People walk past an Asian Development Bank display board in Jeju Island, South Korea. (AFP File Photo)

MANILA, Philippines, July 20--The Asian Development Bank (ADB) announced on Wednesday the issue of one billion dollars worth of five-year global bonds to reinforce its funding strategies, AFP reported.
The bonds, with a coupon (interest) rate of 4.125 percent was priced at 99.652 percent to yield 20 basis points over the 3.875 percent US Treasury bond, the ADB said in a statement.
“This five-year transaction reinforces ADB’s core funding strategy of maintaining a strong presence in key currency bond markets through regular issuance of liquid benchmark global bonds,“ ADB treasurer Mikio Kashiwagi said.
The issue was conducted via lead managers Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and Nomura. A syndicate which included Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Mitsubishi Securities were co-lead managers.

SHANGHAI, China, July 20--International ratings agency Standard and Poor’s said Wednesday it was raising its ratings on China’s long and short-term sovereign credit to A-/A-1, mainly on the improved outlook of state-owned banks and enterprises, AFP reported.
“The upgrade reflects the Chinese government’s aggressive restructuring of its financial sector, combined with the improved profitability of state-owned enterprises,“ SP credit analyst Ping Chew said in a statement.
SP raised the debt rating from BBB+/A-2 and said the outlook was positive, but at the same time warned that accruing government debt could create additional burdens for Beijing. But it said that given the considerable economic and social
challenges facing China, policymakers had not wavered in executing reforms gradually, steadily, and predictably.
“This strengthens China’s exceptional growth prospects, and boosts the policymakers’ financial resources, including budgetary revenue and central bank’s assets,“ it added.
SP also said it has raised its foreign currency rating on Hong Kong to AA-/A-1+ from A+/A-1, with a stable outlook.
China’s improved flexibility is allowing it to overcome some of its key challenges, including its weak banking system, it said.
SP has lowered its projection of non-performing loans (NPLs) in the financial system to 25-28 percent of total loans by end of 2005. The NPL ratio is expected to decline further as more bad debt is disposed of to state-owned asset management companies alongside the improving quality of recent lending.
The positive outlook reflects SP’s expectation that China will continue to pursue economic reforms successfully and deliver rising prosperity to its population.
In related news, SP reiterated Tuesday its investment grade rating on Russia, adding that the outlook remained “stable“ despite persistent political risk.
SP maintained its long-term foreign currency sovereign credit rating on Russia at ’BBB-minus’ and said it expected to see continued improvement in the country’s public debt.
It also kept its short-term foreign currency sovereign credit rating on Russia at ’A-minus3’ and its long-term local currency sovereign credit rating at ’BBB’.
The Russian government’s financial position was expected to improve further from 2006-2008, owing to high prices for oil exports and savings following early reimbursement of debt owed to the Paris Club of state creditors, analyst Elena Hessel wrote.

TOURS, France, July 20--World population growth is slowing due to impressive drops in fertility rates in Asia and Latin America, but Africa remains the exception, international experts told a conference here Tuesday.
Between 1960-65 and 2000-05, fertility rates declined in Latin America from six children per woman to 2.9, and in Asia from 5.6 to 2.2 children per mother, said Jean Pierre Guengant of the French Institute for Research and Development.
But in Africa, the rate fell only from 6.9 to 5.0, the French expert said on the second day of a major international population conference being held in the central French city of Tours.
“In Asia, a strong commitment to family planning programs is the main reason behind the success of many countries to achieve high levels of contraception,“ he said. “Explicit population policies were implemented by government organizations through public service programs alone in China, Indonesia and Iran, or with the help of community organizations in Bangladesh and Thailand.“
China, the world’s most populous nation at 1.3 billion, has achieved a fertility rate of 1.7 children per woman and will be overtaken in coming decades by India, with a population of 1.08 billion, where the fertility rate of 2.85 only began falling recently.
However in Africa, population rates are fast on the rise, with populations expected to triple by 2050 in a number of countries, including Burkina Faso, Burundi, Chad, Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia and Uganda.
Demographer John Cleland of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said that population increase could contribute more to deepening poverty than HIV infection in sub-Saharan Africa, where the population is predicted to rise from 750 million to 1.7 billion during this period.
Cleland said there was a “conspiracy of silence“ among political leaders on the issue of family planning and population control, adding that coercive government programs like the one in India had only hurt, not helped.
The 25th conference of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP), which has brought 2,000 demographers, economists, geographers and sociologists to Tours, was due to run through Friday.

