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The prices of sugar, spices and vegetables increased further in the city markets last week, intensifying the suffering of citizens with limited incomes.
   The New Age correspondent found that shoppers are becoming anxious over the continuous hikes of the prices of some essentials, just a week before Ramadan, when he went to some kitchen markets on Friday.
   ‘I am feeling that the market is behaving abnormally with regard to many products, including sugar and spices, but maybe this is usual before Ramadan,’ said Jalam Uddin, employee of a government hospital who was shopping at Mohakhali on Friday morning. ‘The government should take effective action to ensure that the market remains stable in Ramadan.’
   Sugar was being retailed on Friday for Tk 48 to Tk 50 per kilogram, up by Tk 4 in a week and Tk 8 in a fortnight.
   Retailers said that the wholesale price of sugar has increased considerably in the past few days as deliveries from private sector sugar refiners have slowed down.
   Different varieties of garlic were being retailed on Friday for Tk 150 to Tk 180 per kilogram, up by Tk 20 in two weeks and Tk 50 in a month or so, and ginger cost between Tk 120 and Tk 160, up by Tk 20 in a week.
   ‘Prices of garlic and ginger increased sharply in China in the past couple of months, therefore the local market is heating up,’ claimed a wholesaler at Shyambazar, the wholesale hub of spices and other perishables.
   Market sources, however, told New Age that some importers and wholesalers were pushing up the prices of spices unduly as demand from retailers increased before Ramadan.
   Consumers were angry when they saw that the prices of dry spices had increased wildly. Per kilogram of cardamom was retailed for Tk 2800 to Tk 3,200 on Friday, which was more than double its price before the last Ramadan.
   Green chilli was retailed for Tk 100 to Tk 120 per kilogram. The price of green chilli is now more than double its regular price because, according to traders, monsoon rain has flooded chilli fields in many areas of the country.
   The prices of leafy vegetables also increased due to same reason, claimed greengrocers.
   On Friday, at Nakhal Para Bazaar, a bunch of lal shak cost Tk 8 to Tk 10 and pui shak Tk 12 to Tk 15. This was double their prices just a week back.
   The price of rice remained unchanged this week as traders said demand is decreasing before Ramadan. Moreover, market sources said that news of rice imports and open market sales at cheaper prices have had a salutary impact on the rice market.
   Soya bean oil was retailed for Tk 86 to Tk 88 per kg, red lentil for Tk 90 to Tk 106 per kg and coarse flour for Tk 23 to Tk 24 per kg.

Dhaka stocks bounced back last week as investors bought shares to avail the lower prices of securities after a steep fall in the previous week, market operators said.
   The market gained in the first four days of the week, but fell sharply on Thursday, the last trading day of the week, after the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday decided to squeeze margin loan further for investors from Sunday.
   The stock market regulator decided that merchant banks would not be allowed to provide more than Tk 10 crore in margin loans to a single client, while the brokerage houses would not provide more than Tk 5 crore.
   The general index of Dhaka Stock Exchange gained 95.53 points, or 1.51 per cent, in the week to close at 6,404.97 points on Thursday. The bourse’s key index hit its all-time high at 6,495.20 points on Wednesday.
   The broader DSE all shares price index was increased by 82.64 points, or 1.57 per cent, to close at 5,331.95 points.
   The DSE had a tumultuous ride in the week from July 11 to 15 with the general index declining by 1.91 per cent and turnover going down by a whopping 33 per cent as the stock market regulator squeezed loans for investors and heightened monitoring of credit disbursement amid rumours of more regulatory measures.
   Market operators said buying spree of investors pulled the market in the first four days of last week. SEC’s move dampened the investors’ mood on Thursday, they said.
   DSE president Md Shakil Rizvi said, ‘The market dropped on Thursday as many investors tried to adjust their loans.’
   The SEC on Thursday for the first time fined the two bourses Tk 1 lakh each for flawed computations in indices and starting trade before transaction hours.
   DSE stockbrokers said encouraging financial disclosures made by a number of companies put a positive impact on the market in last week.
   ‘The financial disclosures of companies like Grameenphone, AB Bank and Summit Power influenced the market. Investors are also waiting for disclosures from other good issues,’ said an official of a brokerage house.
   The weekly turnover at the country’s premier bourse increased by 17.38 per cent to Tk 8,503.24 crore from the previous week’s total of Tk 7,244.29 crore.
   Titas Gas topped the turnover leaders with a total transaction of Tk 541 crore. Beximco, AB Bank, LankaBangla Finance, DESCO, Summit Power, BSRM Steels, Confidence Cement, Power Grid Company Bangladesh and RAK Ceramics (Bangladesh) were the rest of the top 10 turnover leaders in the week.
   RAK Ceramics (Bangladesh) was the top gainer, while Prime Islami Life Insurance Company was the worst loser.

