Total world demand for steel is forecast to grow by 3.7 percent in 2005.

BRUSSELS, Belgium, April 20--Global demand for finished steel products should exceed one billion metric tons this year for the first time, according to an estimate released Tuesday by the International Iron and Steel Institute, AFP reported.
“Total world demand is forecast to grow by 3.7 percent in 2005, an increase of 36 million metric tons compared to 2004,“ the IISI said in a statement.
For China, the increase would be greater than 10 percent, and the industry group estimated that the Asian giant “will account for 29 percent of total steel demand and nearly 80 percent of world growth in 2005“.
Elsewhere, demand would grow only by around one percent, or eight million metric tons.
“Slower economic growth, combined with an adjustment to steel stocks, will cause the temporary decline,“ the group said.
In 2006, the IISI forecast use of finished steel products would expand further by 4.8 percent to 1.05 billion metric tons.
“A recovery in the world’s economic activity will guarantee growth in steel demand in a wider range of countries“ next year, it said.

BEIJING, April 20--China’s foreign exchange reserves, the second-largest in the world after Japan’s, hit $659.1 billion at the end of March, official data showed Wednesday, AFP reported.
This reflected an increase of $16.5 billion over February, the National Bureau of Statistics said.
Earlier official figures showed that China had a trade surplus of $16.58 billion in the first three months of the year.
China’s trade surplus for 2004 was up 25.6 percent at $32 billion, the highest level in six years.
China’s economy grew 9.5 percent in the first quarter, the same rate as for all of 2004 and compared to 9.7 percent in the same period last year, the National Bureau of Statistics announced Wednesday.
Economic output by value totaled 3.13 trillion yuan ($379 billion) in the three months to March, the NBS said.
Fixed asset investment, which reflects government spending on infrastructure, increased 22.8 percent in the first quarter, just slightly slower than the 25.8 percent growth rate for 2004, according to the figures.
“The total size of investment is too large. Shortages of coal, electricity, petroleum and transportation are still prominent,“ NBS spokesman Zheng Jingpin said, warning of continuing pressure on resources to fuel the rapidly expanding economy.
Zheng indicated China still faced difficulties trying to cool down the economy to prevent it from overheating.
“The price for some upstream products rose by a bigger margin than desired and the task of macro-economic regulation is still arduous,“ he said.
“Macro-economic regulation and control should be meticulously implemented in order to consolidate and strengthen the good momentum of national economic performance.“
The Chinese government has targeted growth of around 8 percent this year but many non-government economists expect eight or nine percent, or even more.

Mubarak (r) and his Nigerian counterpart Olusegun Obasanjo chair the opening session of the NEPAD summit in Sharm el-Sheikh on Tuesday. (AFP Photo)

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt, April 20--African leaders meeting in Egypt on Tuesday begged for cash ahead of July’s G8 summit, but poor attendance showed tepid faith in the continent’s ability to achieve the stability and transparency meant to underpin the meeting, AFP reported.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, hosting the summit of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, urged donors to boost contributions.
“We stress the paramount necessity for our partners in development to deliver on their pledges,“ he said.
A report on the organization’s activities over the past year and its recommendations for the coming year stressed the continent would need another 50 billion to 75 billion dollars in aid if it was to reach the UN millennium goal of reducing global poverty by half by the year 2015.
The document presented to leaders of some 30 African countries asked NEPAD’s steering committee to urge the Group of Eight leading industrialized countries to double aid in the short term and improve its coordination and distribution.
The current level of funding for NEPAD stands at $10 billion a year for cross-border infrastructure projects and the same amount to speed up the streamlining of African institutions.
The report urged the G8 to propose a timetable for scrapping subsidies to specific countries and offer a mechanism enabling African products to penetrate the European market.
NEPAD is an African initiative created in 2001 and aimed at revitalizing the continent’s ailing economy by attracting private investors with progress in conflict-resolution and improved transparency.
The main novelty at this year’s summit was expected to be the first report of the Peer Review Mechanism (PRM), aimed at improving governance.
The report was to focus on the performance of Ghana, Rwanda, Mauritius and Kenya. But officials charged that only Rwanda and Ghana had cooperated with the PRM and that Mauritius and Kenya were not ready.

