A Chinese woman examines her crops, which have been affected by severe drought in the area since last summer, in Qionghai, China. (Reuters Photo)

BANGKOK, Thailand, March 5--A severe Asian drought has left millions of people struggling to find water, damaged crops from India to China and cost millions of dollars in lost exports.
In hard-hit Vietnam, desperate farmers burned thorns off cactus to feed the water-storing plants to their thirsty sheep. Coffee farmers in Daklak, one of Vietnam’s major coffee-producing provinces, are facing huge losses due to the dry weather expected to last until early May.
Millions of people across Asia are becoming increasingly desperate for water, including southern China where farmers and city folk are feeling the pinch.
The region should get some rainfall in a few days, but it won’t be enough for sugar, coffee, rice and other crops in Yunnan, Guangdong, Hainan and other provinces, the China Daily said.
People in the booming southern city of Shenzhen would probably be the first in China to use seawater to flush their toilets, it said.
On Hainan, a popular tourist island and major rubber and sugar producer, rivers and farmland have dried up. The government has proposed rationing water in cities, the Xinhua news agency said.
In Thailand, where drought has hit 70 of its 76 provinces and affected 8.3 million people, authorities have stopped supplying water for irrigation.
“The Agriculture Ministry has instructed related agencies not to divert water from reservoirs for farming because the situation could get worse,“ Boontin Kotesiri, a senior Thai Cane and Sugar Board official told Reuters.
Thailand has spent 2 billion baht ($52 million) since October to distribute water and improve pumping systems in remote villages, the Interior Ministry said.
The Philippines, one of Asia’s largest rice importers, has started building up rice stocks partly due to worries of a supply shortfall due to the El Nino weather pattern.
The drought has already cost millions of dollars in damaged crops and lost exports. Thailand’s losses are estimated at 15 billion baht with another 3 billion baht in lost exports, the Agriculture Ministry said. Drought has forced Thailand, the world’s largest rice exporter, to trim its export estimate this year by 15 percent to 8.5 million tons from a year ago.
India, the world’s largest consumer of sugar whose robust demand keeps the market alive, is expected to buy more sugar in coming months to meet domestic shortfalls.

BEIJING, March 5--Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said Saturday the economy would continue to roar ahead, but a cap on exports seemed designed to allay foreign fears of being crushed by the Asian juggernaut, AFP reported.
The economic growth target has been set at eight percent, a level needed to create enough jobs for the nation’s millions, Wen told the opening session of the National People’s Congress, or parliament.
“Maintaining steady and rapid economic development is an important issue that the government must successfully handle,“ Wen said in his speech.
“This is a period of important strategic opportunities for China, and the economy should grow rapidly, but not be allowed to overheat,“ he said.
This year’s growth objective marks a change from previous years, when China’s planners have been aiming for 7 percent growth as the minimum to keep enough people out of unemployment.
The growth targets have frequently been off by a large margin, such as last year, when economic growth eventually came in at 9.5 percent.
Eight percent growth in Asia’s second largest economy is likely to mean that China will remain one of the world’s top growth engines.
The global economy has been seen as sustained in recent months by the twin forces of China’s producers and America’s consumers.
“They know that excessive growth could result in a lot of challenges,“ said Chen Xingdong, the Beijing-based chief China economist with BNP Paribas Peregrine Securities. “But if they are reining in the growth, they will also see imbalances. The pressure of unemployment is huge,“ he said.
Touching on the most sensitive issue in China’s economic dealings with the outside world, Wen said the currency, the yuan, would remain “basically stable“ this year. “We will ... reform the mechanism for setting the exchange rate for the (yuan) and keep it basically stable at a proper and balanced level,“ he said.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia,
March 5--High fuel prices and keen competition remain important factors that will affect the profitability of airlines this year, says the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines (AAPA), Bernama reported.
AAPA is a grouping of 17 scheduled international airlines, including Malaysia Airlines, based in the Asia-Pacific region.
In its forecast for 2005, APPA said international carriers are expected to increase their presence on key long haul routes while new entrants would provide further competition on a number of regional routes.
“As the global economy is projected to slow somewhat in 2005, freight traffic growth is likely to moderate slightly this year. However, the ongoing economic development of China and India should provide the impetus for further growth in the Asia Pacific region,“ it said.
It said while the business outlook for 2005 remained positive, AAPA carriers would be maintaining their dual focus on revenue growth at the same time as carefully managing their unit costs through continuous efforts to improve efficiency and boost productivity.
AAPA said the unexpectedly strong rebound in passenger traffic in 2004 was a welcome relief for AAPA carriers, and had generally resulted in higher revenues and better profitability, despite markedly higher fuel costs.
APPA said its member airlines registered a 22.5 percent increase in international passenger numbers, to 117 million for 2004.
Passenger traffic grew by 18.6 percent in terms of revenue passenger kilometers (RPKs). Capacity, growing slower than the traffic, was 13.1 percent above the 2003 level.
Within the Asia Pacific region, AAPA said passenger numbers grew by 23.7 percent in 2004.
Traffic to/from China increased by 51 percent, which added about 3.0 percentage points to the overall increase. Traffic within Northeast Asia also enjoyed robust growth, up 30.1 percent, followed by traffic between Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia, up 28.7 percent. Traffic within Southeast Asia grew by 15.7 percent in 2004 while the smaller Southwest Pacific region saw traffic increase by 17.5 percent.
It said all AAPA carriers posted positive passenger traffic growth in 2004, with 10 of them setting new records in terms of traffic volume.