The World Trade Organisation raised on Friday its forecast for growth of global commerce to 10 per cent this year, with its director general saying that even this might yet ‘turn out to be too low.’
   WTO chief Pascal Lamy said: ‘Our forecast for world trade this year is plus 10 per cent in volume after the minus 12 (per cent) we registered in ’09.’
   Lamy was speaking to reporters, at the launch of the trade body’s annual report on the sidelines of the Shanghai World Expo.
   In a separate speech at Shanghai’s Institute of Foreign Trade, the WTO’s director general said that after last year’s dramatic slump, ‘trade growth is coming back fast, thanks in no small measure to the continuing dynamism of China and the others.’
   ‘Unless there are unanticipated negative economic impacts in the second half of 2010, this estimate (of 10 per cent) may even turn out to be too low,’ he added.
   The WTO’s latest forecast marks a rise from the 9.5 per cent issued in March. The secretariat had warned then that the figure could prove too optimistic as markets were at that point unsettled by Europe’s sovereign debt crisis.
   In the trade body’s annual trade report, the WTO focused on the issue of trade in natural resources.
   It called for greater global cooperation on such trade, warning that a failure to work together could spark new tensions.
   ‘I believe not only that there is room for mutually beneficial negotiating trade-offs that encompass natural resources trade, but also that a failure to address these issues could be a recipe for growing tension in international trade relations,’ said Lamy in the report.
   The value of world trade in natural resources — including fisheries, fuels, forestry products and mining — reached $3.7 trillion in 2008, close to a quarter of world merchandise trade.
   Trade in such products had surged more than six fold between 1998 and 2008 mainly due to sharp rises in fuel prices, noted the WTO.
   Russia topped the list of leading natural resource exporters, with a share of 9.1 per cent in 2008. Saudi Arabia was the next biggest exporters, with a share of 7.6 per cent.
   The United States meanwhile is the biggest importer, buying some 15.2 per cent of natural resources traded in 2008.
   Japan was the next biggest importer with 9.1 per cent and China a close third with 8.6 per cent.
   But as natural resources are finite or requires time for natural replenishment, resource-rich countries typically restrict their export volumes through export taxes or quotas, said the WTO.
   Such measures help to improve conservation of resources and can help push countries to diversify their exports away from the natural resource sectors.
   However, the WTO warned that such trade barriers can be problematic. They can lead to retaliation or rising world prices.
   Rather, Lamy pushed for ‘well designed trade rules’ to address environmental protection and management of natural resources.

The government has targeted to attract one million tourists next year by implementing an aggressive tourism promotional campaign—‘Visit Banglaesh-2011’.
   ‘We are taking huge preparation for conducting promotional campaign at home and abroad next year targeting those foreign tourists, who are looking for new destinations of making holidays,’ civil aviation and tourism minister GM Quader told the news agency on Friday.
   At present on an average four lakh foreign travellers visit Bangladesh in a year.
   The government has chosen the year 2011 to observe tourism year as one of the mega events of the earth - cricket world cup -will be hosted in the country this year, he said.
   ‘Initially, we have set a target of receiving one million foreign tourists during the tourism year 2011 and expecting more than two million afterwards,’ he said.
   The minister said Parjatan Corporation, the national tourism facilitating body, has already chalked out lots of events for round the year blending with traditional, cultural, tribal and religious festivals, he said.
   The year-long programme which will initially cost Tk 150 crore also includes staging of road shows and Bangladesh week in different countries as well as inviting foreign renowned international travel writers and journalists to visit Bangladesh.
   The promotional campaign for the tourist year would be conducted as public private partnership. ‘We are looking for private organisations for holding international standard events as well as conducting overseas promotional campaign,’ he added.
   He said the tourism ministry has already selected more than 750 places as tourist spots and taken initiatives to develop infrastructure facilities there with the help of local government division.
   The ministry is actively considering for building some special tourist zones only for the foreigners with foreign investment, the minister added.
   The country has lots of tourist tempting treasures in terms of natural beauty, culture, heritage and archaeological aspects, he said, adding but ‘we have never conducted such huge international promotional campaign to attract travellers.’
   ‘We have to spread the message among the foreigners that Bangladesh is enriched with many resources attractive to travellers,’ Quader said.
   Detailing the government’s plan to boost up tourism sector, the minister said the government has already formulated a national tourism policy and enacted two laws styled ‘Bangladesh Reserved Areas for Tourism and Special Tourism Zones Act-2010’ and ‘Bangladesh Parjatan Board Act-2010’.
   The policy and the two laws will help us to establish a world standard planned and eco-friendly tourism in the country which could be served as one of the major foreign exchange earning sources of the country, he said.
   Sources with the ministry said revenue earning from the sector was Tk 449.38 crore in 2005, Tk 553.6 crore in 2006, Tk 526.51 crore in 2007, Tk 612.45 crore in 2008 and Tk 573.79 crore in 2009.

