The Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industries president, Annisul Huq, on Saturday said the provision of black money whitening in the proposed national budget was certainly immoral but realities demanded that.
   In a post-budget press conference, the apex trade body chief said he wanted that the provision of black money whitening would end forever after the three-year tenure stipulated in the budget proposals.
   ‘We want the chapter for [whitening] black money to be closed forever in the next three-year as provided in the budget,’ said Annis while addressing a press conference at the federation building.
   Arguing that critical tax assessment, realisation procedures and high rates of taxes sometimes discourage the potential tax payers and create black money, Annis said, ‘Provision of whitening black money is definitely immoral but realities and demand for investments sometimes require that.’
   Annis categorically lauded most the budget proposals as he said the government had implemented many suggestions of the FBCCI which had mooted the philosophy of Public Private Partnership.
   Annis recalled that while launching his ‘Agenda for Economic Development’ in October 26, 2008, he had suggested to develop several projects including power plants, highways and elevated express ways under the PPP.
   ‘Now the implementation of PPP projects is a challenge of the government,’ said Annis who suggested the government to raise funds from capital market to invest in more PPP projects.
   The FBCCI president suggested Bangladesh PPP Bond and Bangladesh Infrastructure Bond through which the government could raise huge fund for investing in infrastructure and power projects.
   Foreign Private Equity funds should be invited in Bangladesh’s infrastructure development projects, advised Annis who also suggested that government should not utilise domestic banking sources to meet huge budgets deficit.
   ’A huge budget deficit amounting Tk 34,000 crore was really a great challenge of the government,’ Annis said advising the government to arrange quarterly evaluations on the progress of budget implementations.
   The FBCCI thanked the government for allocating a Tk 5,000 crore ready fund for supporting the recession-hit sectors but he demanded that the export sector would get top priority there.
   He observed that export stimulus in the proposed budgets was quite obscure and exporters were afraid of the proposed increase on duty on capital machinery imports.
   The FBCCI president noted that the government stepped for developing Special Economic Zones but no budget allocations were noted.
   Appreciating the government for plans to meet minimum demand of electricity by the year 2011, Annis said measures to increase electricity production in the short term were very much necessary.
   He suggested the government to encourage establishments of small power plants, which required 6 to 9 months installation time and could meet power demand in SME zones, commercial complexes and elsewhere.
   Projects loans at 5 per cent interest, duty-free imports of coal, furnace oil, diesel and LPG were demanded by the FBCCI president to expedite increased power production in short term.
   Listing that increased allocations for agriculture, health and education sector and widened social safety net were laudable, Annis, however, said, ‘Specific planning, and monitoring of implementation of these increased allocation were precondition of success here.’
   The FBCCI president, however, categorically went against the pro-labour stand of the government that had declared that no SoE would be privatised until its workers were rehabilitated.
   ‘The government should make its position clear regarding privatisation of SoEs and we request government for not operating SoEs on subsidies and without conducting cost benefit analysis,’ he added.

Local knitwear manufacturers and exporters on Saturday said the government should come up with a break-up of the proposed stimulus package worth Tk 5000 crore in the just announced national budget.
   The Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association demanded such break-up so that it could clear what would be the allocation to each export-oriented sector under the package.
   ‘We are not sure whether we would get the share of the package or not,’ said the association president, Fazlul Hoque, at a post-budget press conference at the organisation’s office in Dhaka.
   He said the government should come up with a clear-cut announcement in this connection. ‘A quick and clear-cut announcement will help the local manufacturers and exporters to take their own initiatives to defend the recession fall out,’ he said.
   In his budget speech on Thursday, the finance minister, AMA Muhith, said, ‘……………….that programmes under stimulus package would continue to be expanded consistent with the need and within our affordability. A provision of Tk 5,000 crore has been made in the next year’s budget to continue the programme.’
   Sharing the observation of the Centre for Policy Dialogue, a private think-tank, on the proposed national budget, the BKMEA president said, ‘The proposed budget is very such defensive.’
   He said the budget was formulated only to defend the recession fall out, but did not go beyond. ‘The long-term vision is absence in the proposed budget,’ he said.
   He, however, welcomed the government’s announcement that it would not let any factory to fall sick due to the recession fall out. ‘But, considering the importance and vastness of the export-oriented sector, it has not got proper attention in the proposed budget,’ he claimed.