BRASILIA, Brazil, March 5--Brazil’s move to lift a ban on the sale of genetically modified crops poses a serious threat to the country’s endangered Amazon rain forest, environmentalists charged on Friday, Reuters reported.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva defied his environment minister, much of his party and his own campaign promises this week when he won legislation to allow the sale and planting of GMO plants--most notably soy for export.
Big farmers driving economic growth and biotechnology firms like Monsanto Co. supplying the seeds were seen as gaining from the controversial legislation awaiting Lula’s signature into law. The legislation, which also cleared the way for research involving human embryonic stem cells, was cheered by many Brazilians who saw it as a step toward a modern Brazil.
But environmentalists said the rain forest and small-scale farmers were the losers. “Brazil is just building up agribusiness. It’s an enormous threat to our forests,“ said Gabriela Couto of Greenpeace’s campaign against GMO crops.
Lula’s own environment minister, Marina Silva, said in a statement, “The Environment Ministry feels obliged to point out to Brazilian society the potential environmental risks involved in the project that was approved.“
Environmentalists fear GMO crops for their potential to wipe out native plant species, disrupt food chains and allow crops to move into new areas--such as cleared Amazon jungle.
Environmentalists say commercial farming is driving deforestation as grain farmers create fields out of savannah and rain forest cleared by loggers and ranchers. Agribusiness won an unexpected ally when Lula took office in 2003.
With a weak economy forcing the government to cut social spending to reassure investors, Lula sought ways to boost growth and keep his political plans alive.
Agriculture Minister Roberto Rodrigues urged Lula to promote agribusiness rather than the family farmers and landless whom Lula promised to help on the campaign trail.
Silva lost a political battle when the final version of the GMO bill passed by Brazil’s Congress gave a group linked to the Science and Technology Ministry veto rights on approval of GMO organisms for planting and sale rather than Brazil’s environmental protection agency.