The government has taken the initiative to make the country self-reliant in garden crops, especially vegetables, fruits and spices, to meet the growing demand as well as the demand of nutrition.
   Bangladesh is near self-reliance in the production of granular crops but a huge gap between nutrition demand and intake leaves around 87 per cent of country’s total population suffering from nutrition deficiency.
   To address the shortage of vegetables and fruits production and meeting the demand of nutrition, the government has recently undertaken a project titled ‘integrated standard garden development (second phase) project’ under the agriculture ministry. The project was approved by the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council in a meeting early this month.
   The Department of Agricultural Extension is the lead agency of the project being implemented from July 2009 with completion target in June 2014 at a cost of Tk 194.49 crore.
   Bangladesh Agriculture Research Institute, Bangladesh Agricultural Development Corporation and Department of Agricultural Marketing will assist the DAE to successfully implement the project.
   The first phase of the project (July 2005-June 2008) has been completed for protecting the interest of the farmers through removing the seasonal limitations of garden crops and complexities in their marketing as well as addressing the lack of conservation facility during the production season.
   Talking to the news agency, agriculture secretary CQK Mustaq Ahmed said that the project would have a far-reaching outcome as the country posses a huge potentiality of garden crops due to its eye-catching value addition.
   He informed that the project activities would spread these garden crops throughout the country in a bid to become export-oriented and commercially viable.
   ‘Cultivation and consumption of such kind of crops, including horticultural crops, would help mitigate nutrition deficiency and thus alleviate poverty,’ the Agriculture Secretary said.
   The main objectives of the project include building a Germplasm Collection for future research through collecting local and foreign germplasm, cultivation, evaluation and conservation, and enhancing the efficiency of horticulture centres through producing standard quality cross-breed saplings.
   The project is also designed to build skilled manpower related with the garden crops and nursery sectors through training, developing a high quality marketing system for garden crops through establishing a sustainable link among the farmers, businessmen, processing industries and exporters, improve the nutrition intake situation and thus alleviate poverty through creating employment opportunities for women.
   According to agriculture ministry officials, DAE will impart training to some 75,600 farmers, 1,500 gardeners, 3,000 urban stakeholders and 3,000 extension staffs on nursery management, production, post crop harvest management, stage demonstration on some 1,600 commercial fruit gardens, 6,300 house yards, construct two residential training halls, two non-residential training halls, two residential and staff buildings for the officials, 11 guard/gardener sheds, 11 nursery sheds and 22 potting sheds.
   BARI will increase production of vegetables, flowers and fruits through collecting high quality germplasm and inventing newer technologies, holding 5,600 training programmes for garden farmers and extension staffs and arranging higher education for BARI scientists (10 PhD, 10 MS).
   The BADC will produce and distribute 10.50 lakh coconut saplings and 26.85 tonnes of vegetables seeds, produce 369,195 tonnes of summer vegetables, 774,385 tonnes of winter vegetables, 231,100 tonnes of fruits, 8.067 crore saplings of vegetables and spices, 1.685 crore fruit saplings, 53.55 lakh flower saplings, 39.10 lakh medicinal plants, 39.35 lakh grafting of fruits and imparting training to some 26,800 farmers, gardeners, technical and NGO staffs.
   Besides, Department of Agriculture Marketing will form 600 marketing teams in 12 districts comprising small farmers, establishing four processing-cum-training centres, linking market management system among the producers, traders and exporters, and disseminating market related information of garden crops through the DAM website.

Taiwan’s president Ma Ying-jeou said Friday he hoped to boost economic ties with Japan, following the recent signing of a major trade pact with China.
   ‘We hope to cooperate with Japan in the areas of trade and economy to further boost our ties after the signing of ECFA,’ a statement from Ma’s office quoted him as saying while meeting a delegation of Japanese politicians.
   He was referring to the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, the most sweeping ever between Taiwan and the mainland, which marked the culmination of Ma’s Beijing-friendly policy.
   Ma had also said Taiwan was eyeing a free trade agreement with Japan, its second largest trading partner after China.
   Taiwan’s minister without portfolio, Yiin Chii-ming, is due to leave for Japan on Sunday to kick off a government initiative to attract more overseas investment.
   Yiin told reporters that he was scheduled to meet executives from leading Japanese corporations such as Sony, Mitsubishi and Hitachi in the hope that Taiwan and Japan can ‘jointly explore the mainland market.’
   Japan, like most countries, officially recognises Beijing instead of Taipei, but Taiwan maintains friendly relations with Japan.
   Taiwan has assured Japan it has nothing to fear over the island’s warming ties with China, which it split from in 1949 after a civil war.
   The Japanese chamber of commerce in Taipei has called for a free trade agreement with the island and supported Taiwan’s trade pact with China, saying it could benefit Japanese businesses on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.

Hewlett-Packard will team up with Microsoft to come out with a tablet computer for the enterprise business market this year, a senior HP executive said Thursday.
   HP executive vice president Todd Bradley said the US computer giant was developing tablet, or slate, computers using the WebOS operating system of newly acquired Palm but had not abandoned the US software giant.
   ‘I think you’ll see us with a family of slate products, clearly Microsoft for the enterprise, and a WebOS product,’ he said at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference at Aspen in Colorado.
   ‘Our focus is working with still our largest software partner, Microsoft, to create a tablet, a slate, for the enterprise business,’ Bradley said, adding that the device was expected to hit the market this fall.
   ‘Slates are going to be an enormous category,’ he said of touchscreen tablet computers like Apple’s popular iPad. ‘This is just in its infancy.’
   Bradley added that HP, the world’s top computer maker, is ‘still Microsoft’s largest customer.’
   ‘We have a deep partnership with them, from distribution to development that we’re very, very deeply committed to,’ he said.
   Bradley’s remarks came amid speculation that HP had dropped plans to produce a tablet computer with Microsoft in favour of devices using the operating system from Palm, the US smartphone maker acquired by HP earlier this year.
   Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said earlier this month that the technology titan is teaming up with nearly two dozen hardware makers to release Windows-based tablet computers.
   The list of potential Windows 7-based tablet partners given by Ballmer included HP, Lenovo, Asus, Dell, Samsung, Toshiba, and Sony.
   Apple has sold more than three million iPads since it went on sale in April and Microsoft and other technology giants have been seeking to develop products to rival the touchscreen device from the California gadget maker.
   Speaking at the same Fortune event, Jon Rubinstein, Palm’s former chief executive who is now a senior HP vice-president, said an HP tablet computer would be able to run Flash, the popular video software from Adobe which Apple has barred from the iPad.

