UPDATE.....................April 5, 2010
BANGLADESH
NEWS IN FOCUS
Import of used cars from Japan declines by 50pc
Import of used Japanese cars declined to its lowest level in the first two months of the current year compared to figures of same period of previous two years, shows a report on Japan-Bangladesh trade.
The trend exposes the recent state of car market as used cars, known as reconditioned cars, which are mainly sourced from Japan, dominate around three-forth of the local market.
The report, procured from Bangladesh Reconditioned Vehicles Importers and Dealers Association, shows that import of used car in first two months of this year was decreased by more than 50 per cent compared to same period last year.
It shows only 1,870 cars were shipped from Japan to Bangladesh in January and February of the current year.
Japan’s official car export statistics showed that 3,803 used cars were shipped to Bangladesh in the first two months of 2009 and 2,194 in the same period in 2008.
Exports to Bangladesh declined at a time when Japan’s export of used cars to world market rebounded again. In the first two months of the current year, more than 87,000 used cars were shipped from Japanese ports against some 47,000 in the same period last year.
Abdul Haque, president of the BARVIDA, acknowledged that deteriorating traffic situation in the capital is now discouraging many of the potential buyers to realize their dream of buying a car.
Haque, who is also the vice-president of the Japan-Bangladesh Chamber of Commerce and Industry, however blames that an irrational taxation on recondition cars has put their business into difficulties.
He argued that due to imposition of irrationally higher value assessment on old cars, import costs have increased much in recent times so car the dealers can no more deliver them at affordable prices.
Several car dealers however pointed out that after seeing very high growth in sales in last two years, car market should see a saturation-like situation now.
Availability of easy finance from banks prompted thousands of mid-level executives and middle class families to buy their first car in last couple of years.
Annual sales of car recorded more than 20,000 in last two years while it had ranged between 4,000 and 8,000 in the previous years.
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Govt to make statement on energy situation this month
The Awami League-led government will make a statement on the latest energy situation later this month as acute shortage of power and gas has continued to plague the people’s life and curtailed economic activities across the country. The purpose of this exercise is probably to assuage the increasing public resentment over the frequent power outages.
This was revealed by the finance minister, AMA Muhith, at a pre-budget discussion with economic reporters.
‘In the statement we will provide details of planned power plants, generation capacity, tender schedules and the schedules of generation of additional electricity,’ he said.
Muhith added that the statement would only include schedules of upcoming projects for gas-fields because of the speculative nature of fossil fuel availability.
He mentioned that the government might give the go-ahead to a power project under the budgetary window of the Public-Private Partnership. The Bangladesh Secretariat will soon be provided a solar power system, he told reporters.
However, despite the energy crisis, the national economy is expected to grow at 6.7 per cent in the next financial year, said Muhith while mentioning the budgetary target of the growth of the Gross Domestic Product in the 2010-2011 fiscal year.
He also expressed his confidence that economic growth would not be less than 6 per cent at the end of the current fiscal year.
Muhith was evasive when he was asked if the government would continue the budgetary provision to allow legalizing of untaxed money — a process which is popularly called ‘whitening of black money’.
The finance minister is going prepare the next budget, projecting the rate of inflation at about 6.5 per cent next year.
The size of the annual economic outlay for the next fiscal year will be approximately Tk 1,30,000 crore and that of the Annual Development Programme will be around Tk 38,000 crore, he told the meeting at the finance ministry.
Bangladesh Bank’s governor Atiur Rahman, finance secretary Mohammad Tarique, secretary to the Economic Relations Division Mosharraf Hossain Bhuiyan and president of Economic Reporters’ Forum Monwar Hossain and general secretary Abu Kawser were present on the occasion, along with others.
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Fresh dispute over voters’ list may delay REHAB polls
The stalled elections to the executive committee of the Real Estate and Housing Association of Bangladesh may be delayed further due to fresh discord between the rival panels over authenticity of the voters’ roll.
One of the panels led by a ruling party lawmaker has of late termed the present voters’ list flawed when a fresh date is yet to be announced after postponement of the REHAB elections scheduled for March 27, election commission sources said
Against this backdrop, the REHAB election commission sought opinion from the commerce ministry for taking the next step and expressed the hope that the matter would be resolved in a day or two.
‘As one of the panels alleged that the voters’ list is not flawless, we have written to the ministry to give us necessary directive to proceed,’ Abdul Haque, new chief election commissioner, told New Age on Sunday.
The biannual elections to the REHAB for the 2010-11 were postponed on March 25 following resignation of all the three members of the election commission.
The sources said a REHAB member belonging to Nabadhara panel had asked the election commission to prepare a fresh voters’ list arguing that 149 names out of 588 voters could not be eligible for voting as ‘they are employees of the real estate or housing companies, not shareholders.’
‘The employees cannot be voters,’ wrote the Nabadhara panel led by Nasrul Hamid Bipu, an Awami League member of parliament, according to the sources.
However, the leader of the other panel Jagaran ruled out the Nabadhara allegations, describing them baseless.
‘The Memorandum of Articles of the REHAB says anybody nominated by the company board of directors can cast vote, no matter whether he or she is the shareholder or not,’ said Mukarram Husain Khan, also managing director of Capital Land Development Limited.
He claimed that the previous elections were held with the voters list prepared in the same manner. ‘They are rather trying to hinder the process of holding the elections fearing a possible defeat,’ said Mukarram.
When contacted, the Nabadhara panel chief said, ‘No candidates from Nabadhara forwarded allegations of flawed voters’ list. It is the election commission which wrote to the commerce ministry seeking directive after a REHAB member raised objection,’ said Nasrul Hamid.
The tenure of current executive committee, dominated by Nabadhara panel, is set to expire on April 12.
The REHAB on March 29 constituted a three-member election commission headed by Abdul Haque, a director of the Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry.
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EXCLUSIVE
Dhaka wants list of transit goods to Indian states
Bangladesh has asked India which goods she intends to transport through the Akhaura-Ashuganj route to the north-eastern states.
The shipping minister, Shahjahan Khan, made the query when the Indian high commissioner in Dhaka, Rajeet Mitter, called on him on Sunday.
The Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, during her India visit in January agreed to allow the neighbor use of the route.
The minister told journalists after the meeting that the query was part of the formalities before commencement of bilateral trade.
He said he discussed with the Indian envoy declaring Ashuganj in Bangladesh and Silghat in India as ports of call in the Protocol on Inland Water Transit and Trade signed between the two countries.
During Hasina’ visit, the two countries agreed to declare Ashuganj and Silghat as ports of call in the protocol, which would be amended through exchange of letters.
Shahjahan said India assured Bangladesh of extending its assistance in river excavation.
‘They (India) have agreed to give us nine dredgers, which will be handed over soon,’ he said.
The minister also discussed transit to Nepal and Bhutan with Mitter.
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Garments zone to be set up in Munshiganj: HM
Home minister Sahara Khatun Sunday said that the government as part of its long-term plan is contemplating to set up a garments zone (Palli) in Munshiganj district soon.
‘The government has taken up various coordinated efforts involving the officials and representatives from the home, commerce and labour and employment ministries and business organizations to develop the readymade garments sector,’ she said while briefing the journalists after a meeting with the high officials of the ministry and the business leaders.
Chaired by Sahara, the meeting was attended, among others, by state minister for home Shamsul Haque Tuku, director general of Fire Service and Civil Defense Abu Nayeem Mohammad Shahidullah, and president of Bangladesh Garments Manufacturers and Exporters Association Abdus Salam Murshedy.
The minister told the reporters that they discussed different ways and means to reduce the number and causes of fire incidents in the RMG factories and decided to implement the recommendations of a recently formed inquiry committee within two weeks.
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TECH NEWS
Much-hyped iPad hits the market
Apple’s hotly-anticipated iPads are finally in consumers’ hands in what the maker of iPods and iPhones heralds as a personal computing revolution.
While Apple Stores were thronged for the iPad debut in the United States Saturday and the California firm was flooded with pre-orders, analysts said it remained to be seen whether the tablet computers would transform culture.
‘We think it will be a success no matter what,’ Gartner Research vice-president Ken Dulaney told AFP.
‘Tablets have not
done well in the past. If Apple changes that paradigm, they are on a new road.’
Innovative new applications ‘plus using it as a television set’ should drive iPad purchases, according to Delaney.
The Walt Disney Company has released an application for watching ABC television shows on the iPad.
US video rental titan Netflix and Warner Brothers entertainment studio have ‘apps’ to deliver content to the devices.
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BANGLADESH
GOOD NEWS
Remittance increases by 17.35pc in 9 months
Country’s inward remittance during the nine months of the current fiscal year stood at $825.48 crore, up by 17.35 per cent compared to the same period of the previous fiscal year.
The remittance inflow during the similar period of the last 2008-09 fiscal year was $703.38 crore.
‘Inward remittance has increased particularly in March as the number of work-day increased during the month,’ said a senior official of the Bangladesh Bank.
The official said they had seen remittance decreasing due to less number of work-day in any particular month.
According to Bangladesh Bank report, the Islami Bank brought the highest amount of remittance $25.7 crore while state-owned Sonali Bank secured second position with $10.7 crore as inward remittance during the month of March 2010.
Officials also said that the inward inflow of remittance also increased, despite the recent slump in manpower export, as the global economy was coming out from recession.
They said that the annual remittance might touch $11-billion mark in the current fiscal year against over $10 billion.
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NEWS IN FOCUS
University of Maryland to help produce quality shrimp
University of Maryland and Bangladesh Shrimp and Fish Foundation has signed an agreement of cooperation for development of production and import of quality shrimps.
The agreement was signed between University of Maryland President CD Mote Jr and Syed Mahmudul Huq of Bangladesh Shrimp and Fish Foundation on behalf of their respective sides during the visit of a Bangladesh delegation recently in the USA.
The agreement was acknowledged by Dr Cheng-I Wei, Dean, College of Agriculture and Natural Resources of the University.
On his return from the USA Syed Mahmud told the news agency that it was a tripartite cooperation agreement between the government, private entrepreneurs and the academics to enhance both the quality and the quantity of country's shrimp productions.
Mahmud said three aspects like food safety, environmental sustainability and social responsibility which were the pressing demands from the shrimp importers would be mitigated under this cooperation deal.
He said as shrimp was a very labour intensive product, Bangladesh was the best country in the world to supply shrimp to the buyers. 'If we can maintain its food quality, no other country could compete with us in this vitally important export trades,' he added.
Mamud said the present agreement would provide for, among others, joint research and training activities, exchange of scholars and experts for seminars, conferences and research activities.
Under the agreement, Joint Institute for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, a joint initiative of US Food and Drug Administration and University of Maryland and Bangladesh Shrimp and Fish Foundation have already initiated a Training of Trainers Programme for eventual implementation of 'Good Aquaculture Practices' throughout Bangladesh to ensure food safety, environmental sustainability and social responsibility both in terms of human and labour rights.
Besides, both JIFSAN and BSFF have reached an understanding to set up a JIFSAN-BSFF Aquaculture and Aquatic Food Safety Centre as an affiliate of Fishery Products Business Promotion Council under Public Private Partnership.
This would work as a network of training institutes in the region with a goal to build capacity of both foreign regulators and manufacturers in the use of international best practices in food safety management to better assure the safety of the food supply chain in the region.
In Bangladesh, fisheries constitute the second most important source of foreign exchange where shrimp alone earned $445.41 million in 2007-2008. It made 3.15 per cent contribution to national export and over 45 per cent contribution to total export from all agro-based primary commodities.
By 2015, the shrimp and prawn will be expected to make up 1,64,000 tonnes as against the estimated current production of 90,000 tonnes. The fisheries road map projects export earning of $1.1 billion from the shrimp and prawn and $0.1 billion from the fish by 2015.
At the present moment the USA is the single largest importer of shrimp from Bangladesh while all other EU countries are the major buyers of the aqua-products.
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WORLD NEWS
DEVELOPING STORY
US, Japan farm chiefs to meet over beef row
The US agriculture secretary heads to Japan this week in a renewed attempt to settle a long-running beef trade dispute that has created friction between the close allies.
Japan, once the biggest buyer of US beef, stopped the imports after mad cow disease was detected in an American herd in late 2003 and has only resumed limited imports since then.
US farm state senators have fumed that the restrictions are 'scientifically unfounded', with no new cases of the brain-wasting cattle disease bovine spongiform encephalopathy detected for years.
During the recent controversy about Toyota's faulty gas pedal systems, Republican senator Mike Johanns from Nebraska charged that, by the same logic, the United States could halt all Japanese car imports.
He wondered aloud 'what the response would be in Japan if I suggested... that until the Japanese government can assure us that all of the defects are out of these vehicles, we're just not going to accept any vehicles from Japan.'
Still, the Japanese government has stayed firm.
'Basically, I have no plan to change the position that Japan has taken so far,' agriculture minister Hirotaka Akamatsu said last week. 'We will stand by the scientific findings.'
US agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack, who will meet Akamatsu on Thursday, has said he intends to press Japan to lift the curbs but also said he had 'no illusions about how easy this is going to be.'
Years ago the ban nearly grew into a full-blown trade war, when US farm-state senators pressed for sanctions unless Tokyo opened up its markets by the end of 2005.
The following year Japan agreed to resume limited US imports from cattle under 20 months, except for high-risk parts such as brains and spine bones.
Vilsack is expected to now push for the restrictions to be softened to include cattle up to 30 months old.
Japan's US beef imports now stand at only around 10 per cent of their former peak, and Japan has periodically frozen imports by companies whenever it found banned cattle parts in shipments.
In the past four years, Japan suspended shipment from 13 US meat packers, taking up to several months to allow them to resume business. One of them still remains restricted, a Japanese farm ministry official said.
Akamatsu said last week he would repeat Japan's position that the US side must first make sure that breaches of the import rules stop.
On the Japanese side, too, many want US imports to increase again, among them fast-food beef bowl chain Yoshinoya Holdings, which once relied heavily on American beef shipments.
After the import ban, it had to take beef bowls off the menu for more than two years, instead offering pork and fish versions.
Yoshinoya spokesman Yasunori Yoshimura told the AFP: 'We really hope good quality beef will be supplied sustainably for a reasonable price. We hope US beef imports will be normalized.'
Japan and the United States have often clashed over trade issues.
Kazuhito Yamashita, a scholar at Tokyo-based Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry, warned the beef issue may further harm ties between Washington and the new centre-left government in Tokyo.
Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s has already irked Americans by vowing to build more 'equal' relations with the superpower and reviewing a 2006 agreement on the relocation of a US airbase.
Yamashita said that although the risk of falling ill from eating US beef is now 'close to zero', the public is not convinced yet.
'If Japan lifts the US beef ban, it may trigger a serious uproar from Japan's general public,' he said.
'This is a matter of food safety, which is a more complex issue than a trade tariff negotiation,' Yamashita said. 'As long as Japanese consumers reject US beef, Hatoyama's government cannot lift the ban.'