FRANKFURT, Germany, April 20--A group of international investors holding German gold-backed bonds issued in the 1920s said on Tuesday they would sue for $7.8 billion in compensation, saying the bonds were never repaid, Reuters reported.
The group, led by New York lawyer and bondholder Ed Fagan, said notices were being served on German government finance agencies, the Bundesbank and commercial banks to attend a May 13 hearing on the case in New York.
Fagan, known for filing Holocaust-related class action claims, said the group was representing holders of only three kinds of gold-backed bond and that other outstanding bonds could bring total compensation claims to some $42 billion.
“When we win the lawsuit in the United States you’re dead, financially,“ Fagan told a briefing for reporters in Germany.
“This case far eclipses the Holocaust claims financially,“ he added.
Fagan said European financial institutions as well as private investors were represented in the German Goldbond Redemption Group, though he declined to name them.
The group said the gold-backed bonds had been issued to meet reparations and to rebuild German industry after World War One but Adolf Hitler’s Nazi government had halted repayment.
A spokesman for the German Finance Ministry said there had been previous attempts in Germany to claim money against old bonds but those cases had been ruled inadmissible.
“We’ll wait to see what is in the text of the claim,“ the spokesman said. “In principle, we are relaxed about it.“ The Bundesbank declined to comment.
The bondholders said in a statement that they were suing the German government, the German Finance Ministry and officials, and banks, including Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank for default and failure to pay for gold dollar bonds sold in the United States from 1924-1930.
It also said that Commerzbank must provide evidence in a $425-million Florida suit for default on payment of gold dollar bonds.
A spokesman for Commerzbank said the claim was without merit. “Our legal department has researched it. These claims are completely unfounded and have no basis in fact. These bonds were never on our accounts,“ he said. Deutsche Bank declined to comment.
Fagan said at the heart of the gold bond case was a straightforward breach of contract as the bonds had not been addressed by post-war international debt agreements.

BEIRUT, Lebanon, April 20--Lebanon’s central bank said Tuesday it has raised $1.674 billion through an issue of 10-year certificates of deposit (CDs) despite the country’s political crisis, AFP reported.
“Due to the exceptional success of this issue, the central bank has completed the subscription in cash to reach the ceiling of $2 billion,“ the Bank of Lebanon said in a statement.
The new certificates, which mature in 10 years, were issued with an annual yield of about 10 percent.
“The objective of the issue is to consolidate the central bank’s foreign currency reserves in order to boost confidence, strengthen capital markets and attract funds to Lebanon,“ it said.
Banking sources said foreign currency reserves have fallen from $11 billion to $9.5 billion since the February assassination of ex-prime minister Rafiq Hariri which plunged the country in crisis.
New prime minister Nagib Miqati said his government will focus on meeting the economic challenges and protecting monetary stability in a country with debt of $34 billion.

DETROIT, USA,
April 20--General Motors Corp., the world’s biggest automaker, took a sharp turn Tuesday with a quarterly loss of $1.1 billion, reflecting the difficult business conditions in the United States, AFP reported.
GM’s net loss was its biggest since 1992 and the outlook was further clouded by the company’s refusal to provide a full-year outlook for 2005.
Shares of the Dow component, which have hovered around 12-year lows in recent weeks, bounced back from a five percent decline to close down 10 cents at 26.09.
The loss excluding special items and restructuring costs amounted to $1.48 a share, a penny better than most Wall Street forecasts. The loss including special items was $1.95 per share.
The special items include charges for restructuring in Europe, US job cuts and factory closings, as well as tax adjustments.
Without these costs, the adjusted loss reported by GM was $839 million.
The results compared with a profit of $1.2 billion in the same period a year ago.
GM said revenue fell year over year in the quarter by 4.3 percent to $45.8 billion.
The company’s North American division dragged down the overall results for the world’s biggest automaker with a loss of $1.3 billion, compared with a 401-million-dollar profit a year ago.
“This deterioration reflects lower sales and production volumes, a tougher pricing environment, an unfavorable sales mix and a continuing, large health care burden,“ GM said.
“While most of our business units exceeded expectations, the results at GM North America (GMNA) were clearly disappointing,“ said GM chairman and chief executive officer Rick Wagoner.