Japan Airlines, which is undergoing a state-backed rehabilitation process, plans to reduce its annual operating costs by 440 billion yen ($5b) in five years, a report said Friday.
   The turnaround plan, which includes around 16,000 job cuts, was scheduled to be submitted to the Tokyo District Court in late August, the business daily Nikkei reported in its evening edition.
   The plan also calls for raising the airline’s annual operating profit from the 25.3 billion yen forecast for the current business year to 133.1 billion yen for the year to March 2015, the report said.
   It has been jointly drafted by JAL and its court-appointed administrator, the Enterprise Turnaround Initiative Corporation of Japan.
   Assuming that the court approves the plan by the end of November, ETIC will inject 350 billion yen in new capital into JAL in December, the report said.
   JAL, which posted a two-billion-dollar loss for the nine months to December, has said it will scrap 28 international routes and close 11 international bases, while 50 domestic routes will be terminated, along with eight offices.
   Under the plan, JAL will absorb its two core units — Japan Airlines International Co and JAL Capital Co — in December as part of its streamlining effort, the daily said.
   JAL allocated 1.62 trillion yen as operating expenses in the last business year and plans to cut operating costs to 1.28 trillion yen in the current business year, the daily said.
   It will try to further trim the cost to 1.18 trillion yen in the year to March 2015 by reducing its personnel and jet fuel expenses by more than 100 billion yen each.
   The plan to boost the carrier’s profitability centres on its international routes, the daily said.

India’s largest private sector airline, Jet Airways, has swung to a quarterly net profit from a loss a year earlier, led by a rise in passenger air traffic, a statement Friday said.
   Jet posted a net profit of 35 million rupees ($7,40,000) for the first quarter of the financial year to June from a loss of 2.25 billion rupees in the same period a year earlier.
   Total revenues for the quarter rose 24 per cent to 30.23 billion rupees.
   ‘The airline has seen nine straight months of robust growth,’ Nikos Kardassis, chief executive of Jet Airways, said in a statement.
   Jet said it suffered a revenue loss of $7.2 million due to the impact of Iceland’s volcanic ash eruptions in April which hit air travel globally.
   In the quarter, international operations accounted for 56 per cent of total revenues and the airline achieved a seat load factor of 80.1 per cent compared with 76.5 per cent a year earlier.
   Jet carried 3.55 million passengers in the quarter, up 37 per cent in the same period a year earlier.

The world Cup will boost the South African growth rate by one percentage point this year, the finance minister said late Thursday.
   ‘We had forecast that the 2010 FIFA World Cup would add 0.5 percentage points to annual growth this year,’ finance minister Pravin Gordhan told business leaders at a dinner late Thursday.
   But, he said, when spending on stadiums and infrastructure since 2006 was taken into account that rose to a one percentage point increase.
   The government spent 33 billion rands ($4.4b) on preparation for the month-long tournament which was held on the African continent for the first time.
   In February, the minister said South Africa’s economy was expected to grow by 2.3 per cent this year, boosted in part by the football World Cup, after contracting by 1.8 per cent last year.

Asian stock markets surged on Friday on a strong lead from Wall Street and cautious optimism about the results of ‘stress tests’ on eurozone banks, traders said.
   Japan’s Nikkei index ended the day up 2.28 per cent as investors picked up bargains after a five-day losing streak. Sydney was up 1.91 per cent.
   Hong Kong closed up 1.1 per cent, while Shanghai was up 0.38 per cent, a 6.1 per cent rise for the week as a whole, its biggest weekly rise this year.
   Markets were lifted mainly by Wall Street’s rebound, which wiped out a 109-point loss suffered a day earlier after Fed chairman Ben Bernanke warned of an ‘unusually uncertain’ outlook.
   The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 201.77 points (1.99 per cent) on Thursday, while the tech-rich Nasdaq gained 58.56 points (2.68 per cent), with the rise mainly fuelled by robust earnings results.
   In Japan, the yen’s recent strength has generally weighed on exporters, but with the euro firmer, exporters out-performed on Friday. Sony added 4.79 per cent and Panasonic 3.29 per cent, while Toyota Motor rose 1.64 per cent and Honda Motor 2.16 per cent.
   ‘Gains for the day were broad based and saw the heavyweight materials, financials, and energy and consumer sectors all convincingly higher,’ commented IG Markets analyst Cameron Peacock in Australia.
   Hong Kong also enjoyed broad-based gains, with an impending land auction next week giving property developers momentum. In Shanghai, banks gained support from optimism about their first-half earnings.
   Agricultural Bank of China ended up 5.45 per cent in Hong Kong. AgBank was at its highest levels in both Hong Kong and Shanghai since its lacklustre dual listing a week ago, buoyed by news of major investments by Morgan Stanley and US investment fund Capital Group.
   Wall Street’s rebound was largely based on better-than-expected corporate earnings and positive European economic data.
   Traders shrugged off mixed data on the US economy, including a larger-than-expected surge in initial jobless claims and a fall in sales of existing homes.
   All eyes will be on the results of European banking ‘stress tests’ later, but European markets proved buoyant on Thursday and held steady on Friday amid optimism about the results and indications of strong eurozone private sector activity.
   The euro stayed firm against other currencies in Asia.
   Gold opened at $1,194.00-$1,195.00 an ounce, up from Thursday’s close of $1,186.00-$1,187.00.
   Manila closed flat, gaining 1.20 points to 3,416.10.
   Philippine National Bank rose 12.99 per cent, while SM Prime Holdings ended unchanged at 10.50 pesos. Philippine Long Distance Telephone was up 0.82 per cent.
   Taipei closed up 1.24 per cent, or 94.88 points, at 7,761.22. Hon Hai rose 5.05 per cent, while TSMC was up 1.29 per cent.
   Seoul closed up 1.30 per cent, or 22.53 points, at 1,758.06 on US overnight gains and foreign buying of local blue chips.
   Wellington closed up 0.45 per cent, or 13.55 points, at 2,994.90. Telecom was up one cent at $1.96, Fletcher Building dropped a cent to 7.63 and Contact Energy was flat at 5.66.