NEW DELHI, India, March 5--Fuel-hungry India signed a deal Saturday to take a 49 percent stake in a Venezuelan oil field, boosting energy ties between one of Asia’s biggest consuming economies and one of the world’s largest exporters, AFP reported.
Under the agreement reached in New Delhi, Indian state-controlled energy giant Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC), which is scouring the globe to meet the country’s ever-expanding fuel needs, will take a 49 percent stake in the San Cristobal oil field.
“For us to receive 49 percent plus the operatorship is ... a huge advance and with that I am now truly well positioned to commercialize exploration work, India’s Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar told reporters. No financial details of the deal were available.
The signing of the agreement came on the second day of a four-day visit by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to India.
As part of the agreement, one of six signed in New Delhi, PDVSA or Petroleos de Venezuela is taking a stake in ONGC’s refining subsidiary, Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd.
The agreement between Venezuela, the world’s fifth biggest oil exporter, and India, which imports 70 percent of its crude oil needs, will pave the way for the Mangalore refinery to process Venezuelan crude.
ONGC has been aggressively pursuing energy supplies abroad and taken stakes in fuel projects in Russia, Libya and Sudan, among other countries, and recently struck an agreement to import natural gas from Iran.
As India’s economy, now growing at around 7 percent, continues to expand, its reliance on imported crude is expected to grow to around 85 percent in the next 20 years.
Chavez, who has said Venezuela is keen to share its “oil potential“ with India, has struck oil deals with various countries including large ones with China since last year.
Other agreements signed by the two sides included an agreement for cooperation in the hydrocarbons sector and memorandums of understanding in such areas as biotechnology.

WASHINGTON,
March 5--US employers created 262,000 jobs last month, the biggest gain in four months and double January’s pace, but the good news for workers was tempered by a rise in the jobless rate, Reuters reported.
Other reports on Friday showed an unexpected, if slim, rise in factory orders in January and a dip in consumer sentiment last month.
The Labor Department said February’s increase in nonfarm employment, the biggest since October, came as auto workers returned from temporary layoffs and construction activity snapped back from an unusually cold January.
The unemployment rate, however, rose to 5.4 percent from January’s 5.2 percent. The rise in the jobless rate, drawn from a separate survey of households, partly reflected an increase in workers entering the labor force.
The payroll gain came in above Wall Street forecasts, but still shy of levels some traders had braced for after a service-sector employment gauge on Thursday showed a big jump.
Stock prices rose as the data fueled optimism on growth without the offsetting fear of higher inflation. The Dow Jones industrial average .DJI> gained 107 points to a more than 3-1/2 year high of 10,940.
US government bond prices also gained, while the dollar fell, on the view the Federal Reserve could keep inflation at bay with a steady diet of small interest rate rises.
Some economists were optimistic the payroll gain, which snapped a string of three relatively sluggish months capped with a revised rise of 132,000 in January, could herald more vigorous job growth, but others said it was too soon to say.
David Berson, chief economist at mortgage market giant Fannie Mae, said the numbers told a “bipolar story,“ with solid jobs creation on one side, and the rise in the jobless rate and unchanged readings on earnings and the length of the workweek on the other.
“It certainly doesn’t indicate that the economy is slipping, not with the pickup in payroll numbers, but ... there are no inflation signals from this as well,“ he said.

FRANKFURT, Germany, March 5--General Motors’ German unit Opel edged out Swedish brand Saab and won a crucial contract to build the next generation of GM mid-sized cars in Europe, the world’s biggest carmaker said on Friday.
The Opel plant in Ruesselsheim, Germany, and the Saab facility in Trollhattan, Sweden, were competing for the job of making the successor to the Opel Vectra and the Saab 9-3 models from 2008.
After months of review, GM concluded that Opel could do the work for some 200 million euros ($264 million) less than Trollhattan over time, it said in a statement.
“Both plants presented compelling business cases but, in the end, the scale for this particular allocation tipped in favor of Ruesselsheim“, GM Europe Chairman Fritz Henderson said.
Reuters had earlier cited sources familiar with the situation as saying Ruesselsheim had won the contract.
The news comes as a huge relief for Germany, where the auto industry accounts for around one in every seven jobs and unemployment has hit its highest level since the 1930s.
Saab will not walk away empty-handed, however. GM confirmed its commitment to the Saab brand and the Trollhattan plant.
“A major initiative is expected for the expansion of the Saab model line-up,“ it said, noting it would soon add to the core Saab 9-3 and 9-5 cars a premium “crossover“ model that blends characteristics of cars and sport utility vehicles.
In addition, GM will build a new mid-sized Cadillac called the BLS in Trollhattan starting next year.
“Furthermore, the company today committed to build selected Saab vehicles in Trollhattan through 2010,“ it said.