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INDIA
Geithner eyes US investment on India visit
Timothy Geithner will begin his maiden visit to India as US treasury secretary on Tuesday, hoping to improve an economic relationship that is often eclipsed by Washington's trade with China.
Geithner will begin his two-day trip in Delhi - a city where he lived while his father was working for the Ford Foundation - holding meetings with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and finance minister Pranob Mukherjee.
The 48-year-old, who is an Asia expert and speaks fluent Mandarin, hopes to focus talks on global economic management, financial investment and building infrastructure, a senior treasury official said ahead of the visit.
'India is an emerging global power and one with which the United States has an increasingly vital economic and financial relationship,' the treasury official said.
After years of lingering Cold War tensions, unease about Washington's close ties with Pakistan and Washington's displeasure at India's acquisition of a nuclear bomb, relations are blooming.
In mid-March the two countries signed a framework for cooperation on trade and investment in Washington, which US Trade Representative Ron Kirk said would tap the 'almost limitless potential for growth in trade between our two countries.'
But ties between the world's first and fourth largest economies - and two of the world's largest democracies - are still overshadowed by the vast trade between China and the United States.
'This trip is significant just for the fact that it is happening,' according to Arvind Subramanian of the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
'First and foremost, this trip is about symbolism, aimed at establishing a parallelism with the US-China relationship,' he wrote in a recent commentary.
Trade between India and the United States has roughly doubled in the last five years, as India has become one of the world's foremost emerging markets.
But that relationship, for years focused on trade and outsourcing, is increasingly focused on investment.
Bilateral foreign direct investment was worth around $21 billion in 2008, according to the treasury, still a pittance compared with flows between the United States and Europe, or China.
To boost ties, Geithner is set to press India to open its highly regulated markets to US investment, in part by launching a US-India financial partnership.
The project would spur regular cabinet-level US-India meetings, in line with a similar program between the United States and China.
Washington argues that more open Indian markets would afford India easier and cheaper access to capital that could help finance the country's massive infrastructure needs.
It is a case Geithner is also likely to make when he visits Mumbai, India's business and financial capital, where he will meet leaders of US firms present in India, as well as top Indian CEOs.
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SOUTH KOREA
Peace breaks out on S Korean factory floors
Eight months ago, Ssangyong Motor's car plant looked like a war zone as unionists occupying the premises battled riot police with catapults, firebombs and steel pipes.
Today the mood is altogether more co-operative, and both sides are seeing the benefit.
The 77-day occupation, in protest at mass redundancies designed to save the loss-making carmaker, ended only with a police raid featuring commandos rappelling from a helicopter in a hail of missiles.
More than 100 people were hurt, dozens were arrested, the redundancies went ahead and the firm's financial troubles deepened with the lost production.
'There was no winner: neither management nor labour could get what they wanted,' said Ssangyong Motor union leader Kim Kyu-Han, a moderate elected in the wake of the strike.
Workers at the country's smallest automaker also cut ties with the militant Korean Confederation of Trade Unions - part of a trend in South Korea's labour movement, which was once known for its militancy.
Some members of the KCTU and its less hard-line rival the Federation of Korean Trade Unions announced in March they had quit the umbrella groups to launch a 'third way' union alliance.
Labour Solidarity for New Hope has recruited 52 unions with 120,000 workers in less than a month. The FKTU and the KCTU have 8,00,000 and 6,50,000 members respectively, government data shows.
The unions of Hyundai Heavy Industries, the world's largest shipbuilder; subway operator Seoul Metro; and KT, the top communications firm, are leading the new alliance.
They see the established umbrella groups as too violent, too politically biased or too bureaucratic.
'The era of unions resolving problems by force has gone,' Seoul Metro union leader Chung Yeon-Soo, a KCTU founder and now co-chairman of the new grouping, told the AFP.
'The paradigm of the labour movement - based on the 19th century industrial structure - no longer fits the business environment in the 21st century.'
Radicalism has its roots in the 1970s and 80s, when unions led the pro-democracy movement against military-backed dictatorship.
Attitudes began to change during the 1997-98 financial crises, which triggered tens of thousands of redundancies in a country which once prized lifetime employment guaranteed by strict labour laws.
Kim Jeong-Han, of the Korea Labour Institute, a research body, attributed militancy partly to a poor social welfare network and a still-inflexible job market.
'In South Korea many workers still think that if they get laid off, they will be unable to find other jobs. That's why they become desperate and often radical.'
But Kim said more and more unionists realize working conditions cannot improve just through a strike.
At the Ssangyong plant in Pyeongtaek, 70 kilometres (40 miles) south of Seoul, union chief Kim said the mood has changed.
'Many KCTU unionists called me a traitor and some still do, but I don't care,' the 41-year-old said.
A framed photo of him and other union leaders staging a sit-in at the plant in 2006 hangs on his office wall. 'I put it up on the wall a month ago so as not to repeat the same mistake,' Kim said.
Underneath is a blanket, pillow and sleeping mat in case he has to work late and sleep in his office.
'I used to sleep out for a strike. I sleep here these days to spend more time cooperating with management to pull the company out of this crisis,' he said.
Kim said executives often pay him unscheduled late-night visits to discuss business problems - unimaginable in the past - and even bring pizza.
Productivity has risen sharply. The average manufacturing time for each vehicle fell from 87.9 hours before the strike to 48.7 hours afterwards, said company spokesman Choi Jin-Woung.
'Workers are all desperate to help save the company from the crisis,' said Oh Tae-Soo, 42, as he worked on the assembly line turning out Kyron sports utility vehicles.
Ssangyong Motor ended up lying off over one third of its total 5,000 staff. 'The job cuts could have been smaller than that if we had avoided the loss-making strike last year,' said Kim Choon-Sik, a deputy manager.
After the bitter dispute ended, labour and management at Ssangyong announced a policy of no industrial disputes. In March they rallied together from the factory to Seoul to seek financial aid.
'If our salaries could rise with a general strike, we would walk out. If we could improve working conditions by jabbing our arms in the air at a union rally, we would do so,' said union leader Kim. 'But it's not true.'
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IRAN
Iran annual inflation down by more than half
Iran's year to March 2010 inflation fell to 10.8 per cent, down by more than half from the previous year, the official IRNA news agency reported quoting the central bank.
IRNA said inflation in the previous year to March 2009 was 24.5 per cent.
Inflation in the Islamic republic, OPEC's second biggest oil exporter, has been its greatest economic challenge and had peaked in September 2008 to 29 per cent.
Iranian economists blame President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for stoking inflation with his expansionary policies during his first four-year term.
They accuse Ahmadinejad, who was re-elected in June 2009, of directly fuelling price rises by ploughing huge amounts of cash into the economy for local infrastructure projects and by offering low-interest loans.
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WORLD ECONOMY
Commodities rally on manufacturing data
Most commodities rallied this week, lifted by buoyant manufacturing data in China and the eurozone and in volatile trade with many markets winding down for the long Easter weekend.
The price of New York crude oil soared above $85 per barrel, hitting a 17-month peak on a wave of positive investor sentiment about the global economic outlook.
'Sentiment across the whole commodity complex is very upbeat, with very good eurozone manufacturing PMIs today (Thursday) and exceptionally strong Chinese PMIs,' said VTB Capital analyst Andrey Kryuchenkov.
He added that the oil had jumped higher 'in very thin (trading) volumes' ahead of the holiday weekend and was aided by the weak greenback, which tends to lift demand for dollar-priced goods. Crude prices hurtled to 17-month high points, nearing October 2008 peaks.
'Prices have started the second quarter with a bang, with both New York crude and Brent currently trading at their highest for the year, and in fact, their highest levels since October 2008,' said Barclays Capital analysts.
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ECB to hold first meeting since EU Greece showdown
European Central Bank governors meet this week to set monetary policy for the first time since EU leaders agreed to accept potential IMF help for Greece, despite strong objections by the ECB.
An International Monetary Fund operation within the eurozone could be taken as a sign the monetary union cannot sort out its own problems, but might be necessary if Athens cannot get money at reasonable rates on financial markets.
ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet said on March 25 that if the IMF or any other body assumed responsibilities of eurozone central banks or governments, 'it's obviously very, very bad.'
He sought later to temper his remarks, and will likely be pressed to clarify his position at a press conference after the bank announces its latest interest rate decision on Thursday.
The ECB governing council will undoubtedly leave the main interest rate at a record low of 1.0 per cent, a level hit almost a year ago, as concern over the Greek crisis and high unemployment offset strong industrial output data and a surprise spike in inflation.
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ASEAN ECONOMIC INTEGRATION
Bumpy road ahead for ASEAN economic integration
Flaws in ASEAN's economic integration plans are being exposed as some members struggle to adapt to a massive free-trade deal with China, and the US and EU opt to pursue pacts with individual states.
Grand plans for the establishment of an ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) by 2015 are likely to be a key topic when leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations hold their annual summit next week in Vietnam's capital Hanoi.
But wide development gaps within the region, entrenched domestic interests and the perennial distraction of Myanmar's failure to embrace democracy continue to weigh down the group's activities and global ties, analysts say.
The integration concept goes beyond freeing up trade -- it also includes physical connectivity through better rail and air links and the unhampered movement of people and capital in the 10-member bloc.
But soon after a giant free-trade agreement (FTA) between ASEAN and China went into effect this year, the region's biggest member, Indonesia, under pressure from domestic industries, said it wanted some terms renegotiated.
The European Union had also ditched earlier plans to negotiate an FTA collectively with ASEAN, and instead launched separate talks with individual countries -- an option also favored by the United States.
Hank Lim, a senior research fellow with the Singapore Institute of International Affairs (SIIA), said the main reason the EU and the US do not want to negotiate a regional pact is the group's vastly differing levels of economic development.
'It is impossible to negotiate a high-quality FTA with the ASEAN 10 collectively,' Lim told AFP.
Alongside Indonesia and Vietnam, ASEAN's eclectic membership also includes Singapore, whose $35,000 per capita income and gleaming skyscrapers are a stark contrast to poverty-ridden Laos and largely agricultural Cambodia.
The group's other members are Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand -- making a collection of emerging democracies and monarchies, and a military dictatorship in the form of Myanmar.
Diplomatic sources also admit that negotiating individual trade deals will allow Western countries to avoid the awkwardness involved in doing deals with a group that has international pariah Myanmar in its ranks.
Former ASEAN secretary-general Rodolfo Severino said that tearing down tariff barriers on intra-ASEAN trade is on track, at least on paper.
But he said in an opinion piece published in Singapore's Straits Times newspaper last week that there are other things that need to be done for integration to be broad-based and effective.
These include the 'building of transportation and telecommunications infrastructure and the dismantling of the political, economic and technical obstacles to the efficient flow of goods, services, people and ideas across the region.'
He expressed hope that the leaders meeting in Vietnam 'will give impetus' to the integration process.
Ernest Bower, a Southeast Asia specialist with the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said ASEAN's target of establishing an economic community by 2015 is a 'stretch goal'.
'Indonesia's well documented anxieties over the impact of the China-ASEAN FTA expose the limitations of the regional approach to economic integration, namely entering into less well defined regional agreements that allow countries to opt in or out,' Bower told AFP.
'The legally binding approach of the US and Europe does ensure that countries go through a legal and governance process before entering agreements,' he said.
'If China doesn't manage the situation with Indonesia and other concerned ASEAN countries well, it could take on political baggage. The same risk exists for the US.'
Severino, who now heads the ASEAN Studies Centre at the Singapore-based Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, said integrating regional economies requires a mindset change across a broad range of sectors.
'This would entail a change in the outlooks of the governments, the business sector and the public at large -- from narrowly national to broadly regional,' he said.
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WORLD GROWTH FORECAST
IMF draft raises 2010 world growth forecast
The world economy could grow 4.1 per cent this year, 0.2 points more than previously forecast, the International Monetary Fund says in the latest draft of its World Economic Outlook, Italian news agency ANSA reported.
The US economy is now expected to grow 3.0 per cent this year, instead of the 2.7 per cent forecast in the IMF's January report, according to ANSA and Italian newspapers which published the draft figures on Sunday. The IMF is due to publish its next World Economic Outlook on April 21, business newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore said.
According to the draft, euro zone growth this year is now forecast to be 0.8 per cent, down 0.1 points from January's estimate. In 2011, the figure is seen at 1.5 per cent, also down 0.1 points, the reports said.
Europe 'is coming out of recession more slowly than other regions,' the draft said, because there are 'various forces which are putting a brake on recovery,' including Greece, Il Sole 24 Ore said in its report on Sunday.
Europe's biggest economy, Germany, is expected to report a 1.2 per cent rise in gross domestic product in 2010 and 1.7 per cent in 2011, the draft says according to the reports. Those figures are down 0.3 points and 0.2 points respectively from the January forecast.
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US-CHINA POLICY
US delays China yuan ruling ahead of Hu visit
US treasury secretary Timothy Geithner said on Saturday he was delaying an April 15 report on whether China manipulates its currency but pledged to press for a more flexible Chinese currency policy.
The decision follows Thursday's announcement in Beijing that Chinese president Hu Jintao will attend a nuclear security summit meeting in Washington April 12-13 and seems to be a move to keep tensions over currency in check.
The Obama administration seeks broad global support for measures to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions, making it an inconvenient time to risk inflaming the dispute over China's currency policy.
Analysts said it would have been a slap in the face to Beijing if Washington had labeled China a currency manipulator days after Hu's visit.
Geithner said he will use upcoming meetings of the Group of 20 and a US-China economic summit in Beijing in May to try to get China to budge.
'I believe these meetings are the best avenue for advancing US interests at this time,' Geithner said in a statement issued at midday on the Easter holiday weekend. Treasury gave no indication when it will actually release the report.
The US Business and Industry Council, a trade group, said the administration apparently would delay the release of the report until after the G20 summit meeting in June.
As a result, 'for three more months, more American factories will close or cut back production and more of their employees will lose their jobs' because unilateral US tariffs are needed to combat 'predatory trade practices.'
Early reaction from lawmakers, who have focused in recent weeks on China's currency policy as a primary contributor to huge US trade deficits, was negative.
Republican Senator Charles Grassley, ranking minority member on the Senate Finance Committee, said Treasury's move effectively belittles US influence because China's policy of pegging its yuan, or renminbi, to the dollar was blatantly manipulative and said Beijing should be called on it.
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EU DEBT PLAN
Stung by costly loans, Greece doubts EU debt plan
Greece fought for months to get EU help to tackle its mounting debt crisis but it has taken only days for fresh doubts to emerge on the deal and the country's ability to put its finances in order.
Greece finds it still has to pay a high and rising price to secure crucial funding on the international markets to roll over debt -- let alone pay it down so as to relieve the strains on the economy and the broader eurozone.
The March 18-19 accord with the European Union was supposed to convince the markets that Greece would not be allowed to fail and accordingly would be a better credit risk, deserving lower rates of interest on its debt.
As the interest rates or yields fell, Athens would have more money available to pay off its overall debt and reduce a budget deficit which last year was more than four times the EU limit.
Hugely unpopular spending cuts would also help improve the public finances.