Personal computer makers are increasingly prioritizing ‘green’ strategies, creating a pivotal point of competition for customers that are becoming more attuned to their financial — and societal — benefits.
   Analysts say going green has become a business plan unto itself for the industry’s heavyweights: a way to stand apart from rivals, win over a growing segment of environmentally conscious consumers, and shore up branding worldwide.
   The three major US computer vendors — Hewlett-Packard Co, Dell Inc, and Apple Inc — argue that customers glean real benefits, for example lower power consumption in green-certified display screens.
   ‘It’s really a green arms race, in which they’re trying to one up each other,’ said John Spooner, an analyst with Technology Business Research. ‘The good news is they’re all working in this direction and that’s going to benefit themselves, their customers and the environment.’
   Analysts point to certain efforts — such as Dell’s recycling program, Apple’s moves to remove toxic raw materials, and HP’s actions around packaging — as areas of success. But the IT industry still accounts for an estimated 2 per cent of global emissions of greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.
   Consumers might have trouble picking out just who among the PC makers are making the right moves: Dell says it aims to become the ‘greenest technology company on Earth’; Apple lays claims to the ‘greenest family of notebooks’; and HP stresses it has a long tradition of environmentalism as well as the market size to effect change.
   TBR recently ranked Dell No. 1 out of 40 technology companies on corporate sustainability. But a recent Greenpeace report ranked Apple best among the major PC makers.
   While there are differences between the three in areas such as materials, PC power usage and recycling and packaging, analysts and environmental groups say, the green agenda is profiting from the competition between them.
   Campaigns by interest groups like Greenpeace to praise or tweak PC makers have been particularly effective.
   ‘Companies are realizing that consumers do use these environmental considerations as tiebreakers. It does help differentiate their products,’ Forrester’s Sally Cohen said.
   Around 70 per cent of companies surveyed in a recent report by Forrester Research cited product differentiation — the desire to stand out — as a business driver for their environmental strategies.

Khulna Hardboard Mills, the country’s lone factory manufacturing hardboard, is suffering from an acute fund crisis and the authorities have sought Tk 52 crore to the government for making the plant fully operational.
   KHM officials the amount was needed for Balancing Modernisation Rehabilitation and Expansion (BMRE) of the plant to enhance its operational capacity while Tk 5 crore was urgently required as running capital to keep the wheels on.
   The officials said the productivity of the KHM had been reduced significantly because of its obsolete machinery and shortage in the supply of furnace oil, lubricant oil and other logistics.
   Khalilur Rahman, the managing director of mills, told the news agency that the mills could be saved from ruin by providing sundari wood of Sunderban, furnace oil at low cost, imposing tax on import of foreign hardboard and reducing tax on local products.
   Mechanical faults with the hydraulic pump have been hampering smooth production of the mills, he said.

The 3rd Dhaka International Telecom Fair, an annual gala exposition of mobile and land phones, ended in Dhaka Friday night with high hopes as the fair drew a large crowd on the last day which coincided with the weekly holiday.
   About 30,000 people, mostly students, visited the fair since its formal inauguration on June 9 by the president, Zillur Rahman, said the Bangladesh Mobile Phone Businessmen Association President, Mohammad Nizam Uddin Jitu.
   The BMBA arranged the five-day fair at the Bangladesh-China Friendship Conference Centre with a slogan ‘Growing towards a digital Bangladesh’.
   Besides Dhaka, Jitu said people from different parts of the country visited the fair.
   He said 42 stalls, seven pavilions, two mega pavilions and a special mega pavilion were set up at the fair in about one lakh square feet area of the BCFCC.
   Leading mobile phone companies such as Nokia, Samsung and Sony Erricson took part in the fair. Besides local mobile and land phone operators and distributors of other cell phone companies set up stalls at the fair where they gave discount on phone sets and SIM cards.
   Commerce minister Faruq Khan attended the concluding day function of the fair as chief guest, while Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission chairman Zia Ahmed and former chairman of BTRC Syed Marghub Morshed were present as special guests.

