, for the 2009-2012, a 60 per cent increase over the last four-year period.
   The fund provides grants and low interest loans to Asia’s poorest countries to help them build roads, provide clean water and electricity and agriculture infrastructure.
   ‘With child malnutrition still widespread in Asia, and the global food crisis threatening to reverse the gains nations have achieved in reducing poverty, support for rural infrastructure and rural finance is critically important,’ ADB president Haruhiko Kuroda said in a statement.
   Prices for the benchmark Thai variety of rice, a food stable across much of Asia, are at about 1,000 dollars a tonne, up threefold from the last ADB annual meeting in Japan one year ago.
   The jump in food prices is fueling inflation globally and the ADB predicted it will hit 5.1 per cent across Asia this year, its highest level since the Asian financial crisis a decade ago. This is raising concerns of popular unrest.
   The food crisis has been blamed on poor harvests caused by drought, use of agriculture commodities to make biofuels, and surging demand, especially from China and India, as living standards rise.
   Some major Asian exporters of rice, such as India and Vietnam, have imposed restrictions on exports of the staple in a bid to secure domestic supplies.
   The ADB opposes such measures, saying it amounts to hoarding at the national level and arguing it distorts the market.
   The future of the bank is also under discussion at the meeting amid a simmering internal row among members over its long-term strategic plan.
   Last month the United States, which with Japan is the ADB’s largest shareholder, took the unprecedented recent step of voting against the plan that outlines the bank’s policies until 2020 because it wanted a greater focus on the region’s poorest members.
   The ADB is owned by its 67 member countries — 48 from the Asia-Pacific region, and 19 from elsewhere around the world, including Spain.
   Since it was established in 1966, the lender has grown from helping Asian governments develop infrastructure projects to promoting the role of the private sector in development.
   Some 3,000 people — business and government leaders, academics and representatives of non-governmental organisations — are taking part in the ADB’s annual meeting, which is being held in Spain for the first time.
   It holds the annual meeting outside of Asia every two years.

The Microsoft Corp walked away from its bid to buy Yahoo Inc on Saturday after the Internet company turned down its offer to raise the price by $5 billion to $47.5 billion.
   Microsoft’s offer was for $33 a share but Yahoo would not lower its demand below $37, Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said. The software company initially bid $31 per share for Yahoo more than three months ago.
   ‘We believe the economics demanded by Yahoo do not make sense for us, and it is in the best interests of Microsoft stockholders, employees and other stakeholders to withdraw our proposal,’ Ballmer said in a statement.
   Analysts say Yahoo has overplayed its hand and they expect the Web pioneer’s shares to fall as much as 30 per cent to $20 levels when Nasdaq trading resumes on Monday. The stock rose nearly 7 per cent to $28.67 on Friday on hopes of an agreement between Microsoft and Yahoo.
   ‘Wow. I’m shocked Yahoo wasn’t more reasonable. The stock will probably go down at least $5 on Monday. It is surprising that Ballmer walked away instead of trying a hostile bid at $33,’ said Walter Price, a senior portfolio manager at RCM fund management company in San Francisco, which had 21 million Microsoft shares and 2 million Yahoo shares as of the end of December.
   Laura Martin, a senior analyst at Soleil Securities, said she expected a number of shareholder lawsuits against Yahoo.
   ‘The Yahoo guys want too much money for their company. We think $33 a share is fair in the context of the weakening economic environment and adverse advertising trends,’ she said. ‘They’ve prioritized employees over shareholders in the hopes that someday they can create more than $8 billion of value, even if they have no track record of doing so,’ she said.
   Some Wall Street analysts also have said Microsoft could pull its bid as a negotiating strategy aimed at putting pressure on Yahoo to eventually accept a future offer.
   Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock said in a statement the company believed from the beginning that Microsoft’s offer undervalued it, and the board was ‘pleased that so many of our shareholders joined us in expressing that view.’
   He said Yahoo was pursuing ‘strategic opportunities’ but gave no details.
   Yahoo has courted possible deals with Time Warner Inc’s AOL Internet division or News Corp’s MySpace online social network, and tested a search advertising partnership with Google Inc. A partnership with Google may be announced as early as next week, a person with knowledge of discussions told Reuters.
   ‘With the distraction of Microsoft’s unsolicited proposal now behind us, we will be able to focus all of our energies on executing the most important transition in our history so that we can maximize our potential to the benefit of our shareholders, employees, partners and users,’ Yahoo co-founder and Chief Executive Jerry Yang said in a statement.
   Jordan Rohan, founder of digital media advisory firm Clearmeadow Partners, said Yahoo could name Time Warner as a partner or buy AOL to put a positive spin on the situation, but neither option would give as good a payoff to shareholders.
   ‘Yahoo management and board overplayed its hand. Shareholders were cheated out of a victory,’ Rohan said. ‘I think Yahoo forgot what it felt like to have a share price under $20. They may be reminded soon.’
   Ballmer cited Yahoo’s Google plans as one reason Microsoft was walking away rather than mounting a hostile offer.
   ‘We regard with particular concern your apparent planning to respond to a ‘hostile’ bid by pursuing a new arrangement that would involve or lead to the outsourcing to Google of key paid Internet search terms offered by Yahoo today,’ Ballmer said in a letter to Yang, made public on Saturday. ‘In our view, such an arrangement with the dominant search provider would make an acquisition of Yahoo undesirable to us.’
   Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo to gain a stronger foothold in its battle with Google, which is expanding rapidly into the software maker’s own turf with new Web-based applications.

While April sales of new vehicles in the United States dropped to their lowest level since 1992, figures also show that US consumers are buying smaller cars with better fuel economy over trucks and sport utility vehicles.
   ‘Smaller vehicles are going over big,’ said Toyota Motor Sales president Jim Lentz. ‘With oil prices at record levels, compact cars and hybrids continue to lead the way.’
   Other Japanese brands, such as Honda, Nissan Subaru and Suzuki, also reported sales increases last month as consumers opted for small cars.
   Overall, sales tracker Autodata reported that despite a weak economy, sales of passenger cars increased by five per cent last month, while sales of trucks and sport utility vehicle plunged 17.4 per cent. Car makers report that more consumers are opting for smaller, more fuel-efficient four-cylinder engines when purchasing new cars such as the Chevrolet Malibu, GM officials said.
   ‘Consumer preference is shifting and we’re shifting with it,’ said Mark LaNeve, vice-president, GM North America Vehicle Sales, Service and Marketing.
   ‘Throughout the industry, truck sales have been soft,’ he added, after GM reported a 3.3 billion dollar first-quarter loss as its truck sales plunged.
   GM announced deep cuts in truck production through the summer even though inventories have already been thinned by a two-month strike at a key supplier.
   Ford Motor Co vice-president of marketing and sales Jim Farley also said that sales of vehicles such as the Ford Focus and Mercury Milan were helping the company shift its sales profile away from truck and sport utility vehicles.
   Overall Ford sales were down 9.8 per cent, according to Autodata. However, 63 per cent of Ford vehicles sold in April were cars or car-like crossover vehicles, while less than 38 per cent were trucks or SUVs — the smallest percentage in more than a decade.
   Farley said Focus sales were the best for any April since 2000, and that the hybrid versions of Ford Escape and Mercury Mariner sold so well they were in relatively short supply.
   Like GM, Ford also plans to cut truck production in the next quarter, while boosting production of passenger cars.
   George Pipas, Ford sales analysts, said the company’s dealers also are reporting that consumers who bought F-150 pickup trucks as a fashion statement in the middle of the decade are now opting to purchase cars.

As controversy rages over the ethics of producing biofuels at a time of soaring food prices, a Ghanaian company has announced it will start exporting ethanol to Sweden by end 2010.
   In Ghana’s first industrial-scale biofuels project, Northern Sugar Resources Ltd will grow sugar cane on 30,000 hectares of currently unused land in the centre of the country and turn it into ethanol in a plant that will be built by Constran S/A of Brazil, executives of the two companies said.
   ‘Subject to the financial agreements being signed in June, the initial plan is for us to be exporting at half capacity — that is 75,000 cubic metres — in the second half of 2010,’ Roger G Walters, technical director of Northern Sugar’s parent Regency Resources told AFP.
   ‘It’s good news for Ghana. Even though the fuel ... is not going to used in Ghana, it very good news because this plant will provide jobs,’ deputy information minister Frank Agyekum told AFP.
   At full capacity the plant will produce 150,000 cubic metres of ethanol per year.
   Svensk Etanolkemi AB, a Swedish green fuels company, has committed to buying the first 10 years of the plant’s production, managing director Anders Fredriksson told AFP in a telephone interview from Sekab’s headquarters in Ornskoldsvik.
   ‘One of our big missions is to bring Africa into the global biofuels market. Africa has a huge potential for economic growth with the forthcoming biofuels explosion,’ Fredriksson said, adding: ‘It’s also a great opportunity for Africa to produce alternative fuels.’
   The project requires a total investment of 306 million dollars, according to Fabio Pavan, business development director of Constran S/A, who was in Accra for meetings with Northern Sugar.
   Of that total 260 million dollars will come from a loan granted to Northern Sugar by the Brazilian government development bank BNDES, Pavan said.
   ‘This is a win-win project,’ he said, noting that this is the first loan by the Brazilian government to Ghana in the history of bilateral relations.
   One year of production from Ghana, once the plant is running at full capacity, will cut Sweden’s ethanol deficit by almost one third, Pavan said.
   And after one year of production, ethanol should rank fourth amongst Ghana’s exports, behind coffee, gold and timber, he added.
   The first year of the project will just be the cultivation of sugar cane. The second year will see a start to production and the third year production at full capacity.
   The project has preliminary approval from the BNDES and a final agreement should be signed in June.
   The site where the sugar cane is to be cultivated and the plant built lies at the northern tip of Volta Lake, about 100 kilometers south of Tamale.
   ‘It’s a savanah-type grass area, very flat, with a lot of old river beds and no cultivation,’ Walters said.
   Ironically, according to Sekab’s Fredriksson, the land to be used by Northern Sugar was developed two years ago to grow sugar. The European Union then changed its tariffs to protect its own sugar and the project never got off the ground.
   Asked about the ethics of using land for biofuels production, Fredriksson argued that huge swathes of land are lying unused in Africa.
   ‘It’s more of a structural problem — there are huge amounts of land not used.’
   Producing ethanol is going to bring in money that can be used to develop agriculture, he said, adding that while Sekab is just involved in the Ghana project as a buyer, in Tanzania the company is active in ethanol production.
   ‘Another issue is that there’s going to be between 1,000 and 2,000 people employed during the project and afterwards, so it is going to support some 8,000 people, it’s going to raise the economy, give them money to buy food, school their kids etc,’ he continued.
   The surplus electricity generated during the processing will be sold to the Ghanaian government, which lacks sufficient electricity for the country’s requirements, Regency Resources CEO Kojo Fosu said.
   Biofuels were developed as part of plans to limit and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, held responsible for global warming, but since in some cases they take up land that would otherwise be used for food production, they have been increasingly blamed for soaring food prices.
   The leaders of some poor nations have accused developed countries of caring more about having fuel in their cars than about ensuring the poor have access to staple foods.

Boeing Co denied a German media report on Saturday it had informed customers of another delay on its new 787 Dreamliner model.
   ‘There has been no change since our announcement in April,’ said Yvonne Leach, a spokeswoman in Seattle, adding that, on average, delays would put deliveries about 20 months behind schedule.
   German daily Die Welt reported on Saturday, quoting a letter from Boeing to customers, the delay would affect deliveries planned for 2012 and push them 27 months behind schedule.
   Early last month Boeing announced the third major delay on the 787 as it makes slow progress on assembling the plane and continues to grapple with underperforming suppliers.
   None of the 55 or so airlines which have bought the plane have cancelled their orders, but many have said they will seek compensation for late deliveries.
   The delay mirrors the long-running wiring problems on Airbus’ A380 superjumbo, which ended up two years late and put a big hole in the finances of parent EADS.
   German magazine WirtschaftsWoche said in a preview of a story to be published on Monday that Airbus would have to delay deliveries of A380’s scheduled for 2009. It said Airbus had also Hinformed customers of the delay in a letter.
   Both Boeing and Airbus have played down expectations for plane orders this year, after the unprecedented boom which resulted in 2,754 orders between them last year.

Japanese carmaker Toyota Motor Corp will raise sale prices in North America this month in a bid to offset rising production costs and the stronger yen, a report in Tokyo said Sunday.
   The Japanese maker has expanded aggressively outside its home market, helped by its reputation for fuel efficient vehicles, including petrol-electric hybrids, which have generated strong interest at a time of soaring oil prices.
   But Toyota is widely expected in the current business year to March 2009 to suffer its first drop in operating profit in nine years because of sluggish US sales and a stronger yen, as well as surging costs of steel and other materials.
   From those to be shipped from Monday, the price of the popular Prius hybrid will likely climb by 1.8 per cent and that of the Yaris compact by up to 1.7 per cent, the Nikkei business daily reported citing unnamed company sources.
   Cars manufactured in North America, including the Camry mid-size sedan, will see their prices rise from late May, it said.
   Toyota is expected this year to surpass General Motors as the world’s top automaker but is relying increasingly on emerging economies to underpin its rapid expansion, with the US economy losing steam.

German chemicals company BASF has felt the repercussions of a financial crisis mostly in North America and expects the global market for chemicals to grow by 2.8 per cent this year, its chief executive told a German weekly.
   ‘We have been feeling the effects primarily in North America, in the automotive, construction and furniture industries...anywhere major purchases are involved,’ Juergen Hambrecht told WirtschaftsWoche in comments published on Saturday.
   Hambrecht also said he expects an average oil price of $90 per barrel and the dollar to be on average at 1.50 euros.
   ‘The oil price is exaggerated right now. Too much oil is being produced,’ Hambrecht said, adding that a decline in world economy and slower growth rates will result in a lower oil price.
   BASF, the world’s biggest chemicals company by sales, benefits from global high oil prices through its oil and gas exploration activities.

A New York food company is recalling more than 286,000 pounds of meat and poultry because it might be contaminated with the bacteria Listeria monocytogenes.
   The voluntary recall includes several different brands of fresh and frozen products made by Gourmet Boutique, the US Department of Agriculture said Saturday.
   Included are some types of chicken salad and sandwiches sold under the name Gourmet Boutique, and several frozen wraps and burritos sold under the names ‘Jan’s’ and ‘Archer Farms.’
   The problem was discovered through sampling by federal food safety inspectors and Florida agriculture officials, the USDA said.
   There have been no reports of illnesses associated with the recalled foods so far, but the bacteria can potentially cause Listeriosis, an illness that can cause high fever, headache and nausea. People with depressed immune systems could also suffer a fatal infection.

The Trust Bank Limited has opened its branch at BNS Issa Khan Naval base in Chittagong.
   The chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Sarwar Jahan Nizam, inaugurated branch on Sunday, said a press release.
   At the inaugural ceremony, the navy chief hoped that the opening of the branch and its initiative and activities would accelerate the social and economic development of the port city of Chittagong.
   Mentionable, Trust Bank Ltd is a scheduled private commercial bank owned by army welfare trust.
   Among others, managing director of Trust Bank Iqbal U Ahmed, senior navy officials, civil and military personnel and officers and staff of the bank were present on the occasion.