If that was the plan, however, it has not worked so far.
'The biggest hurdle for the Greek government is to get its borrowing done at a decent yield (interest rate),' GFT analyst David Morrision told AFP.
'They (want) ... yields similar to Germany's, around three per cent, rather than the six per cent-plus the market is demanding,' Morrision added.
The 10-year Greek government bond on Thursday was yielding 6.529 per cent, up sharply from 6.333 per cent on Friday the previous week after Brussels announced the accord, which also provides for International Monetary Fund involvement.
The difference, or spread, between Greek and German 10-year bond yields has steadily widened, hitting 342 basis points on Thursday, up from 321 points on Monday.
'The high spreads reflect the insecurity caused to investors by our country's high debt and credibility deficit,' Greek finance minister George Papaconstantinou told the Imerisia financial daily on Thursday.
The minister insisted that 'the government's aim is to never to have to activate' the EU support mechanism, which analysts have deemed 'opaque' and sorely lacking in detail.
Talk of an IMF rescue -- which would be the first to involve a eurozone member -- could have actually impaired the country's efforts to drive down its borrowing costs, the Greek debt agency chief suggested.
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INDONESIA
China pledges $2b loan for Indonesia infrastructure
The Indonesian trade minister said Saturday that China agreed to lend $2 billion for investment in Indonesia's infrastructure.
Beijing will give Jakarta $1.8 billion worth of preferential export buyer's credits as well as a concessional loan of $263 million, said the minister, Mari Pangestu, after a meeting with China's minister of commerce Chen Deming.
She said Chinese premier Wen Jiabao would sign the agreement during a visit to Indonesia this month.
Indonesia plans to spend $140 billion in the next five years to improve its poor infrastructure and help it reach an economic growth target of seven per cent. The government has said it would aim to attract $90 billion of that total from private investors.
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PHILIPPINE
Philippine business icon quits over borrowed speech
One of the Philippines' most powerful men has quit an academic post after admitting that an address he delivered copied from speeches by Harry Potter author JK Rowling and US leader Barack Obama.
Manuel Pangilinan said he was sorely embarrassed over the March 27 speech and wanted to spare the academic community further criticism by resigning as chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Ateneo de Manila University.
Pangilinan is also the chairman of the country's leading carrier, the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co and its mobile phone unit Smart Communications.
He is one of the country's richest men and recently gained control of a television station to consolidate his media empire.
Forbes Magazine in 2008 ranked him 39th in its list of 40 richest Filipinos, with a net worth of $39 million.
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UPDATE..............................APRIL 4, 2010
BANGLADESH
NEWS
ADP IMPLEMENTATION
Communications ministry, power division lag behind
The communications ministry and the power division lagged behind among the leading Annual Development Programme implementing agencies in the first eight months of the current fiscal.
According to a monthly review of the planning ministry, the communications ministry could only spend 24 per cent of its allocated ADP funds between July 2009 and February 2010 while the power division utilized only 28 per cent of the allocated funds during the period.
These two ministries are among the top ten agencies responsible for spending 75 per cent of the ADP allocation worth Tk 30,500 crore.
Other agencies are the local government division, the health ministry, the ministry of primary and mass education, ministry of education, ministry of water resources, ministry of agriculture, the mineral resource division and the ministry of housing and public works.
Planning ministry officials said together the communications ministry and the power division were allocated 22 per cent of the ADP fund. The lower than expected implementation rate by the agenises slowed down the overall ADP progress, said the officials.
It calculated that only 39 per cent of ADP was implemented in the first eight months of the current fiscal.
The implementation rate of the local government division, the ministry of primary and mass education, the ministry of education, the ministry of agriculture and the energy and mineral resources division is over 50 per cent.
The ministry officials observed that it would be a difficult task for the leading ministries to spend the allocated funds for the ADP which has prompted the government to cut the size of ADP by Tk 2,000 crore to Tk 28,500 crore.
The country had no record of implementing ADP worth more than Tk 20,000 crore because of lack of skill on the part of the implementing agencies, tough conditions by the lenders in releasing funds and lengthy procedure of procurement.
Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies director general MK Mujeri observed that lacklustre ADP implementation status in last several years become a major worry for the successive governments as many things, especially private investment, depended heavily on the annual public investment.
The idle money worth about Tk 34,000 remained stuck in the vaults of the local commercial banks as of the last month, he said, adding that private investors would not feel encouraged to go for new investments unless the government increases spending on purchase of goods and services.
Former caretaker government adviser Mirza Azizul Islam said a number of measures were taken in last several years to push up the ADP implementation rate, but those failed to bring about any major improvement.
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MARKET
Wholesale wheat price up
Reduced supply of wheat from the international market players has pushed up wheat price by at least Tk 50 per maund in the domestic wholesale market in the past one week or so, said market watchers.
As a result, the country’s wheat growers may benefit as the newly harvested wheat has already started to arrive in the market, they added.
The latest wholesale price of wheat, imported from Ukraine, was Tk 580 a maund (37.3 kilogram) in Narayanganj, a major hub for wheat trading, where dozens of flour mills are located.
‘Price began increasing a week ago as some importers either reduced supply or even stopped fresh procurement,’ said Zakir Hossain, a flour miller.
Dwelling on price rise, a wheat miller in Dhaka observed that the announcement of a good local procurement price for wheat by the government in the past week left an impact on the current market price.
Some 50,000 tonnes of wheat will be procured from the farmers at Tk 19.50 per kg, according to the decision.
While the country’s annual demand for wheat is more than 30 lakh tonnes, the domestic production of wheat is in the range of 10 lakh tonnes a year.
Private sector importers bring in wheat mainly from Ukraine, Australia and Canada to meet the demand.
Farmers were offered a price between Tk 15.50 and Tk 16 for a kilogram newly harvested wheat at Jaduranir Hut of Thakurgaon, a major wheat growing district, on Saturday.
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NEWS FLASH
Govt to import 50,000 tonnes of sunned rice
The government has taken an initiative to import 50,000 tonnes of sunned rice in the wake of its depleting stocks this season, said sources in the food ministry.
Many people in Chittagong, Sylhet and Chittagong Hill Tracts consume sunned rice including fine varieties of rice, although common Bangladeshis usually take boiled rice as the staple food.
The proposal from the food ministry to import 50,000 tonnes of sunned rice is scheduled to be discussed for endorsement in today’s meeting of the cabinet committee on purchase headed by the finance minister, AMA Muhith.
If the proposed is approved, this will be the last rice import about a month ahead of the harvesting of the Boro rice, said officials of the ministry.
‘Stocks of sunned rice are going to be depleted soon due to increase in the demand for this kind of rice in the country’s southeast and northeastern region,’ said a senior official of the food ministry.
According to unofficial estimate, about 10 lakh tonnes of sunned are traded in the local market every year while its actual demand is higher in view of consumption by rice growers themselves.
The government, in the annual food budget, decided to import 1 lakh tones of sunned rice this fiscal year.
‘As part of the year-long plan, the ministry will import 50,000 tonnes of sunned rice through international tenders,’ the food secretary, BD Mitra, told New Age on Saturday.
Singapore–based Indo-Sino Trade Pte Ltd is expected to supply 35,000 tonnes of sunned rice at a rate of $388.92 per tonne while Tanvir Enterprise may supply 15,000 tonnes of rice at a rate of $389.96 per tonne, according to the food ministry proposal.
The price of sunned rice has meantime declined to Tk 26 from Tk 28 a kilogram in the local market due to sufficient imports by the private sector from Pakistan and Myanmar.
The agriculture ministry hopes a bumper crop of Boro this season and there will be no need for imports of sunned rice after the harvesting, the food secretary added.
The government has currently 4.50 lakh tonnes of rice and 1.40 lakh tonnes wheat in its overall stocks whereas the stock was 9 lakh tonnes of food-grains a month ago
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Ocean-going ship handed over to Danish buyer
The country’s one of the leading shipbuilding companies, Ananda Shipyard and Slipways Ltd, on Saturday handed over an oceangoing ship ‘Stella Moon’ to Danish buyer Stella Shipping.
Ananda group chairman Abdullahel Bari handed over the 2,900 tonne capacity ship worth $7.5 million to Stella Shipping company representative captain Michael Sorensen at Chittagong port dry-dock, said a news release.
Shipping minister Shahjahan Khan was present in the handing over ceremony as chief guest.
Ananda managing director Afroza Bari said that the company had so far received orders worth 44.78 euros plus $316.64 for exporting 34 ships. The company exported seven ships.
Ananda Shipyard and Slipways Ltd is the first company in Bangladesh which received orders for export oriented oceangoing ships two years back, opening a new era in the country’s shipbuilding sector.
Shipping secretary Abdul Mannan Howlader, local member of parliament MA Latif,
Danish deputy ambassador Jan Moller Hansen and managing director of Chittagong dry-dock Ltd Enamul Baqui were present in function.
Shahjahan Khan said the company had set a milestone in the country’s ship export sector, exporting its first oceangoing ship ‘Stella Maris’ to the same company on May 15, 2008.
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BB road show ends
The eight-day caravan ‘Journey of Developments: Road Show Teknaf to Tentulia’ ended at the country’s northernmost point of Tentulia in Panchagarh with enthusiasm and festivity on Friday night.
The Bangladesh Bank organised the event from Teknaf and it concluded at Tentulia after the caravan travelled through Chittagong, Feni, Comilla, Tangail, Sirajganj, Bogra, Rangpur, Dinajpur, Thakurgaon and Panchagarh.
Huge numbers of stalls were set up at all venues in the banking fairs organised on the occasion by the local lead banks where the officials and executives of the banks concerned delivered elaborate information to all about their services.
Hundreds of officials and employees of the public and private financial organizations working in Panchagarh greeted the Bangladesh Bank caravan comprising executives of 48 banks when it reached at Tentulia Pilot High School ground Friday evening.
After a huge rally at Panchagarh district town last afternoon, the grand concluding ceremony was arranged on Tentulia Pilot High School ground in the evening with BRAC Bank managing director and chief executive Abdul Muhaimen in the chair.
Member of the Parliament from Panchagarh-1 constituency M Mozaharul Haque Pradhan attended the Tentulia discussion meeting as chief guest.
BB deputy governor general Ziaul Hassan Siddique and SME Foundation managing director Redwanul Kabir were present as special guests.
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WORLD NEWS
SCI-TECH
Japan teddy bear robot comforts elderly, snores
Japanese researchers have developed a cuddly teddy bear robot designed to comfort the elderly and delight children by reading facial expressions and actions and responding to them.
The fluffy invention by Fujitsu is still being worked on, but the electronics giant rolled out the as-yet-unnamed prototype for an early glimpse at an exhibition near Tokyo this week.
A camera in the nose of the bear can detect human faces and actions, such as waving of hands, while sensors inside its head and limbs can detect human touches and caresses. The bear can respond with more than 300 actions of its own, from giggling and laughing to waving its paws and taking a nap — and even snoring.
‘We want to offer an object that can become part of the family, nursing home or school and that can benefit humans,’ a Fujitsu researcher told the AFP during the sneak preview. ‘We really want it to look natural.’
Fujitsu ‘plans to test the robot in nursing homes so that it can entertain and soothe elderly people,’ said the researcher.
The teddy is not the first cuddly robot in Japan, where the high-tech baby seal Paro is already used in hospitals and nursing homes.
Paro coos and flaps its flippers to ease loneliness among the elderly and try to prevent depression and even dementia.
Japan has the world’s longest average life expectancy —79 years for men and 86 years for women and more than a fifth of the population is aged 65 or older. By 2050, figure is expected to rise to 40 per cent.
Fujitsu said it may also use its robot-bear in schools to aid children to communicate, gain self-confidence — or to help them wake up in the morning.
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BANGLADESH
NEWS IN FOCUS
BB imposes fee for non-MICAR cheques
Bangladesh Bank has imposed fee for processing non-magnetic ink character recognition cheques at its Dhaka clearing house.
A BB circular issued Thursday said all the banks should pay Tk 100 processing fee for every non-MICAR cheque at the clearing house of its headquarters.
Government cheques, payment instruments and foreign taka draft will get the fee waiver, the BB said.
The circular also re-fixed on April 30 the deadline for clearing such cheques at the Dhaka clearing house.
The circular said it would not process any old cheques at its headquarter from May 1, which earlier was fixed at April 1.
BB governor Atiur Rahman last week told BSS that they would allow processing of such cheques for another three months.
Executives of some private banks said that three months would be good enough to allow banks to be completely ready with the new cheques.
But, a central bank official said that the BB extended time limit for another 30 days to accelerate the automation process.
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Tk 800cr budget needed for tourism sector: GM Qader
Civil aviation and tourism minister GM Qader Saturday said his ministry would seek Tk 800 crore in the next budget for further development of the tourism sector.
Talking to the news agency, the minister said the government was working relentlessly for development of tourism as the Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina showed special interest about this sector.
Qader said next year would be observed as `tourism year’ projecting the attractive spots of the country to foreigners including Cox’s Bazar sea beach and the Sundarban mangrove forest.
Meanwhile, through the ministry of foreign affairs, he said, letters have been sent to Bangladesh missions abroad to take necessary measures to attract foreign tourists.
He said the government would provide all assistance to the private sector in developing tourism industry.
Allocation for the tourism sector in the current fiscal is only Tk 2 crore, a ministry source said, adding the sector can earn Tk 20,000 crore annually if it is developed across the country and Cox’s Bazar can be turned into a modern tourism spot.
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US ECONOMY
Jobs, profit hopes may drive US stock rally
Optimism about an improving labour market and corporate profits could propel US stocks higher next week as earnings season approaches.
Analysts expect trading at the week’s outset to be dictated by Friday’s non-farm payrolls report, which showed the economy added 162,000 jobs in March, the fastest pace of growth in three years. US markets were closed for the Good Friday holiday.
‘Things have been getting better. There’s no question about it. We’ve had a remarkable V-shaped recovery since last March,’ said Alan Valdes, director of floor operations for Kabrik Trading in New York.
The market could have momentum on its side as investors turn their attention to what is expected to be a strong earnings season.
The broad Standard & Poor’s 500 achieved its fourth consecutive quarterly gain this week and scored its best monthly rise since last July. For the first quarter, the S&P 500 climbed 4.9 per cent. For March alone, it gained 5.9 per cent. On Thursday, the S&P ended at 1,178.10 — an 18-month high. For the short holiday week, it was up 1 per cent.
The Dow, meanwhile, has its sights set on the psychologically important 11,000 level, which could be taken out Monday if there is enough enthusiasm over the jobs report.
The payrolls data will lend support to markets, as US stock futures rallied on Friday in the wake of the release.
Private hiring was stronger than anticipated, bolstering the view the economy is starting to find its footing and, as a result, needs less government support.
However, with the S&P 500 stock index up 74 per cent from the March 2009 closing low, some worry the rally will be interrupted if the economy does not maintain its strength.