The euro held firm against other currencies in Asia on Friday as investors took a cautiously optimistic view of upcoming results of ‘stress tests’ of European banks, dealers said.
   The euro fetched $1.2910 in Tokyo afternoon trade, up from $1.2886 in New York late Thursday. The single currency traded at 112.34 yen from 112.08. The dollar was selling at 87.01 yen, marginally up from 86.92.
   ‘The market is waiting for stress-test results,’ Mitsubishi UFJ Trust and Banking dealer Hideaki Inoue said, referring to tests to see whether European banks are strong enough to withstand any further financial turmoil.
   The euro had been sold heavily due to pessimism about the European economy but ‘has rebounded with market players adjusting positions amid caution,’ he said.
   The London-based Committee of European Banking Supervisors is to publish later Friday the results of tests conducted by national regulators on 91 European Union institutions that represent 65 per cent of the EU banking sector.
   Investors bet the tests will show the European banking system is largely in good health, dealers said.
   A senior dealer at a major Japanese securities house noted in comments to Dow Jones Newswires the positive effect on the euro from rising Asian share prices.
   Meanwhile, the dollar lost broadly against most Asian currencies.
   The greenback fell to 9,050.50 Indonesian rupiah from 9,063.00, to 32.27 Thai baht from 32.31, and to 1.3725 Singapore dollars from 1.3752.
   It also declined to 46.40 Philippine pesos from 46.60 and to 32.12 Taiwanese dollars from 32.19.

India’s biggest lender to the poor, SKS Microfinance, announced on Thursday plans to launch an IPO next week, joining a select group of microfinanciers globally that have sought share listings.
   The initial public offering by SKS, which has a fast-growing customer headcount and a near-zero default rate, is expected to raise around $300 million.
   SKS, which lends small sums to India’s neediest who are unable to get credit from mainstream banks, is selling a 22 per cent stake and will be the first Indian microfinance company to float its shares on the Mumbai stock exchange.
   ‘We are bringing the poor to capital markets and capital markets to the poor,’ SKS chief executive Suresh Gurumani told reporters in New Delhi.
   The company, backed by private equity firms Sandstone Capital and Sequoia Capital, will announce a price range for the shares on Monday ahead of the IPO’s launch two days later.
   Founded in 2003 and based in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad, SKS has seven million borrowers and operates in 19 Indian states.
   Like most microfinance lenders, it charges interest rates of up to 28 per cent annually on its loans, which some critics say is exorbitant.
   It represents around double the rate at which it borrows.
   But SKS says the rates reflect its high costs and are far lower than those charged by predatory moneylenders who ask for 36-72 per cent interest annually and to whom the poor would otherwise turn for loans.
   Just a handful of microlenders globally have listed their shares.
   In 2007, Mexican microlender Banco Compartamos — which means ‘let’s share’ in Spanish — listed on the stock market, making large sums for its founders and sparking a public debate about the ethics of making profits from the poor.
   The pioneer of microfinance, Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, believes the practice should focus on helping borrowers rather than on returns for investors.
   He founded Bangladesh’s Grameen Bank in the 1970s, which has loaned small amounts of money to eight million borrowers.
   But SKS — which stands for Swayam Krishi Sangam or self-help union — says it needs to raise the funds so it can increase its ability to lend to needy borrowers, most of whom are poor women in India’s rural hinterland.
   It also has ambitious plans to provide insurance.
   ‘We need lots more capital to fund demand,’ Gurumani said.
   The company, whose borrowers pay back their loans in weekly instalments, has a 99-per cent repayment rate.
   SKS cited research showing that the supply of funds for micro-loans in India stood at $4.3 billion in 2008, while demand was $51.4 billion.
   By 2011, demand was projected to reach $72 billion.
   Some 60 per cent of the share issue, being managed by Kotak Mahindra Capital Company, Citigroup and Credit Suisse, is earmarked for institutional buyers.
   SKS reported a profit for the year ended March 2009 of 802 million rupees ($17 million).

General Motors Co plans to file its registration for an initial public offering during the week of August 16, just after the expected date for its second quarter results, according to two people with direct knowledge of the preparations.
   A GM filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission would be the first step toward an IPO to reduce the US government’s ownership in the automaker after a $50 billion bailout in 2009.
   By filing with the SEC in August, GM is aiming to complete its IPO before the November US elections, according to the sources, who asked not to be named because the closed-door preparations remain confidential.
   GM also remains in talks with Bank of America Corp, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and Wells Fargo & Co for dealer and consumer financing for more credit-worthy borrowers, one of the sources said.
   One concern for potential investors has been whether GM dealers and potential car buyers have the same kind of access to financing as competitors with in-house financing operations like Ford Motor Co.
   General Motors on Thursday said it would buy auto finance company AmeriCredit Corp for $3.5 billion in cash to form what it called the ‘core’ of a captive finance operation. The move marks a reversal of the position GM took when it sold control of its former in-house financing arm GMAC in 2006.
   Any additional financing partnership agreement GM reaches would be complementary to the AmeriCredit transaction, one of the sources said. Many GM dealers have complained that lack of consumer financing has cost them sales.
   An IPO for the US automaker, which was restructured in bankruptcy last year, would be the biggest US stock offering since Visa Inc’s $19.7 billion March 2008 IPO and one of the biggest IPOs of all time.
   GM’s second-quarter earnings report is expected to show the automaker generated cash for a second consecutive earnings period, according to one of the sources.