OTTAWA, Canada, April 20--Canada will radically overhaul its foreign aid program, devoting most of its assistance to a group of 25 mainly African countries rather than spreading it out over more than 150 nations as at present, the government said on Tuesday, AFP reported
The announcement was made in a wide-ranging foreign policy review which reconfirmed Ottawa’s intention to double its foreign aid to more than C$5 billion ($4 billion) by 2010 from 2001 levels.
Critics have long complained about what they see as the unfocused nature of Canada’s overseas assistance and ask why Ottawa is giving money to such emerging superpowers as China.
The review said that by 2010, at least two-thirds of Canada’s country-to-country assistance--which accounts for 40 percent of the overall aid budget--would be focused on 25 developing countries, more than half of which are in Africa.
“We have concluded that the government’s aid budget is spread too thinly across too many programs in more than 150 countries,“ Prime Minister Paul Martin wrote in an introduction to the review.
The document said Canada’s aid program would focus on good governance, health issues such as HIV/AIDS, basic education, private sector development and environmental sustainability.
It said the 25 nations--including Benin, Burkina Faso, Rwanda and Zambia--were among the poorest on earth and had already demonstrated they could use aid effectively. But one key proposed recipient is Kenya, which Canada recently criticized for not clamping down on corruption.
“Our intention is to increase programs in these countries, but if conditions are not propitious, we won’t do so.“
Aid programs to so-called failed and fragile states such as Haiti, Afghanistan and Sudan will be funded from the remaining third of the direct assistance budget.
Officials said Canada would continue to donate money to China, but only to Canadian-run projects focusing on improving the environment and the judiciary.

SANTA CLARA, USA, April 20--Intel Corp. on Tuesday reported its first-quarter profit jumped 25 percent from a year ago to $2.15 billion as revenues were lifted by strong demand for mobile computer chips.
The leader in semiconductors said its earnings amounted to 34 cents a share, better than the average Wall Street estimate of 31 cents per share.
Revenue in the quarter to April 2 hit $9.4 billion, up 17 percent year-over-year.
Intel’s first-quarter included an additional week of business because 2005 is a 53-week fiscal year for the company.
“Led by strong demand for our mobile products, Intel posted double-digit revenue and profit growth versus a year ago,“ said Intel chief executive Craig Barrett.
“Today marks the 40th anniversary of Moore’s Law, which remains the driving force behind our ability to continually innovate and bring exciting new products to our customers around the world.“
Intel co-founder Gordon Moore observed that technology allowed computing chip power to double every 18 months.
Intel sold more of its newest products, which carry a higher profit margin, as computer makers sell more laptops with wireless Internet connectivity. Intel microprocessors run more than 80 percent of the world’s personal computers.
The company said its gross margin, an important profitability measure, came in at 59.3 percent of sales, higher than the 57 percent Intel had projected last month. It raised its 2005 gross margin target to 59 percent from 58 percent.
In related news, Yahoo’s first-quarter profit doubled to $205 million as the Internet giant increased revenues from advertising, fees and other partnerships,the company reported Tuesday.
The company topped Wall Street estimates for per-share earnings and revenues.
The profit amounted to 14 cents a share, beating the average forecast of 11 cents.
“Yahoo entered 2005 on a high note, delivering strong growth and record revenue for the eighth consecutive quarter, further validating the strength of Yahoo’s business model,“ said Terry Semel, chairman.