Oil prices succumbed to profit taking and a stronger dollar Friday at the end of a week of gains that saw prices peak above 73 dollars a barrel.
   New York’s main futures contract, light sweet crude for delivery in July, fell to $72.04 a barrel, a drop of 64 cents from Thursday’s close.
   In London, Brent North Sea crude for July delivery shed 87 cents to settle at $70.92 a barrel.
   ‘The market probably went up a little bit too quickly and I suspect we see some profit taking,’ said Bart Melek of BMO Capital Markets.
   The New York contract had spiked about five dollars over the past three days, peaking at $73.23 in intraday trade Thursday, its highest level since last October.
   On May 1, the price hovered around $50 a barrel.
   Ellis Eckland, an independent analyst, noted that a firmer dollar makes dollar-priced oil more expensive for buyers using weaker currencies.
   ‘Basically you can explain the whole move with the stronger dollar and the stock equities off a little bit,’ he said.
   The dollar’s recent weakness against most major currencies had supported the oil rally, as had several reports indicating a pickup in weak energy demand.
   The market shrugged off an OPEC report suggesting that the worst of the impact from the global economic and financial crisis was past for the oil markets, as it fractionally reduced its demand estimate for 2009.
   The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries said in its latest monthly report on Friday that the oil market appeared to be turning a corner amid some signs of stabilization in the global downturn.
   ‘In light of the considerable challenges the world economy and commodity markets, particularly the oil market, have undergone, the worst appears to be behind us,’ the cartel said, adding, ‘As the world economy stabilizes, the world oil demand appears to be settling down.’
   OPEC estimated that demand would contract by 1.62 million barrels per day (bpd) or 1.89 per cent in 2009 — only marginally lower than its prior forecast.
   In its May monthly report, OPEC had pencilled in a contraction of 1.57 million bpd or 1.83 per cent for 2009.
   New York crude had soared above 73 dollars on Thursday after the International Energy Agency raised projections for world oil demand by 120,000 barrels per day to 83.3 million in 2009, up from its 83.18 million forecast in May.
   On Wednesday, oil prices found support in a US Energy Information Administration report showing US crude inventories had tumbled 4.4 million barrels last week.
   That was far more than market expectations of a 7,00,000-barrel drop and stoked hopes of a recovery in the global economy and energy demand.

The dollar recouped earlier losses in Asian trade Friday as investors locked in profit ahead of a Group of Eight finance meeting that will take place amid a flurry of upbeat data from major economies.
   The dollar gained to 98.03 yen in Tokyo afternoon trade from 97.60 in New York late Thursday. The euro slipped to 1.4098 dollars from 1.4106 but firmed to 138.13 yen from 137.72.
   Finance ministers from G8 countries Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States will meet in Italy later in the day.
   While few concrete results are expected, the meeting could see sparring over the safety of US investments and calls for European banks to undergo ‘stress tests’ similar to those seen in the US, SMBC chief strategist Daisuke Uno said.
   It comes as Moscow recently said it would shift part of its reserves from US Treasurys into International Monetary Fund bonds and commercial bank deposits as questions linger over the greenback’s future as the global reserve currency.
   Japan and Russia are some of the largest holders of US debt.
   ‘If something happens to set off speculation that Treasury bonds will be sold off by some countries, that could have some impact on currency markets,’ warned Mitsubishi UFJ Trust and Banking forex manager Hideaki Inoue.
   ‘I doubt such things would ever happen, but Russia is part of the G8, so we have to be careful,’ he told Dow Jones Newswires.
   The greenback was likely to remain pressured as hopes for a global economic recovery sap demand for the safe-haven currency, said Hachijuni Bank forex strategist Masatsugu Miyata.
   The dollar was seen as a reliable bet during the global crisis but has been hit recently as signs of a recovery have led to a funds flow to higher-yielding commodity currencies such as the Canadian, Australian and New Zealand dollars.
   Those countries are heavily dependent on raw material exports.
   ‘Sentiment toward a world economic recovery is on the uptick,’ said Miyata.
   China’s industrial output rose 8.9 per cent in May from last year, according to official data and in line with market expectations following a mainland media report this week.
   Traders said appetite for risk was increasing amid growing signs the US economy could recover late this year.
   Most recently, revised official data from Japan showed factory output rose 5.9 per cent in April from the previous month, better than an initial estimate of 5.2 per cent.
   Against other currencies the dollar inched up to 32.75 Taiwan dollars from 32.73 on Thursday, to 47.70 Philippine pesos from 47.69 and to 10,075.00 Indonesian rupiah from 10,067.47. It also gained to 1,254.03 South Korean won from 1,249.10 and to 34.10 Thai baht from 34.06.
   However, the greenback slipped to 1.4495 Singapore dollars from 1.4501.