Swedish wireless equipment maker LM Ericsson AB said Friday its net profit more than doubled in the second quarter, boosted by improved margins and a dramatic cut in costs as its savings plan reached its completion.
   Net profit for the three-month period reached 1.9 billion kronor ($258 million), up from 831 million kronor in the same three months a year ago.
   Operating costs were reduced by nearly 1 billion kronor in the April-June period, to 14.9 billion kronor.
   Stockholm-headquartered Ericsson said revenues dropped, however, to 48 billion kronor, compared with 52.1 billion kronor in the second quarter in 2009.
   The company blamed the plunge in sales to continued shortages in industry components as well as bottlenecks in the supply chain. Ericsson estimates these problems to have hurt second-quarter sales by between 3-4 billion kronor.
   Its gross margin jumped, to 37 per cent from 33.8 per cent. The improvement was attributed to a better business mix as well as efficiency gains.

Dell Inc on Thursday agreed to pay $100 million to settle charges by market regulators that the computer maker used hidden payments from Intel Corp, and fraudulent accounting to make it appear that it was meeting analysts’ earnings targets.
   The US Securities and Exchange Commission alleged that Dell did not disclose large exclusivity payments it received from Intel to not use chips made by its main rival, Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
   Those payments, ‘rather than the company’s management and operations,’ allowed Dell to meet its earnings targets from 2002 through 2006, the SEC said. The charges were laid out in a stinging 61-page complaint.
   Under the settlement, Dell chief executive Michael Dell, along with former CEO Kevin Rollins, each agreed to pay $4 million. Former chief financial officer James Schneider agreed to pay $3 million.
   Dell announced last month that it had set aside $100 million in its first fiscal quarter in preparation for a potential SEC settlement.
   The company and Michael Dell entered into the settlements without admitting or denying the charges.
   According to the SEC, Intel’s exclusivity payments to Dell grew considerably over the years, peaking at 76 per cent of Dell’s operating income in the first quarter of fiscal 2007.
   Without the Intel payments, Dell would have missed Wall Street’s earnings-per-share estimate in every quarter from 2002 through 2006, the SEC said.
   Dell shares surged roughly 50 per cent from 2002 to 2004.
   Rather than disclose the benefits it received from Intel’s payments, Michael Dell, Rollins, Schneider and others in regulatory filings cited ‘cost reduction initiatives’ and ‘declining component costs’ as reasons for Dell’s increasing profit margins, the complaint said.
   ‘Dell manipulated its accounting over an extended period to project financial results that the company wished it had achieved, but could not,’ said Christopher Conte, associate director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement, in a statement.
   ‘Dell was only able to meet Wall Street targets consistently during this period by breaking the rules.’
   Intel cut its payments after Dell announced plans to start using AMD chips, leading to a sharp drop in Dell’s operating results which the company blamed on demand and pricing, according to the SEC complaint.
   Dell in a statement said the settlement does not include any restrictions on Michael Dell’s service as an officer or director of the company he founded.

Ford hopes its investments in Asia will dramatically boost sales in Japan — a market so dominated by local makers like Toyota and Honda that the US automaker has long struggled to maintain a toehold.
   Tim Tucker, chief executive of Ford Motor Co’s Japan operations, said Friday he was bullish about the potential for Japan, although he declined to give a sales target or specific product plans.
   Last year, Ford sold just 2,200 vehicles in Japan — a tiny fraction of a market where new car sales last year totalled about 3 million vehicles.
   But Tucker, who oversaw Ford’s India business before taking his new post last month, was optimistic about potential growth, noting that Ford sold 30,000 vehicles in India last year and expects to sell 1,30,000 this year.
   ‘We know we are going to grow our business,’ he said at a Tokyo event to unveil the Kuga sport-utility vehicle, one of five models Ford plans to introduce in Japan through 2012.
   He declined to say whether Ford would bring a hybrid model to Japan, despite several questions from reporters.
   Ford, based in Dearborn, Michigan, has a successful hybrid programme in the US exemplified in its Fusion hybrid. But it will face stiff competition in Japan, home to strong hybrid makers Toyota Motor Corp and Honda Motor Co.
   This week, Ford introduced in the US the 2011 gas-electric hybrid Lincoln MKZ sedan for about $35,000, the same price as the gasoline-engine version.
   Usually hybrids cost a couple of thousand dollars more than the equivalent regular model because of the ecological technology.
   ‘All I can say is wait,’ he said on Ford’s Japan possible hybrid rollout. ‘You will be pleasantly surprised.’

