Kuwait provides a cradle-to-grave welfare system to its 950,000 nationals who receive most public services at heavily-subsidized prices and pay no income tax.

KUWAIT CITY,
May 17--Kuwait’s parliament approved a 50-dinar (171-dollar) monthly pay rise Monday for tens of thousands of public and private sector workers and pensioners to meet rising living costs, AFP reported.
Amid a booming economy in the oil-rich emirate, parliament voted a government proposal for the salary increases which will cost an annual 140 million dinars ($479 million), an AFP correspondent.
The salary rise will affect about 100,000 public and private sector employees as well as some 80,000 pensioners. Some 90 percent of Kuwait’s 290,000-strong workforce have government jobs.
Kuwaiti employees earn a monthly average of at least 600 dinars ($2,054).
Excluded from the salary rise are professionals who have received pay hikes over the past five years.
In December, parliament approved a grant of 200 dinars ($680) to every Kuwaiti national to help cope with the rise in living expenses.
Kuwait provides a cradle-to-grave welfare system to its 950,000 nationals who receive most public services at heavily-subsidized prices and pay no income tax.
The 1.7 million foreigners living in Kuwait will not benefit from the salary increases.
The OPEC member posted a combined surplus of $30 billion in the past six fiscal years due to rising oil prices and output.
Kuwait is set to almost double its budget surplus in 2005-2006, reaping up to $18.5 billion, according to independent economic reports.
The emirate sits on 10 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves and it currently produces at full capacity of 2.7 million barrels per day.

BONN, Germany,
May 17--A UN meeting took a tiny first step on Monday towards finding a successor to the Kyoto protocol on global warming, with calls for the United States and developing nations to take part after 2012, Reuters reported.
But India, China and Brazil told rich nations to do more to keep promises of cuts in their own emissions of heat-trapping gases before trying to widen the accord. They also urged the rich to provide more aid and non-polluting energy technologies.
“We need common solutions for the most serious environmental challenge of our time. Climate change is already a harsh reality,“ German Environment Minister Juergen Trittin said at the opening of the two-day seminar of experts from 190 nations.
“Climate protection must not end in 2012. Companies and investors want to plan beyond 2012,“ he said.
Kyoto entered into force on Feb. 16 after years of delays and weakened by a pullout by the United States, the world’s top polluter. The informal Bonn seminar is a first step to start considering what to do after it runs out in 2012.
Under Kyoto, rich nations are meant to cut emissions of heat-trapping gases from power plants, cars and factories by 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12 to try to slow what many scientists say could be catastrophic climatic changes.
“This is a global problem--we can’t let the United States stay out,“ Argentine Environment Minister Gines Gonzalez Garcia said. Australia, the other main outsider, must also join.
He said developing nations also needed to consider how they could take part in future without stifling economic growth.
Under Kyoto, rich nations are meant to take the lead as the main source of pollution since the Industrial Revolution.

NEW DELHI, India, May 17--India on Monday said it was launching a massive program to build tens of millions of homes for the poor but warned the project was likely to cost more than $40 billion.
“The project will also bring an additional 10 million hectares (24.7 million acres) under irrigation and connect all villages that have a population of 1,000 with roads,“ an official spokesman said after a ministerial meet headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
He said the “Build India“ project was slated to be completed by 2009 but did not say how the government planned to finance it.
“The program entails the construction of six million homes for the poor, provide drinking water to 74,000 new habitations, reach electricity to 125,000 villages still lacking the facility and telephones to 66,822 villages,“ the spokesman said.
Some 80 percent of India’s billion-plus population lives in 600,000 neglected villages.
The official said the four-year project was likely to cost $40.46 billion .
Singh urged provincial administrations of India’s 29 states to clear up bureaucratic bottlenecks for the project’s implementation.
“Bharat Nirman (Build India) will emphasize outcomes and not just revenue outlays and the project should be implemented with a sense of urgency and dedication at all levels of the government,“ Singh was quoted as saying by the Press Trust of India.
“This is the most important initiative of the government,“ Singh said and added it would cover “six critical areas of rural infrastructure.“
Singh’s left-leaning coalition government celebrates its first anniversary on May 22 but has little support from its politically-crucial communist partners for its economic reforms.
India says it needs to spend $150 billion over the next five years to develop world-class infrastructure--$75 billion in the power sector, $25 billion in telecommunications and $50 billion on airports, seaports and roads.

Israel's economy and trade are intricately linked to the fate of the Palestinians.

BEIT-UL-MOQADDAS, Occupied Palestine, May 17--A senior army officer warned in a report Tuesday that it will be impossible for Israel to totally divorce itself economically from the Gaza Strip after it pulls out of the territory this summer, AFP reported.
General Yosef Mishlav, coordinator of government activities in the occupied territories, proposed that 15,000 Palestinian workers be allowed to continue crossing into Israel from Gaza every day for the next three years, in a report whose contents were revealed by public radio.
The pullout of troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip, due to begin in August, is part of an Israeli government plan to “disengage“ from the Palestinians.
Ministers have argued that Israeli business needs to wean itself off its dependency on cheap Palestinian labor, with the presence of thousands of Palestinian workers inside Israel each day carrying added security risks.
However Israel’s economy and trade are intricately linked to the fate of the Palestinians, a situation which Mishlav argued was not going to change for some years.
According to recent government statistics, levels of trade between Israel and the Palestinian territories rose 25 percent last year to $2.3 billion, a return to the rate seen before the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising in September 2000.
The report by Mishlav, who was tasked with finding ways to help rehabilitate the Gaza economy, also recommended that the government does not demolish the homes of the 8,000 Gaza settlers. The government has yet to make a firm decision on the fate of the houses.
Some 400 greenhouses of the settlers should also be handed over to the Palestinians and Israel must keep supplying the territory with electricity, the general added.

BURI RAM, Thailand, May 17--Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said Tuesday he worried that Thais may be accumulating too much personal debt and turning to loan sharks, according to a government spokesman, AFP reported.
“Prime Minister Thaksin expressed his concern that at the moment there are many Thais who have more than 10 credit cards,“ spokesman Chalermdej Jombunud told reporters.
Because of “fierce campaigns to offer credit lines that could lead to an overload of debt, they could turn to loan sharks,“ the spokesman added.
Thaksin gave the example of one credit card holder getting a 300,000 baht credit line (7,500 dollars), allowing the holder to spend 3.0 million baht if they had 10 credit cards, the spokesman said.
Chalermdej said Thaksin has assigned Finance Minister Somkid Jatusripitak and Bank of Thailand Governor Pridiyathorn Devakula to examine the issue.
“Thaksin expressed his concern because he wants to block low-income earners from having too many credit cards by coordinating (information on) a card holder’s background among credit card issuers,“ Somkid told reporters.
The Bank of Thailand said at the end of the first quarter of 2005 there were 8.9 million credit cards issued by Thai commercial banks, foreign banks and non-bank lenders.
The central bank in July 2004 raised the minimum income level needed to get a credit card to 15,000 baht a month from 8,000 baht for bank lenders. Non-bank lenders do not require a minimum income level.
Thaksin was chairing Tuesday a weekly meeting of the Thai cabinet, held in the northeastern province of Buri Ram.

Chinese visitors view BMW cars at the 2005 Auto Shanghai Exhibition in ChinaÕs financial capital April 23, 2005. (Reuters Photo)

SHANGHAI, China, May 17--China’s auto market may be slowing sharply but the government continues to make rosy predictions, with the latest report Tuesday claiming annual demand will climb to 18.9 million units by 2020, AFP reported.
Although car sales growth fell 15 percent last year from the more than 70 percent seen in 2003, sales will continue to expand in line with China’s rapidly growing wealth, said a report from the State Council Development Research Centre.
The government think-tank report, cited by the China Daily, predicts that annual vehicle demand will hit 9.4 million units in 2010, 13.5 million in 2015 and by 2020 the country will see 18.9 million new vehicles a year on its roads.
In 15 years, passenger cars will make up 17.27 million of the total, a level nearly equal with current annual car demand in the United States of 17.46 million units.
Vehicle production in China last year was just above five million units, making it the world’s third largest producer after the United States and Japan.
Amid a current glut, many producers have been forced to routinely slash prices to remain competitive and draw in new customers as the government has restricted credit to brake the industry’s headlong ways.
Despite cooling in the market, foreign manufacturers like General Motors and Ford have piled into China vowing to implement ambitious expansion plans.
“We will maintain the pace and timing of our investment plans in China,“ the newspaper quoted General Motors vice president Troy Clarke as saying.
Detroit-based GM is in the midst of a $3 billion investment plan to double its annual production capacity here to 1.3 million units by 2007.
Germany’s Volkswagen, China’s dominant passenger carmaker, wants to plough in $7.2 billion to boost capacity through 2008 while Ford has pledged $1.5 billion in investment.
In 2005, demand in China is expected to fall to 12 percent annual growth, a disappointing level compared to the heady growth rates of two years ago but still fantastic compared to developed auto markets.

NEW YORK, May 17--Private-sector economists cut their forecasts for US growth in 2005 compared with three months ago, a Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia survey showed on Monday, but the economic outlook remains robust, Reuters reported.
In its quarterly Survey of Professional Forecasters, the bank said the 46 economists surveyed now expect real gross domestic product (GDP) will grow 3.4 percent on a year-on-year basis in 2005, down 0.2 percentage point from the previous survey’s estimate.
However, it said much of the slowing will occur during the first half of the year, with the second half of 2005 now looking stronger.
“The forecasters overestimated the strength of growth in the first quarter, and they have now marked down their projection for second-quarter growth to 3.0 percent from 3.7 percent in the last survey,“ the Philadelphia Fed said.
The respondents now see third-quarter growth of 3.5 percent, up from their previous projection of 3.3 percent, and 3.4 percent in the fourth quarter, unchanged from February.
“The survey is relatively sanguine on the economic outlook and that is my view as well,“ said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Economy.com in West Chester, Pennsylvania.
US crude oil futures were trading around $48 on Monday, well below the year’s peak above $58 per barrel, but still at levels which could pinch consumers and businesses.