WASHINGTON,
Oct. 26--US companies are considering a new wave of capital investments to Southeast Asia following greater political stability and assurances of business-friendly reforms by leaders in the region, experts say.
The United States is the largest investor in Southeast Asia but there has been a lull in large American investments since 1997, when the region was struck by financial turmoil, AFP reported.
Recovery from crisis was dampened by threats from terrorism and the pneumonia-like Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic.
Now, both US multinational corporations and small and medium sized companies are eager to pump more investments in the region, buoyed by evolving reforms and political stability underscored by smooth leadership changes in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia, said Ernest Bower and Karen Brooks, two Washington-based experts on Southeast Asia, Bower, the former president of the US-ASEAN Business Council, and Brooks, the ex-Asian chief at the White House's National
Security Council, have joined forces and set up an advisory services
firm to promote US-Asia business ties.
Their organization, BrooksBowerAsia, will work with a select group of American multinational firms to expand business links in the region.
"I know from working with the companies that there are new investment plans on the table. There will be a new wave coming in," said Bower, who had headed the US-Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Business Council for the last decade.
"We don't want to ride the change but we want to make the change happen," he told AFP, speaking alongside Brooks, a leading architect of US policy toward Asia during both the Bush and Clinton administrations.
They listed Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand as potential destinations for the new American investments in the power, automotive, information technology, biotechnology and financial services sectors.
US companies have pumped into the region investments worth about $50 billion so far. Bower said the investments were now valued twice the amount.
He said some American companies had faced trouble making new investments in Southeast Asia due to bureaucratic problems.

Global aircraft makers battling for business are likely to get billions of dollars of passenger aircraft orders from India where air travel is poised for massive growth. (AFP Photo)

NEW DELHI, India, Oct. 26--Global aircraft makers battling for business are likely to get billions of dollars of passenger aircraft orders from India where air travel is poised for massive growth, industry officials said.
More than 15 million people boarded planes to travel within India in the last financial year, up 20 percent from the previous year, industry figures show, and last year's growth is seen as just the tip of the iceberg.
"Many people in India have yet to fly. The railways carry in one day the number of people that fly in a year so there's big potential," Airbus spokesman David Velupillai told AFP. "As the market is stimulated by lower fares, there will be more demand," he added.
The number of passengers is expected to grow to 50 million in five years as a booming economy and new low cost carriers stimulate demand, said the consultancy Center for Asia Pacific Aviation, based in Sydney, Australia.
Airbus has forecast the Indian market will need 222 more aircraft worth $17.5 billion in today's currency over the next 15 years, compared with fleet strength of 150 now at the disposal of private and state-run domestic carriers.
Rival aircraft-maker Boeing has estimated demand will be around 270 to 300 aircraft worth $25 billion over the next 20 years.
Velupillai said more people were likely to switch to air travel as they realized they could undertake long journeys in much shorter time and at roughly the same expense as a rail journey.
Low-cost carrier Air Deccan, which used to be a regional operator until last year, spooked mainline carriers this year when it launched long-distance flights for the price of upper class rail tickets a month ago. It sparked a round of fare cuts that brought thousands of new air passengers.
Boeing vice president Dinesh Keskar said India has emerged as a key market because of its strong economic growth and the relative insulation of the travel trade to global developments due to its huge internal market.

Cuban waiter holds a three convertible Cuban Peso note, with an image of late guerrilla leader Ernesto 'Che' Guevara, in Havana on Monday. (Reuters Photo)

HAVANA, Cuba, Oct. 26--Cuban President Fidel Castro, seeking to rid his country of the currency of his arch-enemy, said on Monday Cuba was ending circulation of the US dollar as of Nov. 8 in response to tightened American sanctions, Reuters reported.
Cubans, foreign residents and tourists will have to use locally printed convertible pesos, equal in value to the dollar, a Central Bank decree said.
"As of Nov. 8, the dollar will not be accepted in our shops, which will only accept convertible pesos," it said.
A 10 percent commission will be charged for changing dollars into the local currency, according to the decree read on a special television broadcast attended by Castro.
Appearing on television in a sling only five days after falling and fracturing a knee and an arm, Castro said the issue was so important that he had to be there despite Wednesday's accident that left his left leg in a plaster cast.
"The empire is determined to create more difficulties for us," he said, referring to Bush administration steps to restrict travel and cash flows to the island nation.
The dollar was legalized in Cuba in 1993 after the collapse of the Soviet Union plunged the island into deep economic crisis and forced it to open up to tourism and foreign investment.
Dollars became the dominant currency and are used to buy most consumer goods in dollar stores that will now only accept the local currency.
The decision will effectively tax remittances from the United States, a major support for the cash-strapped Cuban economy that amount to an estimated $1 billion a year, unless they are sent in other currencies.
The government encouraged Cubans living abroad to send cash remittances to their relatives in Cuba in other currencies, such as the euro, the British pound, Swiss franc and Canadian dollar, to avoid exchange costs.