LONDON, July 20--Britain’s government borrowing rose to the highest it ever has been in the month of June, official statistics showed on Wednesday, Reuters reported.
The Office for National Statistics said the public sector net cash requirement stood at 12.3 billion pounds in JuneÑthe highest for that month since records began in April 1984.
That was also some two billion pounds higher than a year earlier and that forecast by analysts.
The government’s preferred accruals-based measure of the public finances--public sector net borrowing--stood at 5.9 billion pounds, slightly weaker than expected but also the highest for June since records began in 1993.
In the year so far, the PSNB was some three billion pounds higher than a year earlier, suggesting Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown may have a tough time meeting his forecasts for the year.
The ONS said the effect of revisions had raised the cumulative budget surplus since April 1999 by 100 million pounds.

Low prices and strong demand for mobile PCs lifted the sale.

WASHINGTON, July 20--Worldwide sales of personal computers grew at a brisker-than-expected pace in the second quarter as the market got a lift from low prices and strong demand for mobile PCs, two surveys showed, AFP reported.
Research firm IDC said late Monday its quarterly tally of global shipments jumped 16.6 percent amid strong growth in the region including Europe, the Middle East and Africa, especially for low-cost and portable PCs.
“This kind of growth in the PC market is just amazing,“ said Loren Loverde, director of the IDC PC Tracker.
“At some point we expect the flood of consumer and portable demand to let up, but so far falling prices and demand across regions and market segments continues to support growth. Such consistent growth raises the prospect that the recent replacement wave is being supplanted by growing adoption that could sustain higher growth into the future.“
A separate report by research firm Gartner Inc. calculated 48.9 million units shipped in the second quarter of 2005, a 14.8 percent increase from the same period last year.
“Demand for mobile (computers) accelerated sales during the second quarter,“ said Charles Smulders at Garnter. “Aggressive price cutting was also a significant factor in driving demand for desktop PCs.“
Gartner figures showed Dell the top global vendor with 17.9 percent and Hewlett-Packard with 14.6 percent. IDC’s data showed Dell with a 19.3 percent market share and HP with 15.6 percent.
In both surveys, Lenovo, the Chinese firm that took over the IBM personal computer division, was ranked third. It has 7.6 percent according to IDC and 7.2 percent in the Gartner data.
“While shipment picture was better than Gartner expected, it was another quarter of intense price competition for the PC vendors,“ Smulders said. “Even so, we expect the operating environment to get yet more difficult in the second half of 2005 as PC replacement opportunities decline.“