Rifts emerged at G8 talks in Italy on Saturday as Germany pressed governments to prepare to scale back huge deficits and spending while the United States urged countries to stay the course.
   There were also divisions over US-style ‘stress tests’ to check on the financial stability of crisis-hit European banks, with Washington and London in favour but Berlin warning that they could undermine economic confidence.
   German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck said he shared the International Monetary Fund’s view that stabilisation measures for economies hit by the economic crisis must ‘increasingly be combined with a credible exit strategy.’
   ‘This means we must now think about how will go about it once we are getting out of this hole, this valley,’ he said, adding that this applied to monetary and fiscal policy as well as the rescue efforts for the banking sector.
   But other countries at the two-day G8 meeting of finance ministers in Lecce in southern Italy said it was too soon to think about exiting the crisis amid still tentative signs of the beginning of an economic recovery.
   ‘We shouldn’t get carried away with the recovery while we’re still relaunching, stimulating and ensuring that our recovery plans work,’ French finance minister Christine Lagarde told reporters late Friday at the talks.
   ‘We must be very prudent because the shock was extremely brutal,’ she said.
   US treasury secretary Timothy Geithner said ahead of the meeting this week that he would urge fellow finance chiefs to stay the course on economic stimulus spending and financial reforms despite signs of the crisis easing.
   ‘I think it is fair to say the force of the global storm is receding a bit. I think fundamentally those signs of improvement ... are the result of policy actions we have put in place here in the US and around the world,’ he said.
   ‘Of course we want to see those actions sustained,’ he added.
   Lagarde also said European ministers would explain to Geithner on Saturday that they are not yet ready to carry out ‘stress tests’ on their banks.
   Britain, which has already stress-tested its banks, has said its recovery could be delayed by other European states failing to clean up their banks.
   ‘If there is a problem it doesn’t get any better by walking around it and hoping it will go away,’ British finance minister Alistair Darling told the Financial Times ahead of the talks.
   ‘Because if you don’t sort that problem you’ll never sort out the economy.’
   Signs have emerged in recent weeks of a modest start to a recovery in countries such as Britain, France, Germany, Italy and the United States.
   That in turn has sparked debate over ‘exit strategies,’ or how governments will rein in spending and cut massive debts incurred during the crisis.
   Some warn however that it may be too early to declare the worst over while output in many parts of the world continues to decline and unemployment soars.
   ‘There are relatively small but encouraging signs of a return to stability,’ Canadian finance minister James Flaherty said on Friday.
   ‘I think what we need to work on is an exit strategy. There’s been massive government involvement but now we need to plan, as growth returns, to withdraw from the private sector,’ he said.
   ‘I don’t think any of us want to have government-run economies,’ he added.
   The International Monetary Fund has upped its forecast for global growth in 2010 to 2.4 per cent, but the World Bank has said the recession in 2009 will be worse than expected and the WTO has said there are no signs of a trade recovery yet.
   The talks include ministers from all the Group of Eight (G8) countries — Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States — and are set to finish at 1200 GMT with a joint declaration.

The world’s rich nations were expected on Saturday to commission a study on how to unwind policies to rescue their economies, though officials are still cautious about the speed of a recovery.
   The Group of Eight finance ministers, meeting in southern Italy, will ask the International Monetary Fund to conduct the study in a communiqué to be released later on Saturday, a G8 source told Reuters.
   The move would not mean any quick tightening of budget and interest rate policies, which have been eased drastically over the past year to fight the global credit crisis.
   But it does suggest G8 nations feel the start of an economic recovery is in sight, and want to reassure financial markets that they can manage the recovery without unleashing a wave of inflation.
   ‘I will support the request to the IMF to work out options for exit-strategies,’ German finance minister Peer Steinbrueck told a briefing as ministers headed into meetings on Saturday.
   ‘There are indeed indicators which show that there will be possibly a certain stabilization (of the economy). But I share the view of the IMF completely that the date and the drive of the upswing and the sustainability of it are very insecure.’
   A leap in long-term government bond yields over the past several weeks shows markets fear the huge sums of public money pumped into economies will eventually fuel inflation and damage governments’ finances for years to come.
   Pressure has therefore been building in the G8 for talks on ways to wind down stimulus as soon as it is no longer needed — ‘exit strategies’ that would prevent market interest rates from rising high enough to threaten economic recovery.
   ‘The IMF report will probably be presented at the (IMF’s) October annual meeting in Istanbul,’ the G8 source, declining to be named, said late on Friday.
   The IMF study could provide governments with some political cover when they eventually start making painful cuts in state spending to bring budget deficits under control, and when central banks begin to raise interest rates back up from near-zero levels.
   Germany and Canada on Friday urged the G8 to hold its first talks on exit strategies.
   But other countries are less enthusiastic about discussing the subject and are less convinced that the worst of the economic slump is over.
   Euro zone industrial production shrank by more than a fifth in April, new data showed on Friday, raising risks that the second quarter will be weaker than expected.
   ‘We must not get wrapped up in the pick-up when we’re still in the process of relaunching, stimulating and making sure the stimulus plans are working,’ French economy minister Christine Lagarde told a briefing late on Friday night.
   ‘We cannot say that at the end of X months we will be at such a threshold and we should withdraw such and such a support.’