Oil prices rose further on Friday, building on the previous day’s surge, as investors awaited European banking stress test results for indications of the global economic outlook, analysts said.
   New York’s main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in September, increased by 19 cents to $79.49 a barrel.
   Brent North Sea crude for September added 11 cents to $77.93 in morning deals.
   Prices were meeting resistance at $80 after soaring more than three per cent overnight on rising US equities and a possible storm threat, said Ong Yi Ling, an investment analyst with Phillip Capital.
   ‘I think that if you see an upside, it’s pretty much capped. The European stress tests result is something that investors would really look at,’ Singapore-based Ong told AFP.
   ‘General market sentiment is positive but because of the fact that it has been largely considered and possibly priced in, the risks on the downside would possibly be there.’
   Wall Street stocks rallied on Thursday as sentiment was boosted by forecast-busting corporate earnings from AT&T, Caterpillar and 3M.
   Investors will next turn to the results of ‘stress tests’ from the London-based Committee of European Banking Supervisors due later on Friday for a clearer picture of the region’s economic outlook.
   The tests conducted by national regulators on 91 European Union institutions that represent 65 per cent of the EU banking sector are designed to assess the capacity of major European lenders to withstand economic or financial crises.
   The crude market had raced higher on Thursday as stock markets rallied and investors kept an eye on a storm threat for oil operations in the Gulf of Mexico.
   ‘Crude oil prices surged (on Thursday) as an array of strong economic data, robust corporate earnings results and continuing concerns over a tropical storm potentially hitting oil operations in the Gulf of Mexico area contributed to the strength of the energy market,’ said Sucden analyst Myrto Sokou.
   ‘The weakening US dollar provided further support to the crude oil prices,’ she added.

The European banking system faces a moment of truth Friday when regulators reveal whether it is strong enough to cope with any fresh crisis or needs another huge injection of cash to keep it afloat.
   Much depends on the outcome.
   The authorities are claiming that the results of the ‘stress tests’ on 91 top lenders will largely be positive, with any problem banks requiring more capital likely to be corralled off safely and then bailed out.
   Analysts say that would be a positive outcome — but the tests have to be rigorous and tough enough to convince investors that the books have not been cooked to produce the desired results.
   It is about confidence, they say, in the banks, in the regulators, in the financial system and ultimately in the prospects for recovery from the worst recession since the 1930s.
   ‘We should all be bracing ourselves for relief to flow through European financial markets (on the results),’ Credit Agricole strategist Mitul Kotecha said.
   ‘More likely, questions will be asked about why did so few banks fail and why the tests were not rigorous enough?’
   The global financial crisis devastated the banks, claiming victims among the most iconic names in the business as once abundant credit markets dried up.
   Others had to be bailed out to the tune of tens of billions of dollars (euros) by governments who effectively covered the bad debt of the banks by borrowing extensively themselves through issuing bonds.
   That at least stabilised the economy, allowing a recovery from early last year, but the cost was heavily indebted governments whose own troubles now threaten the recovery they worked so hard for.
   The markets reason that if governments such as Greece and Spain face problems managing their debt, then their sovereign bonds, bought up by the banks to bolster their books, might now be worth a lot less.
   Investors want to know exactly how much less, so they can judge if the banks are really sound and can be trusted to pay back what they borrow.
   At the same time, governments with huge debt burdens are slashing spending to balance their budgets, which puts economic growth at risk, in turn hitting business and the banks which fund it, to create a dangerous vicious circle.
   The problems came to a head earlier this year when Greece had to seek an IMF-EU bailout and Brussels with the International Monetary Fund set up a trillion-dollar fund to protect the whole eurozone project.
   To ease nerves, the authorities agreed to test 91 lenders, accounting for 65 per cent of the European banking system, promising they would stop the rot and restore credibility, as a similar exercise had done in the United States.

Stubborn deflation and low demand from an ageing population prone to tight-fistedness spell a difficult future for Japan’s economy, the government warned in an annual report Friday.
   Falling prices have been at the core of the lacklustre performance of the world’s number two economy over the past two decades, said the Cabinet Office in its Annual Report on the Japanese Economy and Public Finances.
   Japan has been hit by repeated bouts of deflation since an asset price collapse in the early 1990s that ended the country’s economic boom, later compounded by the 2008-2009 global financial crisis.
   The report said Japan was now alone among leading industrialised economies in suffering from notable deflation, which slows the economy as consumers put off purchases in anticipation of future price falls.
   While Japan’s economy has gradually been recovering from a bruising recession since last spring thanks to improved exports and government stimulus, the rebound is still hampered by deflation, the report said.
   The Cabinet Office economic ‘white paper’ traces the roots of Japan’s deflation to ‘the negative legacies of the bubble economy’, such as bad loans and excessive debt, which dried up funds flows and slowed growth.
   Japan’s heavy reliance on growth through exports has also aggravated deflation as companies facing tough competition have increasingly had to move production overseas, where labour and other costs are lower, the report said.
   The report urged the government to boost domestic demand and jobs through promoting potential high-growth sectors such as health care and green technology, echoing the strategy of prime minister Naoto Kan.
   ‘It is important to continue efforts to restructure public finances even if it’s at a slow pace,’ the report added, referring to Japan’s mountain of public debt, which is nearing 200 per cent of gross domestic product.
   The government last November announced for the first time in nearly three and a half years that Asia’s biggest economy was again in deflation. It marked the first period of falling prices since March 2001-June 2006.
   Weak demand worsened the country’s jobless rate by about two per cent in 2009, pushing it to 5.1 per cent, according to the Cabinet Office estimate.