Key Asian currencies ended the week mainly down against the US dollar as the greenback found new strength on limited signs of optimism in the troubled US economy.
   The Japanese Yen Slipped to a nine-week low against the dollar in Tokyo as the greenback was buoyed by sharp gains in Asian share prices and easing worries about the US economy.
   The Japanese unit hit the week’s low of 105.05 to the dollar before closing daytime trading at 104.72-74 to the dollar on Friday, compared with 104.70-72 to the dollar a week earlier.
   The Australian dollar is expected to fall modestly against a resurgent greenback next week after peaking recently at a 24-year-high against the US currency, dealers said.
   The Australian dollar was trading at 92.90 US cents at 5.00 pm Thursday, well down on the previous week’s 94.64 US cents.
   ANZ senior markets economist Katie Dean said the US dollar was on the rebound amid signs that the cycle of interest rate cuts from the US Federal Reserve was ending.
   Dean said the Reserve Bank of Australia was likely to leave rates on hold at 7.25 percent next week and its quarterly statement on monetary policy, released Friday, would confirm its hands-off approach.
   ‘The Australian dollar is likely to underperform against a stabilising US dollar,’ she said.
   ‘The major risk events for the Australian currency in the coming week is the Reserve Bank decision and quarterly statement, as well as the April employment data, due Thursday.
   ‘We suspect both events, with RBA on hold but signalling a careful eye on inflation and employment likely to grow modestly, to keep the Australian dollar relatively well supported.’
   The New Zealand dollar ended local trading Friday at 77.77 US cents, sharply down from 79.40 at the end of the previous week.
   Weaker than expected New Zealand trade data for March saw the kiwi lose ground earlier in the week but the currency steadied towards Friday.
   The kiwi was likely to continue underperforming in general, although it was supported by the US dollar’s lack of reaction to the cutting of interest rates by the US Federal Reserve, said Westpac currency strategist Michael Gordon.
   The Chinese Yuan closed at 6.9870 to the dollar Wednesday on the exchange-traded market, compared with Tuesday’s close of 6.9958, and a closing price of 7.0109 to the dollar last Friday.
   On the over-the-counter market, it ended at 6.9875 to the dollar against 6.9850 in the previous day.
   The central bank had set the yuan central parity rate at 7.0002 to the dollar Wednesday, compared with 6.9898 on Tuesday.
   The People’s Bank of China allows a trading band of 0.5 percent on either side of the midpoint. The US-pegged Hong Kong unit was trading at 7.7962 to the dollar from 7.7938 a week earlier.
   The Indonesian Rupiah ended the week’s trading at 9,230/9,235 to the dollar compared to 9,225/9,235 to the dollar a week earlier.
   The Philippines peso fell to 42.345 to the dollar on Friday afternoon from 42.040 on April 25.
   The Singapore dollar was at 1.3628 Singapore dollars on Friday from 1.3588 the previous week.
   The South Korean WON weakened to a six-week low of 1,009.60 won per dollar Friday, down from 996.0 won a week earlier, as the greenback gained for three consecutive trading days against the South Korean currency.
   The Taiwan Dollar fell 0.38 percent during the week to close at 30.455 against the US dollar, against 30.340 a week ago.
   The Thai Baht remained stable against the dollar this week amid light trading as there were few factors impacting the currency, a dealer said.
   The Thai unit closed Friday at 31.71-72 baht to one dollar compared to last week’s close of 31.69-70.

Players on the London Stock Exchange will be keeping a close eye on a meeting next week of Bank of England policymakers, who are generally seen as holding the bank’s key interest rate at 5.0 per cent.
   The London FTSE 100 index on Friday closed at 6,215.5 points, a gain of 2.04 per cent from the previous Friday, its highest reading since January 14.
   Of 36 economists surveyed by the agency Thomson Financial, only one foresaw a rate cut by the BoE this Thursday. The others forecast no change in rates before June.
   The bank at its April session lowered its benchmark rate by a quarter of a point to 5.0 per cent.
   The decision to hold borrowing costs at current levels should come despite a report this week showing that British house prices fell 1.3 per cent in April from March and were down year-on-year for the first time in 12 years.
   Companies unveiling financial results next week, when the market will be closed for a public holiday on Monday, include hotel group Intercontinental and the low-cost carrier EasyJet.
   Defence group BAE Systems could name a new chief executive to replace Mike Turner.
   Three candidates are in the running — Ian King, BAE’s chief operating officer for British and international business, Chris Kubasik, a vice president at US defence company Lockheed Martin, and Fred Kindle, former chief excecutive at Swiss engineering giant ABB.
   Figures are also to be released Wednesday on British manufacturing and industrial production in March.

ADB chief opposes OPEC-style
rice cartel
The chief of the Asian Development Bank said on Saturday that he opposed the idea of setting up an OPEC-style rice cartel as suggested by Thailand amid surging food prices. ‘Agricultural markets should be market oriented. It would not be good for exporters and it certainly would not be good for importers,’ ADB president Haruhiko Kuroda told reporters on the sidelines of the bank’s annual meeting, which began here Saturday. Thailand has said recently it had contacted Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia, four members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, on the proposal to form an OPEC-style rice cartel for a stronger voice on international price-setting. In the past month, rice prices have doubled, whose impacts have been most pronounced in import-dependent countries. During the past year, domestic rice prices doubled in Bangladesh and Cambodia, and rose 70 per cent in Afghanistan, 55 per cent in Sri Lanka and 40 per cent in the Philippines, according to the Manila-based ADB. Kuroda said that to tackle rising food prices in the medium and long term, the most important task is to increase agricultural productivity. In a 15-page report, the ADB urged governments to step up investment, boost rural infrastructures and strengthen institutions to sustain higher farm output. However, Kuroda played down the role of supply shortages behind the current price hikes. ‘According to various statistics, supply of most agricultural products has been increasing steadily,’ Kuroda said.
— Xinhua