Industrial production in the 16 countries that use the euro slumped in the year to April, official figures showed Friday, more indication that the euro zone may emerge from recession later than the United States or Britain.
   The European Union’s statistics office Eurostat said industrial output a record 21.6 per cent annually from March’s 19.3 per cent.
   Europe’s export-driven economy relies heavily on industrial output and its recovery, whenever it comes, will provide a clear indication that the worst of the recession is over. Sharply lower industrial output was blamed for the massive 2.5 per cent quarterly fall in the euro zone’s first quarter gross domestic product.
   The recession in Germany, the euro zone’s biggest single economy, was even greater as demand for its high-value exports, such as cars and heavy machinery, slumped amid the collapse in global trade.
   Earlier this week, figures for Britain, which is outside the euro zone, showed that industry may be picking up. Many economists think Britain’s manufacturers may be benefiting from the pound’s fall against the euro and the dollar and that conversely Europe’s exporters are struggling as the euro remains stronger in the foreign exchange markets.
   A similar picture has emerged in the US where a run of better than expected economic indicators have helped the stock markets rally around the world — the world economy is highly dependent on how soon the US emerges from recession.
   ‘The rebound in risk appetite reflects hopes of a stabilisation or recovery in the global economy,’ said Daniele Antonucci, an economist at Capital Economics.
   ‘But with less convincing signs of improvement, the recovery in the euro zone will lag behind,’ said Antonucci.
   This seemingly multi-speed recovery could well raise tensions that this weekend’s gathering of G-8 finance ministers in Lecce, Italy.
   Despite apparently agreeing to a raft of initiatives at the G-20 summit of world leaders in London in April, splits seem to have emerged among policymakers over tax and monetary policies in the last few weeks.
   Europe, especially Germany, has appeared increasingly at odds with the US and Britain, particularly over the policies being enacted by the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of England. Both banks have embraced quantitative easing — pumping newly created money into the economy by buying government and corporate bonds — unlike the European Central Bank.
   Meanwhile, there are some worries in the US and Britain that continental Europe has not done enough to deal with the recession — hence the continuing dearth of resurgent signs in the euro zone economy.
   ‘The Americans believe that the Europeans are ‘free riding’ on the back of American monetary and fiscal stimulus,’ said Neil Mackinnon, chief economist at ECU Group.
   And Britain’s finance minister Alistair Darling suggested to the Financial Times newspaper Friday that some European governments have failed to clean up their banks as much as was needed.
   ‘If there is a problem, it doesn’t get any better by walking around it and hoping it will go away,’ he told the newspaper in an interview.

Plans by major US airlines to slash the number of seats they sell may bolster fares this fall, further stabilising prices that tumbled this year as economic weakness drained travel demand.
   Delta Air Lines and AMR Corp’s American Airlines said they would cut their capacity deeper than previously predicted. The capacity reductions are expected to kick in after the peak summer travel season.
   ‘When they do kick in, I expect price points to move up a bit,’ said Rick Seaney, chief executive of FareCompare.
   ‘It’s about competition,’ he said. ‘So the routes that are losing the seats are the ones that are going to be boosted, and the ones that continue to have excess capacity are still going to have really good deals.’
   Delta said it would trim system capacity by 10 per cent this year, with reductions beginning in September. Previously, it said its system capacity would be down 6 to 8 per cent.
   American Airlines said it would cut capacity by 7.5 per cent this year, compared with a previous forecast for a 6.5 per cent decline. Other airlines signalled their intention — or at least their willingness — to cut capacity.
   The airline industry, battered severely last year by soaring fuel prices and later by falling travel demand, rapidly downsized to offset its two heaviest burdens. But the carriers were largely unprofitable in the first quarter despite a stunning decline in fuel prices in the second half of 2008.
   Now, as airlines face a new rally in oil prices and demand remains tepid, experts say they must once again cut their capacity in hopes of charging more for tickets.
   Earlier this year, average fares slipped thanks to deep discounts and seasonal sales that lasted longer than usual. Prices since have begun to stabilize, Seaney said.
   ‘If you look at a two- or three-year history, it’s not terribly low right now, but there’s a lot of sale fares still thrown in the market right now,’ he said.
   Capacity cuts already in place have helped airlines keep planes full, even if fares remain somewhat depressed, said Terry Trippler at tripplersview.com, a travel opinion website.
   ‘Planes are still going to be somewhat full again because capacity is down,’ Trippler said. ‘But the airports are going to be a little lighter so the hassle factor is going to drop substantially.’