‘The road to a self-sustaining economic recovery, which is the thesis of the bullish cabal, is going to be tested,’ said Doug Kass, president of Seabreeze Partners Management, in Palm Beach, Florida.
As well as the payrolls report, investors will take in minutes from the Fed’s rate-setting meeting in March, and a round of data that includes February pending home sales and an ISM survey on the US services sector for March.
Analysts expect first-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies to rise 36.3 per cent, according to Thomson Reuter’s data. That’s slightly less than the 37.2 per cent growth that was expected in January and well off the 51.2 per cent that was anticipated in October.
While expectations have come down somewhat, analysts’ estimates could be closer to the mark than in recent quarters, said Scott Wren, senior equity strategist at Wells Fargo Advisors in St. Louis.
‘Coming into 2009, estimates were off by $20 or $30. I think people have a better, more realistic feel for what earnings are going to be now,’ Wren said.
Investors will be keen for corporate guidance heading into the earnings season, which kicks off with Alcoa Inc on April 12 — a week from Monday.
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Biggest job gain in 3 yrs pushes up interest rates
The biggest increase in jobs in three years pushed interest rates to their highest level since before the worst days of the credit crisis in 2008.
With the stock market closed for Good Friday, investors had a shortened day of trading in the bond market to react to the Labour Department’s report that employers added the most jobs in March since before the recession began in December 2007.
Treasury prices fell after the report, sending their yields higher. Bond prices tend to fall as investors’ confidence grows and demand for safe-haven investments wanes.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 3.94 per cent from 3.87 per cent late Thursday, its highest level since last June and the latest sign of confidence that the US economy is recovering.
The yield on the 10-year note is tied to many kinds of consumer loans. The increase could raise borrowing costs for mortgages and other debt.
Chik Quintans, a certified mortgage planner at Atlas Mortgage Inc. in Lynnwood, Wash., said rates have gone up following the jobs report. The rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage Friday was 5.125 per cent, up from 4.875 late Thursday. Less than two weeks ago, the rate was about 4.75 per cent.
Barclays Capital Research called the increase in hiring by private employers ‘solid.’ Other analysts also said the numbers were encouraging, pointing to a higher open when stock trading resumes Monday.
‘The bond market seems to have taken it as a very positive number,’ said Andrew Neale, head of portfolio management at Fogel Neale Partners in New York.
It was an unusual day for investors, with the biggest economic news of the month coming out on a holiday for stock markets in US and Europe.
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US refineries have bad safety record: study
US oil refineries have an ongoing problem with accidents that turn deadly, losing four times as much from such incidents than refineries in the rest of the world, according to an insurance company report obtained Friday by The Associated Press.
The problem is highlighted by a deadly string of explosions, including one that killed four people Friday at a Tesoro Corp refinery in Washington State, federal officials said.
The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration got so worried that in 2007 it started a major push for safety inspection in refineries and found more than 1,000 workplace violations in the industry.
‘If the aviation industry were having the same number of significant serious accidents as the refinery industry was having you probably wouldn’t see people flying too much,’ Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board chairman John Bresland told The Associated Press Friday.
The internal insurance report, given to federal safety regulators two years ago but never publicized, was all too familiar to Bresland’s agency, which said Friday’s deadly explosion revives concerns there’s something terribly wrong with the industry.
The board, which makes nonbinding recommendations, oversees investigations on accidents in 150 refineries in the United States and tens of thousands of chemical plants. But about half of the outstanding investigations are of accidents at refineries, officials said.
The cause of Friday’s blast at the Tesoro refinery in Anacortes, about 70 miles north of Seattle on Puget Sound, was under investigation. The blaze started during maintenance work on a unit that processes highly flammable liquid derived during the refining process, the company said.
Six investigators with the chemical safety board were dispatched to the scene. Tesoro, based in San Antonio, was fined $85,700 last April for 17 serious safety and health violations at the plant.
In November, the state reached a settlement with Tesoro, requiring in part that the company correct the hazards and hire a third-party consultant to do a safety audit. The settlement reduced the total penalty to $12,250 and lowered the number of violations to three.
Jeff Haffner, associate general counsel for Tesoro, said the company is investigating the blast and has been working to correct the problems found.
It was the largest fatal refinery accident since a 2005 explosion at a BP American refinery in Texas killed 15 people and injured another 170.
Officials at the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association said their industry is not only safe, it has a better safety record than the US manufacturing sector as a whole.
The industry is ‘one of the leaders’ in safety, said Charlie Drevna, the association’s president and actually has a lower rate of injuries per workers than the manufacturing industry as a whole.
Officials from the chemical safety board and OSHA said that comparison missed the point because it is based on routine slips and falls and not the big accidents from poor safety processes that lead to deaths.
That Texas refinery had a low injury rate, but people were killed ‘because they didn’t properly maintain their equipment,’ said David Michaels, OSHA chief and deputy assistant secretary of labour.
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CHINA
TECH
China’s iPad look-alike brace for real thing
Apple’s iPad has won rave early reviews but its US launch on Saturday is not welcome news for the Chinese maker of a similar-looking device that has already been on sale for nearly eight months.
Wu Xiaolong, the general manager of Shenzhen Great Loong Brother Industrial Co, said the company had already lost a major order for its iPad-like touchscreen ‘P88’, which was launched in August, months before Apple’s product.
‘Our products are more expensive than theirs. There had been a Canadian university planning to buy our tablet PCs for their students, but they cancelled the order to shift to the iPad,’ Wu told the AFP.
The company made headlines in January when it suggested Apple’s iPad looked like a copy of the P88, which was on show last year at the Internationale Funkausstellung consumer electronics fair in Berlin.
Wu declined to give sales figures for the P88, which sells for about $569 — compared to the iPad’s $499 entry-level price — but said the company in southern China was producing 3,000 units a day.
‘We sold to a number of overseas markets in Europe and North America, including Germany, the UK, France and Canada. We also have distributors in many provinces in China, including Shanghai,’ he said.
However, there was no sign of the P88 or other iPad clones at the four-floor CyberMart in downtown Shanghai on Friday, although plenty of cloned iPods and other products were on display.
Shanzai.com, which tracks China’s electronics industry, said dozens of iPad clones have been ‘available on the streets of Shenzhen for months’.
Apple has yet to announce a launch date for the iPad in China, but Huang Ting, who operates one of CyberMart’s more than 100 stalls, said confidently that she expected to be selling the devices around April 10.
‘We have to send someone to line up and buy them in the US and then bring them back to China. The 16GB iPad will sell for around 5,000 yuan ($730),’ she said from behind a counter showcasing row of iPhones and iPods.
Eager customers were paying a 500-yuan deposit, she said.
‘We already have quite a few bookings,’ Huang said.
China’s grey market for Apple products developed to meet demand from consumers eager to get their hands on iPhones, which officially only went on sale in China in October — more than two years after it was launched in the US.
In the meantime, 1.5 million smuggled iPhones flooded into the world’s biggest mobile market before Apple reached an agreement with a Chinese network operator.
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FRANCE
French halal market booms despite political unease
Halal foie gras, non-alcoholic champagne, sauerkaut garnished with pork-free sausages: Muslim-friendly food is moving away from its immigrant roots and merging with mainstream French tradition.
While the fine wine and gourmet food exports that underpin the French food industry have been hit hard by the global crisis, the halal niche market has been growing fast.
The boom went largely unnoticed until a hamburger chain tried a halal menu in some of its restaurants, sparking charges of ‘communautarisme’—a term roughly meaning ‘ghettoization’, which grates against the French insistence on integration.
The growth of halal products is largely thanks to young descendants of Arab and African migrants, who want to enjoy the same culinary diversity as their non-Muslim French neighbors while remaining true to their cultural roots.
‘It’s mostly driven by the second and third generations,’ said Antoine Bonnel, director of the Paris Halal trade show held this week.
‘It’s not a case of the Muslim community withdrawing into itself, but rather one of integration, since they want to be able to buy halal sauerkraut or spring rolls,’ he said.
Bonnel was referring to the increasing number of Muslims joining the French middle classes and expanding their culinary horizons, a trend that has even spawned a new term — ‘beurgeois’, a slightly ironic mix of ‘bourgeois’, or middle class, and ‘beur’, slang for North African.
French sales of halal food are forecast to hit 5.5 billion euros ($7.42b) in 2010 and move ‘from the ethnic market to the mass market’, said Bonnel.
The word halal — meaning ‘lawful’ in Arabic — applies to food that has been prepared according to the prescriptions of the Koran.
Islamic law requires meat to be slaughtered under religious supervision and forbids the consumption of pork and alcohol.
The halal market, targeting France’s estimated five-million-strong Muslim population, has obvious attractions for retailers and restaurateurs, and market researchers say it is growing rapidly.
There are kosher products, so why not halal?
Supermarket chain Casino has created a halal brand, Wassila, and fast food chain Quick is trying out a halal menu in eight of its 350 burger joints.
But the increased presence of halal in French life has raised some hackles in this staunchly secular country.
Several politicians from both right and left have complained that providing halal options will divide French society rather than help welcome Muslims into the culinary mainstream.
Quick’s introduction of halal options in some areas with Muslim populations was attacked by a mayor from the opposition Socialist party, who threatened legal action, and by members of president Nicolas Sarkozy’s own ruling right-wing UMP party.
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SCI-TECH
iPad seekers queue for first shot at new Apple gadget
Gadget-seekers determined to be among the first to get their hands on an iPad began queuing outside Apple’s flagship shop in Manhattan a day ahead of the tablet computer’s Saturday debut.
About 15 aspiring iPad owners heartened by sunshine and spring temperatures had taken up positions outside the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue by 4:00pm (2000GMT)
Friday to wait for sales to commence at 9:00 the following morning (1300GMT).
Eleven-year-old Giovanna Mullen said she staked out her place outside the store at 5:00am Friday with her mother Jeanney Mullen and her grandmother Tony Digiorno.
The girl proudly described herself as the owner of an iPod Touch and said her mother has an iPod and a Macintosh computer, both iconic creations of California-based Apple.
‘We brought food, blankets...so, the three generations will say they slept together in the streets of New York,’ Digiorno said.
Like others in the queue, the trio had not pre-ordered iPads so resorted to hours of waiting to get the gadgets.
‘I am buying two, for me and for my daughter,’ said Jeanney Mullen, who noted she works in digital publishing and is intrigued by the iPad.
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JAPAN FOREIGN EXCHANGE POLICY
Japan asks China for right yuan decision
Japan’s finance minister on Saturday asked China to make an ‘appropriate decision’ on its foreign exchange policy but stopped short of telling it what to do.
Naoto Kan made the remarks at a news conference after meeting with premier Wen Jiabao as part of weekend talks in Beijing with top officials.
‘I told Wen that I believe China’s stable foreign exchange rate policy has helped ease the recent financial turmoil, and asked him to continue to make an appropriate decision’ on the currency problem, Kan said, according to Dow Jones Newswires.
But ‘I didn’t say anything on what China should do or shouldn’t do’ about the yuan, he said.
International disquiet has grown over the yuan, which critics say is undervalued by as much as 40 per cent against the dollar, giving Chinese exporters an unfair advantage.
Washington has led the charge in ramping up the pressure on Beijing to let the yuan appreciate. It has been effectively pegged at about 6.8 to the US dollar since mid-2008.
US lawmakers are pushing treasury secretary Timothy Geithner to label Beijing a ‘currency manipulator’ in a report due April 15.
Currently the yuan may rise or fall 0.5 per cent against the dollar each day from a mid-point set by the China’s central bank and three per cent for non-dollar currencies such as the euro and Japanese yen.
However Chinese media reports this week said the government is reviewing proposals to adjust its currency exchange rate system this month, including giving the yuan more flexibility.
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COMMENTARY
US starting to ‘turn the corner’ on jobs: Obama
President Barack Obama hailed new signs of an improving US labour market on Friday as proof that ‘we are beginning to turn the corner’ but warned it would still take time to achieve sustained job growth.
Seeking to maintain momentum after lawmakers approved his cornerstone healthcare overhaul, Obama shifted focus to tackling high unemployment, a problem threatening to damage his Democratic Party’s prospects in November’s pivotal congressional elections.
Obama spoke after a closely watched government employment report showed that non-farm payrolls grew in March, adding 162,000 jobs, and the strongest signal yet that the economic recovery is moving onto a more solid footing.
‘Today is an encouraging day. We learned that the economy actually produced a substantial number of jobs instead of losing a substantial number of jobs. We are beginning to turn the corner,’ Obama told workers at a battery components plant in North Carolina, a key battleground state he won in the 2008 presidential election.
While welcoming the latest report as the best jobs news in more than two years, he cautioned that there was more work to be done to boost employment, his top domestic priority.
‘It’s not quick and it’s not easy,’ he said. ‘It’s important to emphasize while we’ve come a long way, we’ve still got a long way to go.’
The labour market has lagged the overall recovery from the worst recession since the 1930s, creating a political challenge for Obama. Unemployment last month remained stuck at 9.7 per cent.
But Obama said, ‘The worst of the storm is over and brighter days are still ahead.’
He also used his North Carolina visit to promote healthcare reform, mindful of polls showing many Americans are skeptical
of the sweeping plan after he pushed it through
over fierce Republican opposition.
With the healthcare overhaul largely behind him, Obama is pushing legislative measures to overhaul financial regulation in addition to focusing on job creation. He said he expected results in financial regulations reform soon.
‘We’re starting to see a framework emerge both in the House of Representatives and in the Senate where my hope ... is that we can actually get this done sometime in the next several weeks,’ he said.
With voters nervous over record federal spending, Democrats are advancing job-creation efforts in a series of small steps to avoid the sticker shock of last year’s $787 billion stimulus package.
Obama last month signed into law a bill that includes a $13 billion payroll tax cut for businesses that hire unemployed workers and $19.5 billion for highway-repair programs — a package that liberal Democrats said was disappointingly small.
Other measures pending in Congress would expand subsidies for state and local construction bonds, extend jobless benefits through the end of the year, and help states pay the salaries of teachers and other public employees.
But these measures have been delayed by differences between the House and the Senate, where Republicans have greater power to block legislation.
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STEALING TRADE SECRET
Two jailed Chinese Rio Tinto staff to appeal
Two Chinese Rio Tinto employees jailed for stealing trade secrets and pocketing millions in bribes have decided to appeal, their lawyers said Saturday.
Wang Yong and Liu Caikui will appeal against their jail terms of 14 and seven years respectively, their lawyers told AFP.
The other Chinese employee Ge Minqiang had not yet decided if he would challenge his sentence of eight years, his lawyer told the AFP.
The lawyer representing Australian citizen Stern Hu, who was jailed for 10 years, declined to comment when contacted by AFP.
Liu lodged his appeal on Friday while Wang will meet with his lawyer Monday morning to discuss his decision to appeal, the lawyers said.
Hu and the three Chinese staff were convicted of taking more than $13 million in kickbacks from Chinese steel firms during tense 2009 iron ore talks.
The sentences handed down Monday in Shanghai provoked protests from Australia, which said the prison term for Hu was ‘very tough’ and ‘harsh’.
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BANGLADESH
NEWS IN FOCUS
Import of used cars from Japan declines by 50pc
Import of used Japanese cars declined to its lowest level in the first two months of the current year compared to figures of same period of previous two years, shows a report on Japan-Bangladesh trade.
The trend exposes the recent state of car market as used cars, known as reconditioned cars, which are mainly sourced from Japan, dominate around three-forth of the local market.
The report, procured from Bangladesh Reconditioned Vehicles Importers and Dealers Association, shows that import of used car in first two months of this year was decreased by more than 50 per cent compared to same period last year.
It shows only 1,870 cars were shipped from Japan to Bangladesh in January and February of the current year.
Japan’s official car export statistics showed that 3,803 used cars were shipped to Bangladesh in the first two months of 2009 and 2,194 in the same period in 2008.
Exports to Bangladesh declined at a time when Japan’s export of used cars to world market rebounded again. In the first two months of the current year, more than 87,000 used cars were shipped from Japanese ports against some 47,000 in the same period last year.
Abdul Haque, president of the BARVIDA, acknowledged that deteriorating traffic situation in the capital is now discouraging many of the potential buyers to realize their dream of buying a car.
Haque, who is also the vice-president of the Japan-Bangladesh Chamber of Commerce and Industry, however blames that an irrational taxation on recondition cars has put their business into difficulties.
He argued that due to imposition of irrationally higher value assessment on old cars, import costs have increased much in recent times so car the dealers can no more deliver them at affordable prices.
Several car dealers however pointed out that after seeing very high growth in sales in last two years, car market should see a saturation-like situation now.
Availability of easy finance from banks prompted thousands of mid-level executives and middle class families to buy their first car in last couple of years.
Annual sales of car recorded more than 20,000 in last two years while it had ranged between 4,000 and 8,000 in the previous years.
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Govt to make statement on energy situation this month
The Awami League-led government will make a statement on the latest energy situation later this month as acute shortage of power and gas has continued to plague the people’s life and curtailed economic activities across the country. The purpose of this exercise is probably to assuage the increasing public resentment over the frequent power outages.
This was revealed by the finance minister, AMA Muhith, at a pre-budget discussion with economic reporters.
‘In the statement we will provide details of planned power plants, generation capacity, tender schedules and the schedules of generation of additional electricity,’ he said.
Muhith added that the statement would only include schedules of upcoming projects for gas-fields because of the speculative nature of fossil fuel availability.
He mentioned that the government might give the go-ahead to a power project under the budgetary window of the Public-Private Partnership. The Bangladesh Secretariat will soon be provided a solar power system, he told reporters.
However, despite the energy crisis, the national economy is expected to grow at 6.7 per cent in the next financial year, said Muhith while mentioning the budgetary target of the growth of the Gross Domestic Product in the 2010-2011 fiscal year.
He also expressed his confidence that economic growth would not be less than 6 per cent at the end of the current fiscal year.
Muhith was evasive when he was asked if the government would continue the budgetary provision to allow legalizing of untaxed money — a process which is popularly called ‘whitening of black money’.
The finance minister is going prepare the next budget, projecting the rate of inflation at about 6.5 per cent next year.
The size of the annual economic outlay for the next fiscal year will be approximately Tk 1,30,000 crore and that of the Annual Development Programme will be around Tk 38,000 crore, he told the meeting at the finance ministry.
Bangladesh Bank’s governor Atiur Rahman, finance secretary Mohammad Tarique, secretary to the Economic Relations Division Mosharraf Hossain Bhuiyan and president of Economic Reporters’ Forum Monwar Hossain and general secretary Abu Kawser were present on the occasion, along with others.
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Fresh dispute over voters’ list may delay REHAB polls
The stalled elections to the executive committee of the Real Estate and Housing Association of Bangladesh may be delayed further due to fresh discord between the rival panels over authenticity of the voters’ roll.
One of the panels led by a ruling party lawmaker has of late termed the present voters’ list flawed when a fresh date is yet to be announced after postponement of the REHAB elections scheduled for March 27, election commission sources said
Against this backdrop, the REHAB election commission sought opinion from the commerce ministry for taking the next step and expressed the hope that the matter would be resolved in a day or two.
‘As one of the panels alleged that the voters’ list is not flawless, we have written to the ministry to give us necessary directive to proceed,’ Abdul Haque, new chief election commissioner, told New Age on Sunday.
The biannual elections to the REHAB for the 2010-11 were postponed on March 25 following resignation of all the three members of the election commission.
The sources said a REHAB member belonging to Nabadhara panel had asked the election commission to prepare a fresh voters’ list arguing that 149 names out of 588 voters could not be eligible for voting as ‘they are employees of the real estate or housing companies, not shareholders.’
‘The employees cannot be voters,’ wrote the Nabadhara panel led by Nasrul Hamid Bipu, an Awami League member of parliament, according to the sources.
However, the leader of the other panel Jagaran ruled out the Nabadhara allegations, describing them baseless.
‘The Memorandum of Articles of the REHAB says anybody nominated by the company board of directors can cast vote, no matter whether he or she is the shareholder or not,’ said Mukarram Husain Khan, also managing director of Capital Land Development Limited.
He claimed that the previous elections were held with the voters list prepared in the same manner. ‘They are rather trying to hinder the process of holding the elections fearing a possible defeat,’ said Mukarram.
When contacted, the Nabadhara panel chief said, ‘No candidates from Nabadhara forwarded allegations of flawed voters’ list. It is the election commission which wrote to the commerce ministry seeking directive after a REHAB member raised objection,’ said Nasrul Hamid.
The tenure of current executive committee, dominated by Nabadhara panel, is set to expire on April 12.
The REHAB on March 29 constituted a three-member election commission headed by Abdul Haque, a director of the Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry.
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EXCLUSIVE
Dhaka wants list of transit goods to Indian states
Bangladesh has asked India which goods she intends to transport through the Akhaura-Ashuganj route to the north-eastern states.
The shipping minister, Shahjahan Khan, made the query when the Indian high commissioner in Dhaka, Rajeet Mitter, called on him on Sunday.
The Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, during her India visit in January agreed to allow the neighbor use of the route.
The minister told journalists after the meeting that the query was part of the formalities before commencement of bilateral trade.
He said he discussed with the Indian envoy declaring Ashuganj in Bangladesh and Silghat in India as ports of call in the Protocol on Inland Water Transit and Trade signed between the two countries.
During Hasina’ visit, the two countries agreed to declare Ashuganj and Silghat as ports of call in the protocol, which would be amended through exchange of letters.
Shahjahan said India assured Bangladesh of extending its assistance in river excavation.
‘They (India) have agreed to give us nine dredgers, which will be handed over soon,’ he said.
The minister also discussed transit to Nepal and Bhutan with Mitter.
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Garments zone to be set up in Munshiganj: HM
Home minister Sahara Khatun Sunday said that the government as part of its long-term plan is contemplating to set up a garments zone (Palli) in Munshiganj district soon.
‘The government has taken up various coordinated efforts involving the officials and representatives from the home, commerce and labour and employment ministries and business organizations to develop the readymade garments sector,’ she said while briefing the journalists after a meeting with the high officials of the ministry and the business leaders.
Chaired by Sahara, the meeting was attended, among others, by state minister for home Shamsul Haque Tuku, director general of Fire Service and Civil Defense Abu Nayeem Mohammad Shahidullah, and president of Bangladesh Garments Manufacturers and Exporters Association Abdus Salam Murshedy.
The minister told the reporters that they discussed different ways and means to reduce the number and causes of fire incidents in the RMG factories and decided to implement the recommendations of a recently formed inquiry committee within two weeks.
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TECH NEWS
Much-hyped iPad hits the market
Apple’s hotly-anticipated iPads are finally in consumers’ hands in what the maker of iPods and iPhones heralds as a personal computing revolution.
While Apple Stores were thronged for the iPad debut in the United States Saturday and the California firm was flooded with pre-orders, analysts said it remained to be seen whether the tablet computers would transform culture.
‘We think it will be a success no matter what,’ Gartner Research vice-president Ken Dulaney told AFP.
‘Tablets have not
done well in the past. If Apple changes that paradigm, they are on a new road.’
Innovative new applications ‘plus using it as a television set’ should drive iPad purchases, according to Delaney.
The Walt Disney Company has released an application for watching ABC television shows on the iPad.
US video rental titan Netflix and Warner Brothers entertainment studio have ‘apps’ to deliver content to the devices.
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BANGLADESH
GOOD NEWS
Remittance increases by 17.35pc in 9 months
Country’s inward remittance during the nine months of the current fiscal year stood at $825.48 crore, up by 17.35 per cent compared to the same period of the previous fiscal year.
The remittance inflow during the similar period of the last 2008-09 fiscal year was $703.38 crore.
‘Inward remittance has increased particularly in March as the number of work-day increased during the month,’ said a senior official of the Bangladesh Bank.
The official said they had seen remittance decreasing due to less number of work-day in any particular month.
According to Bangladesh Bank report, the Islami Bank brought the highest amount of remittance $25.7 crore while state-owned Sonali Bank secured second position with $10.7 crore as inward remittance during the month of March 2010.
Officials also said that the inward inflow of remittance also increased, despite the recent slump in manpower export, as the global economy was coming out from recession.
They said that the annual remittance might touch $11-billion mark in the current fiscal year against over $10 billion.
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NEWS IN FOCUS
University of Maryland to help produce quality shrimp
University of Maryland and Bangladesh Shrimp and Fish Foundation has signed an agreement of cooperation for development of production and import of quality shrimps.
The agreement was signed between University of Maryland President CD Mote Jr and Syed Mahmudul Huq of Bangladesh Shrimp and Fish Foundation on behalf of their respective sides during the visit of a Bangladesh delegation recently in the USA.
The agreement was acknowledged by Dr Cheng-I Wei, Dean, College of Agriculture and Natural Resources of the University.
On his return from the USA Syed Mahmud told the news agency that it was a tripartite cooperation agreement between the government, private entrepreneurs and the academics to enhance both the quality and the quantity of country's shrimp productions.
Mahmud said three aspects like food safety, environmental sustainability and social responsibility which were the pressing demands from the shrimp importers would be mitigated under this cooperation deal.
He said as shrimp was a very labour intensive product, Bangladesh was the best country in the world to supply shrimp to the buyers. 'If we can maintain its food quality, no other country could compete with us in this vitally important export trades,' he added.
Mamud said the present agreement would provide for, among others, joint research and training activities, exchange of scholars and experts for seminars, conferences and research activities.
Under the agreement, Joint Institute for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, a joint initiative of US Food and Drug Administration and University of Maryland and Bangladesh Shrimp and Fish Foundation have already initiated a Training of Trainers Programme for eventual implementation of 'Good Aquaculture Practices' throughout Bangladesh to ensure food safety, environmental sustainability and social responsibility both in terms of human and labour rights.
Besides, both JIFSAN and BSFF have reached an understanding to set up a JIFSAN-BSFF Aquaculture and Aquatic Food Safety Centre as an affiliate of Fishery Products Business Promotion Council under Public Private Partnership.
This would work as a network of training institutes in the region with a goal to build capacity of both foreign regulators and manufacturers in the use of international best practices in food safety management to better assure the safety of the food supply chain in the region.
In Bangladesh, fisheries constitute the second most important source of foreign exchange where shrimp alone earned $445.41 million in 2007-2008. It made 3.15 per cent contribution to national export and over 45 per cent contribution to total export from all agro-based primary commodities.
By 2015, the shrimp and prawn will be expected to make up 1,64,000 tonnes as against the estimated current production of 90,000 tonnes. The fisheries road map projects export earning of $1.1 billion from the shrimp and prawn and $0.1 billion from the fish by 2015.
At the present moment the USA is the single largest importer of shrimp from Bangladesh while all other EU countries are the major buyers of the aqua-products.
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WORLD NEWS
DEVELOPING STORY
US, Japan farm chiefs to meet over beef row
The US agriculture secretary heads to Japan this week in a renewed attempt to settle a long-running beef trade dispute that has created friction between the close allies.
Japan, once the biggest buyer of US beef, stopped the imports after mad cow disease was detected in an American herd in late 2003 and has only resumed limited imports since then.
US farm state senators have fumed that the restrictions are 'scientifically unfounded', with no new cases of the brain-wasting cattle disease bovine spongiform encephalopathy detected for years.
During the recent controversy about Toyota's faulty gas pedal systems, Republican senator Mike Johanns from Nebraska charged that, by the same logic, the United States could halt all Japanese car imports.
He wondered aloud 'what the response would be in Japan if I suggested... that until the Japanese government can assure us that all of the defects are out of these vehicles, we're just not going to accept any vehicles from Japan.'
Still, the Japanese government has stayed firm.
'Basically, I have no plan to change the position that Japan has taken so far,' agriculture minister Hirotaka Akamatsu said last week. 'We will stand by the scientific findings.'
US agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack, who will meet Akamatsu on Thursday, has said he intends to press Japan to lift the curbs but also said he had 'no illusions about how easy this is going to be.'
Years ago the ban nearly grew into a full-blown trade war, when US farm-state senators pressed for sanctions unless Tokyo opened up its markets by the end of 2005.
The following year Japan agreed to resume limited US imports from cattle under 20 months, except for high-risk parts such as brains and spine bones.
Vilsack is expected to now push for the restrictions to be softened to include cattle up to 30 months old.
Japan's US beef imports now stand at only around 10 per cent of their former peak, and Japan has periodically frozen imports by companies whenever it found banned cattle parts in shipments.
In the past four years, Japan suspended shipment from 13 US meat packers, taking up to several months to allow them to resume business. One of them still remains restricted, a Japanese farm ministry official said.
Akamatsu said last week he would repeat Japan's position that the US side must first make sure that breaches of the import rules stop.
On the Japanese side, too, many want US imports to increase again, among them fast-food beef bowl chain Yoshinoya Holdings, which once relied heavily on American beef shipments.
After the import ban, it had to take beef bowls off the menu for more than two years, instead offering pork and fish versions.
Yoshinoya spokesman Yasunori Yoshimura told the AFP: 'We really hope good quality beef will be supplied sustainably for a reasonable price. We hope US beef imports will be normalized.'
Japan and the United States have often clashed over trade issues.
Kazuhito Yamashita, a scholar at Tokyo-based Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry, warned the beef issue may further harm ties between Washington and the new centre-left government in Tokyo.
Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s has already irked Americans by vowing to build more 'equal' relations with the superpower and reviewing a 2006 agreement on the relocation of a US airbase.
Yamashita said that although the risk of falling ill from eating US beef is now 'close to zero', the public is not convinced yet.
'If Japan lifts the US beef ban, it may trigger a serious uproar from Japan's general public,' he said.
'This is a matter of food safety, which is a more complex issue than a trade tariff negotiation,' Yamashita said. 'As long as Japanese consumers reject US beef, Hatoyama's government cannot lift the ban.'
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INDIA
Geithner eyes US investment on India visit
Timothy Geithner will begin his maiden visit to India as US treasury secretary on Tuesday, hoping to improve an economic relationship that is often eclipsed by Washington's trade with China.
Geithner will begin his two-day trip in Delhi - a city where he lived while his father was working for the Ford Foundation - holding meetings with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and finance minister Pranob Mukherjee.
The 48-year-old, who is an Asia expert and speaks fluent Mandarin, hopes to focus talks on global economic management, financial investment and building infrastructure, a senior treasury official said ahead of the visit.
'India is an emerging global power and one with which the United States has an increasingly vital economic and financial relationship,' the treasury official said.
After years of lingering Cold War tensions, unease about Washington's close ties with Pakistan and Washington's displeasure at India's acquisition of a nuclear bomb, relations are blooming.
In mid-March the two countries signed a framework for cooperation on trade and investment in Washington, which US Trade Representative Ron Kirk said would tap the 'almost limitless potential for growth in trade between our two countries.'
But ties between the world's first and fourth largest economies - and two of the world's largest democracies - are still overshadowed by the vast trade between China and the United States.
'This trip is significant just for the fact that it is happening,' according to Arvind Subramanian of the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
'First and foremost, this trip is about symbolism, aimed at establishing a parallelism with the US-China relationship,' he wrote in a recent commentary.
Trade between India and the United States has roughly doubled in the last five years, as India has become one of the world's foremost emerging markets.
But that relationship, for years focused on trade and outsourcing, is increasingly focused on investment.
Bilateral foreign direct investment was worth around $21 billion in 2008, according to the treasury, still a pittance compared with flows between the United States and Europe, or China.
To boost ties, Geithner is set to press India to open its highly regulated markets to US investment, in part by launching a US-India financial partnership.
The project would spur regular cabinet-level US-India meetings, in line with a similar program between the United States and China.
Washington argues that more open Indian markets would afford India easier and cheaper access to capital that could help finance the country's massive infrastructure needs.
It is a case Geithner is also likely to make when he visits Mumbai, India's business and financial capital, where he will meet leaders of US firms present in India, as well as top Indian CEOs.
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SOUTH KOREA
Peace breaks out on S Korean factory floors
Eight months ago, Ssangyong Motor's car plant looked like a war zone as unionists occupying the premises battled riot police with catapults, firebombs and steel pipes.
Today the mood is altogether more co-operative, and both sides are seeing the benefit.
The 77-day occupation, in protest at mass redundancies designed to save the loss-making carmaker, ended only with a police raid featuring commandos rappelling from a helicopter in a hail of missiles.
More than 100 people were hurt, dozens were arrested, the redundancies went ahead and the firm's financial troubles deepened with the lost production.
'There was no winner: neither management nor labour could get what they wanted,' said Ssangyong Motor union leader Kim Kyu-Han, a moderate elected in the wake of the strike.
Workers at the country's smallest automaker also cut ties with the militant Korean Confederation of Trade Unions - part of a trend in South Korea's labour movement, which was once known for its militancy.
Some members of the KCTU and its less hard-line rival the Federation of Korean Trade Unions announced in March they had quit the umbrella groups to launch a 'third way' union alliance.
Labour Solidarity for New Hope has recruited 52 unions with 120,000 workers in less than a month. The FKTU and the KCTU have 8,00,000 and 6,50,000 members respectively, government data shows.
The unions of Hyundai Heavy Industries, the world's largest shipbuilder; subway operator Seoul Metro; and KT, the top communications firm, are leading the new alliance.
They see the established umbrella groups as too violent, too politically biased or too bureaucratic.
'The era of unions resolving problems by force has gone,' Seoul Metro union leader Chung Yeon-Soo, a KCTU founder and now co-chairman of the new grouping, told the AFP.
'The paradigm of the labour movement - based on the 19th century industrial structure - no longer fits the business environment in the 21st century.'
Radicalism has its roots in the 1970s and 80s, when unions led the pro-democracy movement against military-backed dictatorship.
Attitudes began to change during the 1997-98 financial crises, which triggered tens of thousands of redundancies in a country which once prized lifetime employment guaranteed by strict labour laws.
Kim Jeong-Han, of the Korea Labour Institute, a research body, attributed militancy partly to a poor social welfare network and a still-inflexible job market.
'In South Korea many workers still think that if they get laid off, they will be unable to find other jobs. That's why they become desperate and often radical.'
But Kim said more and more unionists realize working conditions cannot improve just through a strike.
At the Ssangyong plant in Pyeongtaek, 70 kilometres (40 miles) south of Seoul, union chief Kim said the mood has changed.
'Many KCTU unionists called me a traitor and some still do, but I don't care,' the 41-year-old said.
A framed photo of him and other union leaders staging a sit-in at the plant in 2006 hangs on his office wall. 'I put it up on the wall a month ago so as not to repeat the same mistake,' Kim said.
Underneath is a blanket, pillow and sleeping mat in case he has to work late and sleep in his office.
'I used to sleep out for a strike. I sleep here these days to spend more time cooperating with management to pull the company out of this crisis,' he said.
Kim said executives often pay him unscheduled late-night visits to discuss business problems - unimaginable in the past - and even bring pizza.
Productivity has risen sharply. The average manufacturing time for each vehicle fell from 87.9 hours before the strike to 48.7 hours afterwards, said company spokesman Choi Jin-Woung.
'Workers are all desperate to help save the company from the crisis,' said Oh Tae-Soo, 42, as he worked on the assembly line turning out Kyron sports utility vehicles.
Ssangyong Motor ended up lying off over one third of its total 5,000 staff. 'The job cuts could have been smaller than that if we had avoided the loss-making strike last year,' said Kim Choon-Sik, a deputy manager.
After the bitter dispute ended, labour and management at Ssangyong announced a policy of no industrial disputes. In March they rallied together from the factory to Seoul to seek financial aid.
'If our salaries could rise with a general strike, we would walk out. If we could improve working conditions by jabbing our arms in the air at a union rally, we would do so,' said union leader Kim. 'But it's not true.'
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IRAN
Iran annual inflation down by more than half
Iran's year to March 2010 inflation fell to 10.8 per cent, down by more than half from the previous year, the official IRNA news agency reported quoting the central bank.
IRNA said inflation in the previous year to March 2009 was 24.5 per cent.
Inflation in the Islamic republic, OPEC's second biggest oil exporter, has been its greatest economic challenge and had peaked in September 2008 to 29 per cent.
Iranian economists blame President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for stoking inflation with his expansionary policies during his first four-year term.
They accuse Ahmadinejad, who was re-elected in June 2009, of directly fuelling price rises by ploughing huge amounts of cash into the economy for local infrastructure projects and by offering low-interest loans.
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WORLD ECONOMY
Commodities rally on manufacturing data
Most commodities rallied this week, lifted by buoyant manufacturing data in China and the eurozone and in volatile trade with many markets winding down for the long Easter weekend.
The price of New York crude oil soared above $85 per barrel, hitting a 17-month peak on a wave of positive investor sentiment about the global economic outlook.
'Sentiment across the whole commodity complex is very upbeat, with very good eurozone manufacturing PMIs today (Thursday) and exceptionally strong Chinese PMIs,' said VTB Capital analyst Andrey Kryuchenkov.
He added that the oil had jumped higher 'in very thin (trading) volumes' ahead of the holiday weekend and was aided by the weak greenback, which tends to lift demand for dollar-priced goods. Crude prices hurtled to 17-month high points, nearing October 2008 peaks.
'Prices have started the second quarter with a bang, with both New York crude and Brent currently trading at their highest for the year, and in fact, their highest levels since October 2008,' said Barclays Capital analysts.
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ECB to hold first meeting since EU Greece showdown
European Central Bank governors meet this week to set monetary policy for the first time since EU leaders agreed to accept potential IMF help for Greece, despite strong objections by the ECB.
An International Monetary Fund operation within the eurozone could be taken as a sign the monetary union cannot sort out its own problems, but might be necessary if Athens cannot get money at reasonable rates on financial markets.
ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet said on March 25 that if the IMF or any other body assumed responsibilities of eurozone central banks or governments, 'it's obviously very, very bad.'
He sought later to temper his remarks, and will likely be pressed to clarify his position at a press conference after the bank announces its latest interest rate decision on Thursday.
The ECB governing council will undoubtedly leave the main interest rate at a record low of 1.0 per cent, a level hit almost a year ago, as concern over the Greek crisis and high unemployment offset strong industrial output data and a surprise spike in inflation.
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ASEAN ECONOMIC INTEGRATION
Bumpy road ahead for ASEAN economic integration
Flaws in ASEAN's economic integration plans are being exposed as some members struggle to adapt to a massive free-trade deal with China, and the US and EU opt to pursue pacts with individual states.
Grand plans for the establishment of an ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) by 2015 are likely to be a key topic when leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations hold their annual summit next week in Vietnam's capital Hanoi.
But wide development gaps within the region, entrenched domestic interests and the perennial distraction of Myanmar's failure to embrace democracy continue to weigh down the group's activities and global ties, analysts say.
The integration concept goes beyond freeing up trade -- it also includes physical connectivity through better rail and air links and the unhampered movement of people and capital in the 10-member bloc.
But soon after a giant free-trade agreement (FTA) between ASEAN and China went into effect this year, the region's biggest member, Indonesia, under pressure from domestic industries, said it wanted some terms renegotiated.
The European Union had also ditched earlier plans to negotiate an FTA collectively with ASEAN, and instead launched separate talks with individual countries -- an option also favored by the United States.
Hank Lim, a senior research fellow with the Singapore Institute of International Affairs (SIIA), said the main reason the EU and the US do not want to negotiate a regional pact is the group's vastly differing levels of economic development.
'It is impossible to negotiate a high-quality FTA with the ASEAN 10 collectively,' Lim told AFP.
Alongside Indonesia and Vietnam, ASEAN's eclectic membership also includes Singapore, whose $35,000 per capita income and gleaming skyscrapers are a stark contrast to poverty-ridden Laos and largely agricultural Cambodia.
The group's other members are Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand -- making a collection of emerging democracies and monarchies, and a military dictatorship in the form of Myanmar.
Diplomatic sources also admit that negotiating individual trade deals will allow Western countries to avoid the awkwardness involved in doing deals with a group that has international pariah Myanmar in its ranks.
Former ASEAN secretary-general Rodolfo Severino said that tearing down tariff barriers on intra-ASEAN trade is on track, at least on paper.
But he said in an opinion piece published in Singapore's Straits Times newspaper last week that there are other things that need to be done for integration to be broad-based and effective.
These include the 'building of transportation and telecommunications infrastructure and the dismantling of the political, economic and technical obstacles to the efficient flow of goods, services, people and ideas across the region.'
He expressed hope that the leaders meeting in Vietnam 'will give impetus' to the integration process.
Ernest Bower, a Southeast Asia specialist with the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said ASEAN's target of establishing an economic community by 2015 is a 'stretch goal'.
'Indonesia's well documented anxieties over the impact of the China-ASEAN FTA expose the limitations of the regional approach to economic integration, namely entering into less well defined regional agreements that allow countries to opt in or out,' Bower told AFP.
'The legally binding approach of the US and Europe does ensure that countries go through a legal and governance process before entering agreements,' he said.
'If China doesn't manage the situation with Indonesia and other concerned ASEAN countries well, it could take on political baggage. The same risk exists for the US.'
Severino, who now heads the ASEAN Studies Centre at the Singapore-based Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, said integrating regional economies requires a mindset change across a broad range of sectors.
'This would entail a change in the outlooks of the governments, the business sector and the public at large -- from narrowly national to broadly regional,' he said.
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WORLD GROWTH FORECAST
IMF draft raises 2010 world growth forecast
The world economy could grow 4.1 per cent this year, 0.2 points more than previously forecast, the International Monetary Fund says in the latest draft of its World Economic Outlook, Italian news agency ANSA reported.
The US economy is now expected to grow 3.0 per cent this year, instead of the 2.7 per cent forecast in the IMF's January report, according to ANSA and Italian newspapers which published the draft figures on Sunday. The IMF is due to publish its next World Economic Outlook on April 21, business newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore said.
According to the draft, euro zone growth this year is now forecast to be 0.8 per cent, down 0.1 points from January's estimate. In 2011, the figure is seen at 1.5 per cent, also down 0.1 points, the reports said.
Europe 'is coming out of recession more slowly than other regions,' the draft said, because there are 'various forces which are putting a brake on recovery,' including Greece, Il Sole 24 Ore said in its report on Sunday.
Europe's biggest economy, Germany, is expected to report a 1.2 per cent rise in gross domestic product in 2010 and 1.7 per cent in 2011, the draft says according to the reports. Those figures are down 0.3 points and 0.2 points respectively from the January forecast.
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US-CHINA POLICY
US delays China yuan ruling ahead of Hu visit
US treasury secretary Timothy Geithner said on Saturday he was delaying an April 15 report on whether China manipulates its currency but pledged to press for a more flexible Chinese currency policy.
The decision follows Thursday's announcement in Beijing that Chinese president Hu Jintao will attend a nuclear security summit meeting in Washington April 12-13 and seems to be a move to keep tensions over currency in check.
The Obama administration seeks broad global support for measures to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions, making it an inconvenient time to risk inflaming the dispute over China's currency policy.
Analysts said it would have been a slap in the face to Beijing if Washington had labeled China a currency manipulator days after Hu's visit.
Geithner said he will use upcoming meetings of the Group of 20 and a US-China economic summit in Beijing in May to try to get China to budge.
'I believe these meetings are the best avenue for advancing US interests at this time,' Geithner said in a statement issued at midday on the Easter holiday weekend. Treasury gave no indication when it will actually release the report.
The US Business and Industry Council, a trade group, said the administration apparently would delay the release of the report until after the G20 summit meeting in June.
As a result, 'for three more months, more American factories will close or cut back production and more of their employees will lose their jobs' because unilateral US tariffs are needed to combat 'predatory trade practices.'
Early reaction from lawmakers, who have focused in recent weeks on China's currency policy as a primary contributor to huge US trade deficits, was negative.
Republican Senator Charles Grassley, ranking minority member on the Senate Finance Committee, said Treasury's move effectively belittles US influence because China's policy of pegging its yuan, or renminbi, to the dollar was blatantly manipulative and said Beijing should be called on it.
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EU DEBT PLAN
Stung by costly loans, Greece doubts EU debt plan
Greece fought for months to get EU help to tackle its mounting debt crisis but it has taken only days for fresh doubts to emerge on the deal and the country's ability to put its finances in order.
Greece finds it still has to pay a high and rising price to secure crucial funding on the international markets to roll over debt -- let alone pay it down so as to relieve the strains on the economy and the broader eurozone.
The March 18-19 accord with the European Union was supposed to convince the markets that Greece would not be allowed to fail and accordingly would be a better credit risk, deserving lower rates of interest on its debt.
As the interest rates or yields fell, Athens would have more money available to pay off its overall debt and reduce a budget deficit which last year was more than four times the EU limit.
Hugely unpopular spending cuts would also help improve the public finances.