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, July 20--Malaysia’s ruling party began a round of soul-searching on Wednesday over a decades-old affirmative-action policy that has failed to close a yawning wealth gap for the nation’s majority ethnic Malays, Reuters reported.
Malays trail well behind minority ethnic Chinese whose ancestors came to the region centuries ago as traders or as mine workers shipped in by colonial rulers.
The United Malays National Organization (UMNO) has spent vast sums of state money and used quotas in business and education in an effort to bridge the gap.
But after 30 years of affirmative action, Malays own just 19 percent of the economy despite making up just over half of the population of 26 million. Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak believes Malays, known as “Bumiputras“ or sons of the earth, have an attitude problem. “It’s true that one of the major problems in developing Bumiputra entrepreneurs since the 1970s is related to attitude,“ he told UMNO delegates in the capital on Tuesday. “They want quick profits but don’t wan’t to work hard...They sell any opportunities given by the government easily and cheaply.“
Malaysia’s ruling coalition, led by UMNO and supported by ethnic Chinese and Indian parties, aims to bring Malay ownership of the nation’s wealth to 30 percent and has pursued this goal since deadly racial riots pitted Malays against Chinese in 1969.
Even former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, who spent 22 years in office and billions of dollars in state funds trying to drag Malays up the economic ladder, has voiced his frustrations. Three years ago, Mahathir lamented that some Malay businessmen preferred to trade assets and take cash profits rather than creating real wealth and warned that Malays risked being left behind in a technological age.
But weaning Malays off state contracts and indirect subsidies, ranging from equity allocations in IPOs to guaranteed university places, could be a recipe for political suicide.
Mahathir’s chosen successor, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, has launched a drive to reform government-linked companies, earning investor applause by hiring new and more competitively minded Malay chief executives to run them on performance-based criteria.
The system of giving Malays a lucrative monopoly over importing cars has also been left intact, despite criticism that it is a costly inefficiency that benefits only a few Malays.

SANTA CLARA, USA, July 20--Semiconductor giant Intel Corp. reported Tuesday a 16-percent jump in second-quarter net profit to $2.04 billion on the back of strong demand for notebook computers, AFP reported.
The figure translated into earnings per share of 33 cents, up from 27 cents in the same quarter of 2004 and just ahead of analysts’ forecasts for 32 cents.
Revenue was up 15 percent at $9.23 billion, “led by strong demand for our notebook platforms“, Intel chief executive Paul Otellini said in a statement.
“Our investments in new products, advanced silicon capacity and emerging markets are paying off with growth that is outpacing the industry,“ he said.
For the third quarter, Intel is targeting revenue of between 9.6 billion and 10.2 billion dollars.
In related news, internet giant Yahoo said Tuesday its second quarter profit grew six-fold from a year ago to $755 million, lifted by increased sales across a broad range of services and a one-time gain, AFP reported.
That compared with a net profit of $113 million in the same period a year ago.
But a big chunk of the increase was a one-time gain of $563 million from the sale of what the company called a “non-strategic investment.“ Company officials gave no details on the sale in a conference call.
Excluding the one-time gain, the profit amounted to 13 cents per share, in line with analyst forecasts for the company.
Revenues grew 50 percent from the same period last year to $1.25 billion, lifted by growth from advertising, fees and partnerships.
“Yahoo continued to see solid growth in the second quarter as a result of our strength in both search marketing and brand advertising, increased engagement from our large, global audience, and our ability to execute and perform according to plan,“ said Terry Semel, chairman and chief executive officer.
“We have a healthy business model that we believe will enable us to take advantage of future growth opportunities and we remain dedicated to providing our users with the very best services on the Internet.“
But shares of Yahoo dropped nearly 10 percent in after-hours action Tuesday because its revenue and outlook fell short of expectations. Yahoo shares dropped $3.63 to 34.10 in late trading after the report.

TOKYO, July 20--Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko began a four-day visit to Japan on Wednesday aimed at boosting investment in his ex-Soviet nation from the world’s second largest economy, AFP reported.
The globe-trotting Yushchenko, who won international acclaim after coming to power in December on the back of peaceful protests, wants to increase bilateral trade which stands at $500 million annually.
Ahead of his arrival, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun business daily reported that Isuzu planned to become the first Japanese automaker to set up production in Ukraine through a joint venture to build trucks in Kiev.
During Yushchenko’s trip, Japan was due to give its support formally to Ukraine’s bid to join the World Trade Organization, which Kiev hopes to do by the end of the year.
Yushchenko was also expected to announce that Kiev would drop visa requirements for visiting Japanese, following similar measures for citizens of the European Union, Switzerland and the United States.
Yushchenko was expected to meet with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and be received by Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko.