Ike: Asian news highlights
SINGAPORE: Markets generally higher, shrug off G7; Politics set tone for Asian bourses. Tokyo stocks were driven higher on Monday by tie-up talks between Japan's second largest carmaker Nissan and Germany's Daimler-Benz but holiday-hit Asian markets were mostly little moved. Hong Kong's Hang Seng was up slightly in thin trade but Seoul stocks hit a new intra-year low on fears of labour unrest and a ratings cut by Moody's. A weekend meeting by finance ministers of the G-7 nations had little impact but markets throughout the region were helped by a 78-point rise on Wall Street on Friday.
MANAMA: Arabs need $200b to boost energy sector; Saudis see oil market on the mend: Gulf Arab states will need to invest about $200bn in their energy sectors over the next decade to meet an expected increase in demand for oil and other energy resources. Al-Bahar, GM of Kuwait Insurance Co., who is to speak at a three-day marine and energy insurance seminar in Bahrain, forecast demand for oil from the Opec was likely to rise to 35 million bpd by 2005 from 27 million bpd.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia believes oil markets are on the mend with supply and demand back in balance after oil producers started reducing supplies.
PARIS: IEA (International Energy Agency) Study: Gloom lifting from oil market: Oil markets sent conflicting signals to the oil market Monday as the IEA said the gloom seems to be lifting, but the influential MEES said OPEC producers had not fulfilled their pledge to cut output by more than 4%.
IEA on Monday revised upwards its forecast for 1998 world oil demand to 75.1 million bpd from 75.0 million a month ago. It said "cautiously upbeat sentiment" in the oil futures markets "is countering some of the concerns about oversupply in the physical market."
KIEV: Low oil prices will leave Russia with more than $1.5 billion shortfall in budget revenues, First Deputy Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said on Sunday.
TOKYO: Japan pledges new drive to strengthen financial system - NEC a rare optimist over LCD screens: After months of mounting demands for Tokyo to pull the world's second largest economy from its slide into recession, Japan appears to have won cautious approval for its efforts. G-7 finance ministers "welcomed" a record 16.6 trillion yen spending package unveiled last month. The stimulus plan was the largest in a series of measures, worth in total more than 80 trillion yen, put forward by the Japanese government since the collapse of the speculative bubble economy in the late 1980s.
Meanwhile Japan's NEC Corp. stands apart as a rare optimist in the troubled market for liquid crystal display screen at a time when many producers fear an imminent and painful price collapse. The world's second largest producer of semiconductors behind Intel Corp., is making a hard push to sew up the market for large LCD monitors for desk-top computers. Senior officials say LCD monitors will start to outsell the conventional and now much cheaper cathode ray tube screens in the Japanese business market. But NEC's heavy investment in the screens, 25 billion yen ($190m) in the past year to March alone, runs against warnings that the LCD market may follow the collapse in value of memory chips, crunching profit margins.
BANGKOK: Social activists and businessmen on Monday called on Thais to demonstrate against the IMF and join a "patriotic" campaign to keep companies earmarked for privatisation in Thai hands.
PARIS: IMF managing director Michael Camdessus said on Monday that a debt deal with Indonesia was possible at a May 26 meeting in Frankfurt with creditor banks. Indonesia and its creditor banks held three days of talks which ended on Sunday without an agreement on the most thorny issue of resolving the debt held by companies.
SEOUL: Only `tears, sweat' can rescue Seoul economy; Kim hints at restructuring: South Korea's President Kim Dae-Jung said S. Korea could see its economy recovering next year if "bone-carving" restructuring efforts were made this year. He also called for an end to union militancy.
Meanwhile, S. Korean conglomerate chiefs challenged the government's labour policy Monday, warning union militancy would cause an economic catastrophe if unchecked. The Korean Confederation of Trade Union (KCTU) which claims 600,000 members has threatened to stage mass strikes in late May against lay-offs mandated by the IMF in return for a $57 billion bailout.
TOKYO: Japan's cabinet approves extra budget for the year to March 1999 to implement the huge stimulus package adopted by the government. The 6.1 trillion yen ($46b) budget will finance public works projects and other programs under the pump-priming package worth a total of 16.6 trillion yen. Two other bills are for the amendment of the fiscal reform act to allow the government to issue extra bonds and of the tax system act to enable a further two trillion yen tax cut for the year to next March.
Meanwhile Matsunaga reiterated that the package would boost Japan's GDP by two percentage points during the fiscal year.
Nissan Motor Co. on Monday added an Asia chapter to the Daimler-Chrysler mega-merger saga, announcing it was in talks on an alliance with Germany's Daimler-Benz AG. Japan's second largest carmaker said talks for now were limited to trucks and other commercial vehicles, but could expand to include other areas like passenger cars or even some form of equity participation. Investors cheered the move, with shares of both Nissan Motor and its truck-making affiliate Nissan Diesel Motor Co in heavy demand.
HONG KONG: China Petrochemical Corp. (Sinopec) unit Sinopec Kantons Holdings plans to launch a 500 million Hong Kong dollar ($64.5 million) placement and initial public offering (IPO) for a listing on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong next month. Sinopec plans to place up to 10% of Sinopec Kantons' enlarged share capital with foreign firms, among which the Sumitomo group has already expressed interest in acquiring a strategic state.
BEIJING: Jobless warning to China government: China's population will not accept a continually mounting unemployment rate. Official rate, based on unemployment in rural zones, is currently 3.1% but the "real" rate was around 4.1% and these figures do not include the 11.1 million people laid off by state firms.
KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian Finance Minister Anwar Ibrahim said Monday that the projected budget deficit for this year would be small.
Samira |