If that was the plan, however, it has not worked so far.
'The biggest hurdle for the Greek government is to get its borrowing done at a decent yield (interest rate),' GFT analyst David Morrision told AFP.
'They (want) ... yields similar to Germany's, around three per cent, rather than the six per cent-plus the market is demanding,' Morrision added.
The 10-year Greek government bond on Thursday was yielding 6.529 per cent, up sharply from 6.333 per cent on Friday the previous week after Brussels announced the accord, which also provides for International Monetary Fund involvement.
The difference, or spread, between Greek and German 10-year bond yields has steadily widened, hitting 342 basis points on Thursday, up from 321 points on Monday.
'The high spreads reflect the insecurity caused to investors by our country's high debt and credibility deficit,' Greek finance minister George Papaconstantinou told the Imerisia financial daily on Thursday.
The minister insisted that 'the government's aim is to never to have to activate' the EU support mechanism, which analysts have deemed 'opaque' and sorely lacking in detail.
Talk of an IMF rescue -- which would be the first to involve a eurozone member -- could have actually impaired the country's efforts to drive down its borrowing costs, the Greek debt agency chief suggested.
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INDONESIA
China pledges $2b loan for Indonesia infrastructure
The Indonesian trade minister said Saturday that China agreed to lend $2 billion for investment in Indonesia's infrastructure.
Beijing will give Jakarta $1.8 billion worth of preferential export buyer's credits as well as a concessional loan of $263 million, said the minister, Mari Pangestu, after a meeting with China's minister of commerce Chen Deming.
She said Chinese premier Wen Jiabao would sign the agreement during a visit to Indonesia this month.
Indonesia plans to spend $140 billion in the next five years to improve its poor infrastructure and help it reach an economic growth target of seven per cent. The government has said it would aim to attract $90 billion of that total from private investors.
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PHILIPPINE
Philippine business icon quits over borrowed speech
One of the Philippines' most powerful men has quit an academic post after admitting that an address he delivered copied from speeches by Harry Potter author JK Rowling and US leader Barack Obama.
Manuel Pangilinan said he was sorely embarrassed over the March 27 speech and wanted to spare the academic community further criticism by resigning as chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Ateneo de Manila University.
Pangilinan is also the chairman of the country's leading carrier, the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co and its mobile phone unit Smart Communications.
He is one of the country's richest men and recently gained control of a television station to consolidate his media empire.
Forbes Magazine in 2008 ranked him 39th in its list of 40 richest Filipinos, with a net worth of $39 million.
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UPDATE..............................APRIL 4, 2010
BANGLADESH
NEWS
ADP IMPLEMENTATION
Communications ministry, power division lag behind
The communications ministry and the power division lagged behind among the leading Annual Development Programme implementing agencies in the first eight months of the current fiscal.
According to a monthly review of the planning ministry, the communications ministry could only spend 24 per cent of its allocated ADP funds between July 2009 and February 2010 while the power division utilized only 28 per cent of the allocated funds during the period.
These two ministries are among the top ten agencies responsible for spending 75 per cent of the ADP allocation worth Tk 30,500 crore.
Other agencies are the local government division, the health ministry, the ministry of primary and mass education, ministry of education, ministry of water resources, ministry of agriculture, the mineral resource division and the ministry of housing and public works.
Planning ministry officials said together the communications ministry and the power division were allocated 22 per cent of the ADP fund. The lower than expected implementation rate by the agenises slowed down the overall ADP progress, said the officials.
It calculated that only 39 per cent of ADP was implemented in the first eight months of the current fiscal.
The implementation rate of the local government division, the ministry of primary and mass education, the ministry of education, the ministry of agriculture and the energy and mineral resources division is over 50 per cent.
The ministry officials observed that it would be a difficult task for the leading ministries to spend the allocated funds for the ADP which has prompted the government to cut the size of ADP by Tk 2,000 crore to Tk 28,500 crore.
The country had no record of implementing ADP worth more than Tk 20,000 crore because of lack of skill on the part of the implementing agencies, tough conditions by the lenders in releasing funds and lengthy procedure of procurement.
Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies director general MK Mujeri observed that lacklustre ADP implementation status in last several years become a major worry for the successive governments as many things, especially private investment, depended heavily on the annual public investment.
The idle money worth about Tk 34,000 remained stuck in the vaults of the local commercial banks as of the last month, he said, adding that private investors would not feel encouraged to go for new investments unless the government increases spending on purchase of goods and services.
Former caretaker government adviser Mirza Azizul Islam said a number of measures were taken in last several years to push up the ADP implementation rate, but those failed to bring about any major improvement.
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MARKET
Wholesale wheat price up
Reduced supply of wheat from the international market players has pushed up wheat price by at least Tk 50 per maund in the domestic wholesale market in the past one week or so, said market watchers.
As a result, the country’s wheat growers may benefit as the newly harvested wheat has already started to arrive in the market, they added.
The latest wholesale price of wheat, imported from Ukraine, was Tk 580 a maund (37.3 kilogram) in Narayanganj, a major hub for wheat trading, where dozens of flour mills are located.
‘Price began increasing a week ago as some importers either reduced supply or even stopped fresh procurement,’ said Zakir Hossain, a flour miller.
Dwelling on price rise, a wheat miller in Dhaka observed that the announcement of a good local procurement price for wheat by the government in the past week left an impact on the current market price.
Some 50,000 tonnes of wheat will be procured from the farmers at Tk 19.50 per kg, according to the decision.
While the country’s annual demand for wheat is more than 30 lakh tonnes, the domestic production of wheat is in the range of 10 lakh tonnes a year.
Private sector importers bring in wheat mainly from Ukraine, Australia and Canada to meet the demand.
Farmers were offered a price between Tk 15.50 and Tk 16 for a kilogram newly harvested wheat at Jaduranir Hut of Thakurgaon, a major wheat growing district, on Saturday.
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NEWS FLASH
Govt to import 50,000 tonnes of sunned rice
The government has taken an initiative to import 50,000 tonnes of sunned rice in the wake of its depleting stocks this season, said sources in the food ministry.
Many people in Chittagong, Sylhet and Chittagong Hill Tracts consume sunned rice including fine varieties of rice, although common Bangladeshis usually take boiled rice as the staple food.
The proposal from the food ministry to import 50,000 tonnes of sunned rice is scheduled to be discussed for endorsement in today’s meeting of the cabinet committee on purchase headed by the finance minister, AMA Muhith.
If the proposed is approved, this will be the last rice import about a month ahead of the harvesting of the Boro rice, said officials of the ministry.
‘Stocks of sunned rice are going to be depleted soon due to increase in the demand for this kind of rice in the country’s southeast and northeastern region,’ said a senior official of the food ministry.
According to unofficial estimate, about 10 lakh tonnes of sunned are traded in the local market every year while its actual demand is higher in view of consumption by rice growers themselves.
The government, in the annual food budget, decided to import 1 lakh tones of sunned rice this fiscal year.
‘As part of the year-long plan, the ministry will import 50,000 tonnes of sunned rice through international tenders,’ the food secretary, BD Mitra, told New Age on Saturday.
Singapore–based Indo-Sino Trade Pte Ltd is expected to supply 35,000 tonnes of sunned rice at a rate of $388.92 per tonne while Tanvir Enterprise may supply 15,000 tonnes of rice at a rate of $389.96 per tonne, according to the food ministry proposal.
The price of sunned rice has meantime declined to Tk 26 from Tk 28 a kilogram in the local market due to sufficient imports by the private sector from Pakistan and Myanmar.
The agriculture ministry hopes a bumper crop of Boro this season and there will be no need for imports of sunned rice after the harvesting, the food secretary added.
The government has currently 4.50 lakh tonnes of rice and 1.40 lakh tonnes wheat in its overall stocks whereas the stock was 9 lakh tonnes of food-grains a month ago
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Ocean-going ship handed over to Danish buyer
The country’s one of the leading shipbuilding companies, Ananda Shipyard and Slipways Ltd, on Saturday handed over an oceangoing ship ‘Stella Moon’ to Danish buyer Stella Shipping.
Ananda group chairman Abdullahel Bari handed over the 2,900 tonne capacity ship worth $7.5 million to Stella Shipping company representative captain Michael Sorensen at Chittagong port dry-dock, said a news release.
Shipping minister Shahjahan Khan was present in the handing over ceremony as chief guest.
Ananda managing director Afroza Bari said that the company had so far received orders worth 44.78 euros plus $316.64 for exporting 34 ships. The company exported seven ships.
Ananda Shipyard and Slipways Ltd is the first company in Bangladesh which received orders for export oriented oceangoing ships two years back, opening a new era in the country’s shipbuilding sector.
Shipping secretary Abdul Mannan Howlader, local member of parliament MA Latif,
Danish deputy ambassador Jan Moller Hansen and managing director of Chittagong dry-dock Ltd Enamul Baqui were present in function.
Shahjahan Khan said the company had set a milestone in the country’s ship export sector, exporting its first oceangoing ship ‘Stella Maris’ to the same company on May 15, 2008.
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BB road show ends
The eight-day caravan ‘Journey of Developments: Road Show Teknaf to Tentulia’ ended at the country’s northernmost point of Tentulia in Panchagarh with enthusiasm and festivity on Friday night.
The Bangladesh Bank organised the event from Teknaf and it concluded at Tentulia after the caravan travelled through Chittagong, Feni, Comilla, Tangail, Sirajganj, Bogra, Rangpur, Dinajpur, Thakurgaon and Panchagarh.
Huge numbers of stalls were set up at all venues in the banking fairs organised on the occasion by the local lead banks where the officials and executives of the banks concerned delivered elaborate information to all about their services.
Hundreds of officials and employees of the public and private financial organizations working in Panchagarh greeted the Bangladesh Bank caravan comprising executives of 48 banks when it reached at Tentulia Pilot High School ground Friday evening.
After a huge rally at Panchagarh district town last afternoon, the grand concluding ceremony was arranged on Tentulia Pilot High School ground in the evening with BRAC Bank managing director and chief executive Abdul Muhaimen in the chair.
Member of the Parliament from Panchagarh-1 constituency M Mozaharul Haque Pradhan attended the Tentulia discussion meeting as chief guest.
BB deputy governor general Ziaul Hassan Siddique and SME Foundation managing director Redwanul Kabir were present as special guests.
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WORLD NEWS
SCI-TECH
Japan teddy bear robot comforts elderly, snores
Japanese researchers have developed a cuddly teddy bear robot designed to comfort the elderly and delight children by reading facial expressions and actions and responding to them.
The fluffy invention by Fujitsu is still being worked on, but the electronics giant rolled out the as-yet-unnamed prototype for an early glimpse at an exhibition near Tokyo this week.
A camera in the nose of the bear can detect human faces and actions, such as waving of hands, while sensors inside its head and limbs can detect human touches and caresses. The bear can respond with more than 300 actions of its own, from giggling and laughing to waving its paws and taking a nap — and even snoring.
‘We want to offer an object that can become part of the family, nursing home or school and that can benefit humans,’ a Fujitsu researcher told the AFP during the sneak preview. ‘We really want it to look natural.’
Fujitsu ‘plans to test the robot in nursing homes so that it can entertain and soothe elderly people,’ said the researcher.
The teddy is not the first cuddly robot in Japan, where the high-tech baby seal Paro is already used in hospitals and nursing homes.
Paro coos and flaps its flippers to ease loneliness among the elderly and try to prevent depression and even dementia.
Japan has the world’s longest average life expectancy —79 years for men and 86 years for women and more than a fifth of the population is aged 65 or older. By 2050, figure is expected to rise to 40 per cent.
Fujitsu said it may also use its robot-bear in schools to aid children to communicate, gain self-confidence — or to help them wake up in the morning.
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BANGLADESH
NEWS IN FOCUS
BB imposes fee for non-MICAR cheques
Bangladesh Bank has imposed fee for processing non-magnetic ink character recognition cheques at its Dhaka clearing house.
A BB circular issued Thursday said all the banks should pay Tk 100 processing fee for every non-MICAR cheque at the clearing house of its headquarters.
Government cheques, payment instruments and foreign taka draft will get the fee waiver, the BB said.
The circular also re-fixed on April 30 the deadline for clearing such cheques at the Dhaka clearing house.
The circular said it would not process any old cheques at its headquarter from May 1, which earlier was fixed at April 1.
BB governor Atiur Rahman last week told BSS that they would allow processing of such cheques for another three months.
Executives of some private banks said that three months would be good enough to allow banks to be completely ready with the new cheques.
But, a central bank official said that the BB extended time limit for another 30 days to accelerate the automation process.
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Tk 800cr budget needed for tourism sector: GM Qader
Civil aviation and tourism minister GM Qader Saturday said his ministry would seek Tk 800 crore in the next budget for further development of the tourism sector.
Talking to the news agency, the minister said the government was working relentlessly for development of tourism as the Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina showed special interest about this sector.
Qader said next year would be observed as `tourism year’ projecting the attractive spots of the country to foreigners including Cox’s Bazar sea beach and the Sundarban mangrove forest.
Meanwhile, through the ministry of foreign affairs, he said, letters have been sent to Bangladesh missions abroad to take necessary measures to attract foreign tourists.
He said the government would provide all assistance to the private sector in developing tourism industry.
Allocation for the tourism sector in the current fiscal is only Tk 2 crore, a ministry source said, adding the sector can earn Tk 20,000 crore annually if it is developed across the country and Cox’s Bazar can be turned into a modern tourism spot.
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US ECONOMY
Jobs, profit hopes may drive US stock rally
Optimism about an improving labour market and corporate profits could propel US stocks higher next week as earnings season approaches.
Analysts expect trading at the week’s outset to be dictated by Friday’s non-farm payrolls report, which showed the economy added 162,000 jobs in March, the fastest pace of growth in three years. US markets were closed for the Good Friday holiday.
‘Things have been getting better. There’s no question about it. We’ve had a remarkable V-shaped recovery since last March,’ said Alan Valdes, director of floor operations for Kabrik Trading in New York.
The market could have momentum on its side as investors turn their attention to what is expected to be a strong earnings season.
The broad Standard & Poor’s 500 achieved its fourth consecutive quarterly gain this week and scored its best monthly rise since last July. For the first quarter, the S&P 500 climbed 4.9 per cent. For March alone, it gained 5.9 per cent. On Thursday, the S&P ended at 1,178.10 — an 18-month high. For the short holiday week, it was up 1 per cent.
The Dow, meanwhile, has its sights set on the psychologically important 11,000 level, which could be taken out Monday if there is enough enthusiasm over the jobs report.
The payrolls data will lend support to markets, as US stock futures rallied on Friday in the wake of the release.
Private hiring was stronger than anticipated, bolstering the view the economy is starting to find its footing and, as a result, needs less government support.
However, with the S&P 500 stock index up 74 per cent from the March 2009 closing low, some worry the rally will be interrupted if the economy does not maintain its strength.
‘The road to a self-sustaining economic recovery, which is the thesis of the bullish cabal, is going to be tested,’ said Doug Kass, president of Seabreeze Partners Management, in Palm Beach, Florida.