Eager iPad fans in Singapore, Hong Kong and New Zealand braved long queues and discomfort to get their hands on the coveted Apple device as its second wave of Asia-Pacific launches began Friday.
   A 20-year-old New Zealander set up camp outside an Apple seller in Auckland two days before the launch, while other buyers in the region started their vigil in the wee hours of Friday.
   Japan and Australia were the first Asia-Pacific markets to receive the iPad, getting it in late May along with several European countries.
   Consumers in other Asian markets who could not wait for the release ordered iPads from abroad or bought them through unofficial local resellers.
   But this did nothing to dent enthusiasm at Friday’s debut at an Apple store in the Wheelock Place mall on Singapore’s fashionable Orchard Road.
   Housewife Carol Kwang, who was in pole position to clinch two units of the priciest model — the 64 gigabyte unit with Wi Fi and 3G mobile capability — said the purchase was a treat for herself and her daughter.
   ‘My daughter said if you don’t come, I’ll skip school and come buy!’ she told the AFP after queuing from 6:00am, four hours before the shop opened.
   Prices ranged from 728 Singapore dollars ($530) for the cheapest model with 16 gigabytes of memory and Wi Fi only, to 1,228 dollars ($894) each for the Kwang family’s new toys.
   South Korean student Han Szung Yong, 25, who was third in line at Wheelock Place, interrupted his holiday in neighbouring Malaysia to get to the iPad launch in Singapore.
   ‘I tried to get the iPad in USA and Australia before but I couldn’t get it, so that’s the reason I came here to get it,’ he said.
   In Hong Kong’s busy Causeway Bay shopping district, a line of more than 100 eager shoppers trailed from a ninth floor Apple store down a humid stairwell, with latecomers fanning themselves as they waited.
   Eugene Wong said he did not mind waiting at least an hour to get his hands on the device.
   ‘I think it’s great — lots of my friends really like it too. I wanted a device with fast speed,’ he enthused.
   Johnny Ma, a 42-year-old energy saving consultant, and his girlfriend walked happily out of the packed shop.
   ‘This is a special day too because it’s my girlfriend’s birthday, so we both got one,’ Ma told the AFP.
   In Singapore, buyers formed snaking queues of 50 to 100 in front of three retailers selling the device along Orchard Road.
   For some New Zealand customers, the launch was marred by the extreme secrecy surrounding the tablet’s release.
   They were turned off by Apple’s refusal to announce in advance where the device would be sold in the country, which meant only the most fanatical of buyers were prepared to queue.

US president Barack Obama on Thursday signed into law a bill restoring unemployment benefits to more than two million Americans, following a bitter standoff with Republicans.
   Obama signed the bill in the Oval Office a few hours after it was sent to him by Congress, witnessed by a small group of news photographers.
   Republicans had repeatedly delayed votes on the bill with symbolic tests on other issues, including on permanently repealing the estate tax, and complained the Democratic approach to unemployment benefits would swell the US deficit.
   It was finally cleared by the Senate on Wednesday, with two Republicans joining most Democrats in supporting the measure. The House followed suit earlier Thursday.
   Obama condemned Republicans for delaying the measure over partisan politics, with the high rate of unemployment — currently at 9.5 per cent — a dominant issue in November’s mid-term elections.
   ‘After a partisan minority used procedural tactics to block the authorisation of this assistance three separate times over the past weeks, Americans who are fighting to find a good job and support their families will finally get the support they need to get back on their feet during these tough economic times,’ he said in a statement.
   He also called on Congress to get to work to pass aid packages for cash-strapped states and to support small businesses.
   Obama had argued that the bill had to be funded via deficit spending as it was an emergency measure — and there was no time to find savings in the government budget to finance it.
   Republicans had urged Democrats to rely instead on still-unused funds from a massive economic stimulus program passed by Congress in February 2009 to fund the $34 billion bill.
   On Monday, Obama appeared at the White House alongside three workers who have seen their unemployment benefits run out or are soon to expire, as they desperately seek work amid the most crushing recession in decades.
   The federal government traditionally sends money to states at a time of crisis unemployment.
   The action on Thursday restored funds to claimants who had run out of regular benefits. The political row over the issue had rumbled on since May, leaving many people without benefits since then.

Britain’s economy grew by a faster-than-expected 1.1 per cent in the second quarter, the strongest pace since 2006 as the recovery strengthened, official data showed on Friday.
   The data, published by the Office for National Statistics, easily beat forecasts for 0.6-per cent growth in the April-June period, and builds on the economy’s modest emergence from a record-length recession late last year.
   ‘Gross domestic product increased 1.1 per cent in the second quarter of 2010. The increase in output was due mainly to increases in business services and finance and construction,’ the ONS said in a statement.
   Economists were left stunned by the news, but warned about the impact of the British government’s austerity measures that are aimed at tackling a huge public deficit, amid ongoing market jitters about soaring European state debt.
   ‘This is an absolutely incredible growth number — way above all expectations and the best performance since the first quarter of 2006,’ said IHS Global Insight economist Howard Archer.
   ‘Furthermore, the pick up was widespread across all sectors with service sector activity picking up sharply, manufacturing output humming and the construction sector returning to growth with a vengeance.’ The recovery gathered pace after 0.3-per cent expansion in the first three months of the year.
   Despite the impressive GDP data, British finance minister George Osborne warned that the job was not finished in repairing the troubled economy.

South Korean and Chinese financial chiefs agreed the global economy needs a ‘considerable’ amount of time before making a full-fledged recovery, a government report said on Friday.
   The assessment followed talks in Beijing Friday between South Korean finance minister Yoon Jeung-Hyun and his Chinese counterpart, Zhang Ping, Yoon’s office said in a report.
   The two agreed to continue cooperation in seeking macroeconomic policies and to stave off protectionism to achieve a strong global economic growth, it said.