BEIJING, Oct. 26--China's booming economy is driving demand for coal, oil, power and transport that far outstrips national supplies, potentially leaving millions
nationwide in the cold, the China Daily said on Tuesday, Reuters reported.
National authorities had warned that shortages of resources could trigger power cuts in at least nine provinces this winter, the newspaper said.
"The coming of winter will once again increase power consumption. Together with reduced power generation in the summer, this sharpens the contradiction between supply and demand of power," Cao Yushu, spokesman of the State Development and
Reform Commission, was quoted as saying.
Some 24 provinces suffered blackouts in the first nine months of this year, despite a 14.5 percent year-on-year increase in power generation during the period to 1.56 trillion kilowatts. Nationwide power supplies ran short by 30 million kilowatts over the summer, Cao said.
Coal is the major source of fuel in China, and the country's coal industry, already the world's biggest and most hazardous, has expanded with little regulation to keep up with demand.
Deaths from coal mine accidents surpassed 4,000 in the first nine months of the year. In the worst mine disaster in the country in years, a blast ripped through a mine in central China last Wednesday, killing at least 91 people with rescuers holding out little hope for 57 still missing, state media said.
But an unflagging national appetite for coal means many mines will continue to push production levels beyond safe limits.
Coal supplies in the country's capital, Beijing, were running below the alert line for both power and civil use, forcing city authorities to secure another 500,000 tons of coal for heating by the end of the year, the Xinhua news agency said.
Lack of water, not power, is proving a more pressing problem in southern China.
More than a million people in normally flood-prone Guangdong province, bordering Hong Kong, did not have sufficient drinking water and tens of thousands of hectares of rich cropland had dried up, the newspaper said.

TOKYO, Oct. 26--The recent series of typhoons and tremors to have hit Japan are likely to hurt the world's second largest economy just as it is showing signs of vulnerability, analysts said, AFP reported.
The Japanese government has yet to work out the cost of the damage from a weekend quake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale and its hundreds of aftershocks, which have killed 26 people.
But the images of rows of flattened houses, cracked roads, stranded residents and the first-ever derailed bullet train in northern Niigata province sent shivers throughout the quake-prone archipelago as people braced for more tremors.
Japan's main business lobby on Monday downplayed the direct impact of the tremors on industrial output, but economists said the likely upshot would be lingering fears of disasters which would discourage consumer spending.
"The psychological impact (on the economy) might be bigger than the figures of the casualties and damage may suggest," said Yasunari Ueno, chief market economist at Mizuho Securities. "I think it's wrong to say the macro-economic impact will be limited just by calculating the fairly small size of the economy of the shattered region."
Production could be shifted to other areas and distribution of produce could be re-routed, but the dampener of the recent string of natural disasters could be more lasting, economists said.
The quake and its aftershocks came on the heels of a record 10 tropical storms to hit Japan this year. The latest, Typhoon Tokage, was the deadliest, killing at least 80 people as it tore through southern Japan last week.
Damage to crops has sent the prices of some vegetables up threefold, lowering the purchasing power of many households.
The direct impact on Japan's gross domestic product may take time to figure out but economists said the disasters came at a bad time for the local economy.
"As far as sentiment goes, it's clear that it's not positive but it's awfully hard to quantify," said Peter Morgan, chief economist at HSBC Securities, Japan.
An early summer boost to sales of beverages and clothing brought on by heatwaves was quickly canceled out by damage of typhoons estimated at about one trillion yen ($9.4 billion dollars).
This raised concerns that, combined with a recent drop in exports and flat industrial output, Japan's economic expansion since early 2002 may peter out at a time when fears are growing that the US economy might be in worse shape than widely believed.

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Oct. 26--The managing director of the International Monetary Fund on Monday warned officials about Lebanon's economic "vulnerability" given its gigantic debt and stressed the need for long overdue reforms, AFP reported.
IMF chief Rodrigo de Rato said Lebanon's economic weaknesses stemmed from a public debt that has exceeded $35 billion.
Of the government, de Rato said "efforts have to continue on the path of reforms," mainly with respect to long-awaited privatization projects, he told a joint news conference with outgoing finance minister Fouad Siniora.
"The path has to continue and the first issue is the debt," said de Rato.
Faced with the economy's "vulnerability", Lebanese President Emile Lahoud "is convinced of the necessity of reforms," he added, speaking in English.
"He has his own opinion regarding the debt and in the way to make reforms in the public sector," he said, following talks with the head of state.
Rato was speaking at the Beirut inauguration of an IMF regional office to help Afghanistan and countries in the Middle East reform their economic, monetary and fiscal policies.
The so-called Middle East Technical Assistance Center (METAC) will provide training in economic, monetary and fiscal policies to Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, the Palestinian territories, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
It is the fifth IMF center of its kind, after regional centers for East and West Africa, for the Caribbean and the Pacific.