As well as the payrolls report, investors will take in minutes from the Fed’s rate-setting meeting in March, and a round of data that includes February pending home sales and an ISM survey on the US services sector for March.
Analysts expect first-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies to rise 36.3 per cent, according to Thomson Reuter’s data. That’s slightly less than the 37.2 per cent growth that was expected in January and well off the 51.2 per cent that was anticipated in October.
While expectations have come down somewhat, analysts’ estimates could be closer to the mark than in recent quarters, said Scott Wren, senior equity strategist at Wells Fargo Advisors in St. Louis.
‘Coming into 2009, estimates were off by $20 or $30. I think people have a better, more realistic feel for what earnings are going to be now,’ Wren said.
Investors will be keen for corporate guidance heading into the earnings season, which kicks off with Alcoa Inc on April 12 — a week from Monday.
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Biggest job gain in 3 yrs pushes up interest rates
The biggest increase in jobs in three years pushed interest rates to their highest level since before the worst days of the credit crisis in 2008.
With the stock market closed for Good Friday, investors had a shortened day of trading in the bond market to react to the Labour Department’s report that employers added the most jobs in March since before the recession began in December 2007.
Treasury prices fell after the report, sending their yields higher. Bond prices tend to fall as investors’ confidence grows and demand for safe-haven investments wanes.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 3.94 per cent from 3.87 per cent late Thursday, its highest level since last June and the latest sign of confidence that the US economy is recovering.
The yield on the 10-year note is tied to many kinds of consumer loans. The increase could raise borrowing costs for mortgages and other debt.
Chik Quintans, a certified mortgage planner at Atlas Mortgage Inc. in Lynnwood, Wash., said rates have gone up following the jobs report. The rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage Friday was 5.125 per cent, up from 4.875 late Thursday. Less than two weeks ago, the rate was about 4.75 per cent.
Barclays Capital Research called the increase in hiring by private employers ‘solid.’ Other analysts also said the numbers were encouraging, pointing to a higher open when stock trading resumes Monday.
‘The bond market seems to have taken it as a very positive number,’ said Andrew Neale, head of portfolio management at Fogel Neale Partners in New York.
It was an unusual day for investors, with the biggest economic news of the month coming out on a holiday for stock markets in US and Europe.
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US refineries have bad safety record: study
US oil refineries have an ongoing problem with accidents that turn deadly, losing four times as much from such incidents than refineries in the rest of the world, according to an insurance company report obtained Friday by The Associated Press.
The problem is highlighted by a deadly string of explosions, including one that killed four people Friday at a Tesoro Corp refinery in Washington State, federal officials said.
The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration got so worried that in 2007 it started a major push for safety inspection in refineries and found more than 1,000 workplace violations in the industry.
‘If the aviation industry were having the same number of significant serious accidents as the refinery industry was having you probably wouldn’t see people flying too much,’ Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board chairman John Bresland told The Associated Press Friday.
The internal insurance report, given to federal safety regulators two years ago but never publicized, was all too familiar to Bresland’s agency, which said Friday’s deadly explosion revives concerns there’s something terribly wrong with the industry.
The board, which makes nonbinding recommendations, oversees investigations on accidents in 150 refineries in the United States and tens of thousands of chemical plants. But about half of the outstanding investigations are of accidents at refineries, officials said.
The cause of Friday’s blast at the Tesoro refinery in Anacortes, about 70 miles north of Seattle on Puget Sound, was under investigation. The blaze started during maintenance work on a unit that processes highly flammable liquid derived during the refining process, the company said.
Six investigators with the chemical safety board were dispatched to the scene. Tesoro, based in San Antonio, was fined $85,700 last April for 17 serious safety and health violations at the plant.
In November, the state reached a settlement with Tesoro, requiring in part that the company correct the hazards and hire a third-party consultant to do a safety audit. The settlement reduced the total penalty to $12,250 and lowered the number of violations to three.
Jeff Haffner, associate general counsel for Tesoro, said the company is investigating the blast and has been working to correct the problems found.
It was the largest fatal refinery accident since a 2005 explosion at a BP American refinery in Texas killed 15 people and injured another 170.
Officials at the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association said their industry is not only safe, it has a better safety record than the US manufacturing sector as a whole.
The industry is ‘one of the leaders’ in safety, said Charlie Drevna, the association’s president and actually has a lower rate of injuries per workers than the manufacturing industry as a whole.
Officials from the chemical safety board and OSHA said that comparison missed the point because it is based on routine slips and falls and not the big accidents from poor safety processes that lead to deaths.
That Texas refinery had a low injury rate, but people were killed ‘because they didn’t properly maintain their equipment,’ said David Michaels, OSHA chief and deputy assistant secretary of labour.
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CHINA
TECH
China’s iPad look-alike brace for real thing
Apple’s iPad has won rave early reviews but its US launch on Saturday is not welcome news for the Chinese maker of a similar-looking device that has already been on sale for nearly eight months.
Wu Xiaolong, the general manager of Shenzhen Great Loong Brother Industrial Co, said the company had already lost a major order for its iPad-like touchscreen ‘P88’, which was launched in August, months before Apple’s product.
‘Our products are more expensive than theirs. There had been a Canadian university planning to buy our tablet PCs for their students, but they cancelled the order to shift to the iPad,’ Wu told the AFP.
The company made headlines in January when it suggested Apple’s iPad looked like a copy of the P88, which was on show last year at the Internationale Funkausstellung consumer electronics fair in Berlin.
Wu declined to give sales figures for the P88, which sells for about $569 — compared to the iPad’s $499 entry-level price — but said the company in southern China was producing 3,000 units a day.
‘We sold to a number of overseas markets in Europe and North America, including Germany, the UK, France and Canada. We also have distributors in many provinces in China, including Shanghai,’ he said.
However, there was no sign of the P88 or other iPad clones at the four-floor CyberMart in downtown Shanghai on Friday, although plenty of cloned iPods and other products were on display.
Shanzai.com, which tracks China’s electronics industry, said dozens of iPad clones have been ‘available on the streets of Shenzhen for months’.
Apple has yet to announce a launch date for the iPad in China, but Huang Ting, who operates one of CyberMart’s more than 100 stalls, said confidently that she expected to be selling the devices around April 10.
‘We have to send someone to line up and buy them in the US and then bring them back to China. The 16GB iPad will sell for around 5,000 yuan ($730),’ she said from behind a counter showcasing row of iPhones and iPods.
Eager customers were paying a 500-yuan deposit, she said.
‘We already have quite a few bookings,’ Huang said.
China’s grey market for Apple products developed to meet demand from consumers eager to get their hands on iPhones, which officially only went on sale in China in October — more than two years after it was launched in the US.
In the meantime, 1.5 million smuggled iPhones flooded into the world’s biggest mobile market before Apple reached an agreement with a Chinese network operator.
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FRANCE
French halal market booms despite political unease
Halal foie gras, non-alcoholic champagne, sauerkaut garnished with pork-free sausages: Muslim-friendly food is moving away from its immigrant roots and merging with mainstream French tradition.
While the fine wine and gourmet food exports that underpin the French food industry have been hit hard by the global crisis, the halal niche market has been growing fast.
The boom went largely unnoticed until a hamburger chain tried a halal menu in some of its restaurants, sparking charges of ‘communautarisme’—a term roughly meaning ‘ghettoization’, which grates against the French insistence on integration.
The growth of halal products is largely thanks to young descendants of Arab and African migrants, who want to enjoy the same culinary diversity as their non-Muslim French neighbors while remaining true to their cultural roots.
‘It’s mostly driven by the second and third generations,’ said Antoine Bonnel, director of the Paris Halal trade show held this week.
‘It’s not a case of the Muslim community withdrawing into itself, but rather one of integration, since they want to be able to buy halal sauerkraut or spring rolls,’ he said.
Bonnel was referring to the increasing number of Muslims joining the French middle classes and expanding their culinary horizons, a trend that has even spawned a new term — ‘beurgeois’, a slightly ironic mix of ‘bourgeois’, or middle class, and ‘beur’, slang for North African.
French sales of halal food are forecast to hit 5.5 billion euros ($7.42b) in 2010 and move ‘from the ethnic market to the mass market’, said Bonnel.
The word halal — meaning ‘lawful’ in Arabic — applies to food that has been prepared according to the prescriptions of the Koran.
Islamic law requires meat to be slaughtered under religious supervision and forbids the consumption of pork and alcohol.
The halal market, targeting France’s estimated five-million-strong Muslim population, has obvious attractions for retailers and restaurateurs, and market researchers say it is growing rapidly.
There are kosher products, so why not halal?
Supermarket chain Casino has created a halal brand, Wassila, and fast food chain Quick is trying out a halal menu in eight of its 350 burger joints.
But the increased presence of halal in French life has raised some hackles in this staunchly secular country.
Several politicians from both right and left have complained that providing halal options will divide French society rather than help welcome Muslims into the culinary mainstream.
Quick’s introduction of halal options in some areas with Muslim populations was attacked by a mayor from the opposition Socialist party, who threatened legal action, and by members of president Nicolas Sarkozy’s own ruling right-wing UMP party.
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SCI-TECH
iPad seekers queue for first shot at new Apple gadget
Gadget-seekers determined to be among the first to get their hands on an iPad began queuing outside Apple’s flagship shop in Manhattan a day ahead of the tablet computer’s Saturday debut.
About 15 aspiring iPad owners heartened by sunshine and spring temperatures had taken up positions outside the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue by 4:00pm (2000GMT)
Friday to wait for sales to commence at 9:00 the following morning (1300GMT).
Eleven-year-old Giovanna Mullen said she staked out her place outside the store at 5:00am Friday with her mother Jeanney Mullen and her grandmother Tony Digiorno.
The girl proudly described herself as the owner of an iPod Touch and said her mother has an iPod and a Macintosh computer, both iconic creations of California-based Apple.
‘We brought food, blankets...so, the three generations will say they slept together in the streets of New York,’ Digiorno said.
Like others in the queue, the trio had not pre-ordered iPads so resorted to hours of waiting to get the gadgets.
‘I am buying two, for me and for my daughter,’ said Jeanney Mullen, who noted she works in digital publishing and is intrigued by the iPad.
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JAPAN FOREIGN EXCHANGE POLICY
Japan asks China for right yuan decision
Japan’s finance minister on Saturday asked China to make an ‘appropriate decision’ on its foreign exchange policy but stopped short of telling it what to do.
Naoto Kan made the remarks at a news conference after meeting with premier Wen Jiabao as part of weekend talks in Beijing with top officials.
‘I told Wen that I believe China’s stable foreign exchange rate policy has helped ease the recent financial turmoil, and asked him to continue to make an appropriate decision’ on the currency problem, Kan said, according to Dow Jones Newswires.
But ‘I didn’t say anything on what China should do or shouldn’t do’ about the yuan, he said.
International disquiet has grown over the yuan, which critics say is undervalued by as much as 40 per cent against the dollar, giving Chinese exporters an unfair advantage.
Washington has led the charge in ramping up the pressure on Beijing to let the yuan appreciate. It has been effectively pegged at about 6.8 to the US dollar since mid-2008.
US lawmakers are pushing treasury secretary Timothy Geithner to label Beijing a ‘currency manipulator’ in a report due April 15.
Currently the yuan may rise or fall 0.5 per cent against the dollar each day from a mid-point set by the China’s central bank and three per cent for non-dollar currencies such as the euro and Japanese yen.
However Chinese media reports this week said the government is reviewing proposals to adjust its currency exchange rate system this month, including giving the yuan more flexibility.
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COMMENTARY
US starting to ‘turn the corner’ on jobs: Obama
President Barack Obama hailed new signs of an improving US labour market on Friday as proof that ‘we are beginning to turn the corner’ but warned it would still take time to achieve sustained job growth.
Seeking to maintain momentum after lawmakers approved his cornerstone healthcare overhaul, Obama shifted focus to tackling high unemployment, a problem threatening to damage his Democratic Party’s prospects in November’s pivotal congressional elections.
Obama spoke after a closely watched government employment report showed that non-farm payrolls grew in March, adding 162,000 jobs, and the strongest signal yet that the economic recovery is moving onto a more solid footing.
‘Today is an encouraging day. We learned that the economy actually produced a substantial number of jobs instead of losing a substantial number of jobs. We are beginning to turn the corner,’ Obama told workers at a battery components plant in North Carolina, a key battleground state he won in the 2008 presidential election.
While welcoming the latest report as the best jobs news in more than two years, he cautioned that there was more work to be done to boost employment, his top domestic priority.
‘It’s not quick and it’s not easy,’ he said. ‘It’s important to emphasize while we’ve come a long way, we’ve still got a long way to go.’
The labour market has lagged the overall recovery from the worst recession since the 1930s, creating a political challenge for Obama. Unemployment last month remained stuck at 9.7 per cent.
But Obama said, ‘The worst of the storm is over and brighter days are still ahead.’
He also used his North Carolina visit to promote healthcare reform, mindful of polls showing many Americans are skeptical
of the sweeping plan after he pushed it through
over fierce Republican opposition.
With the healthcare overhaul largely behind him, Obama is pushing legislative measures to overhaul financial regulation in addition to focusing on job creation. He said he expected results in financial regulations reform soon.
‘We’re starting to see a framework emerge both in the House of Representatives and in the Senate where my hope ... is that we can actually get this done sometime in the next several weeks,’ he said.
With voters nervous over record federal spending, Democrats are advancing job-creation efforts in a series of small steps to avoid the sticker shock of last year’s $787 billion stimulus package.
Obama last month signed into law a bill that includes a $13 billion payroll tax cut for businesses that hire unemployed workers and $19.5 billion for highway-repair programs — a package that liberal Democrats said was disappointingly small.
Other measures pending in Congress would expand subsidies for state and local construction bonds, extend jobless benefits through the end of the year, and help states pay the salaries of teachers and other public employees.
But these measures have been delayed by differences between the House and the Senate, where Republicans have greater power to block legislation.
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STEALING TRADE SECRET
Two jailed Chinese Rio Tinto staff to appeal
Two Chinese Rio Tinto employees jailed for stealing trade secrets and pocketing millions in bribes have decided to appeal, their lawyers said Saturday.
Wang Yong and Liu Caikui will appeal against their jail terms of 14 and seven years respectively, their lawyers told AFP.
The other Chinese employee Ge Minqiang had not yet decided if he would challenge his sentence of eight years, his lawyer told the AFP.
The lawyer representing Australian citizen Stern Hu, who was jailed for 10 years, declined to comment when contacted by AFP.
Liu lodged his appeal on Friday while Wang will meet with his lawyer Monday morning to discuss his decision to appeal, the lawyers said.
Hu and the three Chinese staff were convicted of taking more than $13 million in kickbacks from Chinese steel firms during tense 2009 iron ore talks.
The sentences handed down Monday in Shanghai provoked protests from Australia, which said the prison term for Hu was ‘very tough’ and ‘harsh’.
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