China’s May industrial output and retail sales both grew at a faster pace than in previous months, the government said Friday, as massive stimulus measures introduced since last year kicked in.
   The figures come as the Asian giant’s vital export sector has been hit by the global slump, which has slashed demand in key overseas markets, leading Beijing to seek ways of boosting domestic spending.
   Industrial production, a key gauge of activity in factories and plants across China, grew 8.9 per cent in May, the National Bureau of Statistics said — compared to a 7.3 per cent increase in April and 8.3 per cent in March.
   Retail sales meanwhile grew 15.2 per cent in May, it said.
   ‘The rapid improvement of domestic demand is reflected in industrial output. That is the main reason for the growth,’ said Hao Daming, a Beijing-based economist with Galaxy Securities.
   ‘We expect the (industrial output) figure will further accelerate in the rest of the year but the increase will be limited, mainly because of very weak exports.’
   Monthly growth in industrial output hit lows of just over five per cent at the end of last year as the world slowdown bit, falling from a 16 per cent rise in May of 2008, the bureau said.
   The government late last year launched an unprecedented four-trillion-yuan ($585b) spending package focused on infrastructure investment and boosting domestic demand as a hedge against the export troubles.
   Exports have continued to suffer, with the government saying on Thursday they plunged 26.4 per cent in May, the seventh straight monthly decline.
   Thursday’s announcement that fixed-asset investment grew by 32.9 per cent year-on-year during the first five months of 2009 also reflected concerns that the massive stimulus spending was unsustainable, economists said.
   However, Friday’s industrial output and retail data appeared to show the government’s stimulus measures were having the desired effect.
   Automobile production meanwhile rose 29 per cent to 1.14 million units.
   The 15.2 per cent increase in Chinese retail sales—the main gauge of consumer spending—came in higher than the 14.8 per cent rise seen in April.
   For all of last year, retail sales were up 21.6 per cent.
   The World Bank has forecast economic growth in China of 6.5 per cent for 2009, which would be the slowest rate since 1990. China saw double-digit growth between 2002 and 2007.
   Besides concrete policy steps such as loosening credit and several industry-specific stimulus plans, the government has also encouraged financial institutions to lend more to help spur growth.
   In May, new yuan-denominated loans reached 664.5 billion yuan, the central bank said Friday, bringing the total in the first five months to 5.84 trillion yuan, far exceeding an official full-year target of 5 trillion yuan.

India’s exports are expected to decline 2.2 per cent in the fiscal year ending March 2010, rendering 1.3 million workers jobless, as the global slump trims demand for Indian goods, the United Nations said in a report on Friday.
   The report, released by United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, said exports of petroleum products, minerals, gems and jewellery and textiles are expected to see the steepest fall.
   ‘Given such heavy reliance on advanced countries’ markets, the impact of slowdown in these countries is being felt in India’s trade sector,’ the report said.
   However, the UN said, India’s exports are expected to recover and grow 8.3 per cent in FY11, and this will help create 5.22 million jobs.
   Exports, which contribute nearly a fifth to India’s economy, have been falling since October, prompting exporters to demand relief measures from the government to arrest the slide.
   Policy makers expect the declining trend to last until September and they projected exports at $168-$170 billion in FY10 compared to $168.7 billion in FY09.
   The report puts the job losses in the exports sector in the fiscal 2008/09 at around 1.16 million.
   India’s trade minister has said he would ask the finance ministry for more relief measures for exporters.
   To counter the impact of global slowdown the report suggests diversification of exports to new markets and products, and reduction of costs by simplifying customs procedures.