Nearly 40 percent of the 1.8 million tons of poultry slaughtered in France is exported.

PARIS, Feb. 19--France, the world’s fourth largest poultry exporter, has lost about a third of its trade over fears about the unrelenting spread of bird flu across the globe, AFP says.
“The situation is very difficult for the part of the poultry sector concerned with exporting chickens,“ said Francis Ranc, president of a chicken export group (GIPEP) centered in Brittany.
“There has been at least a 30 to 40 percent drop in poultry exports,“ Ranc said at the headquarters of Tilly-Sabco, part of the Doux Group, the No.1 European poultry producer which accounts for nearly all exports from France.
Avian influenza and its H5N1 strain that can be lethal to humans has reached from Asia to the Middle East and central Europe and recently into Africa and several European Union countries.
The H5N1 strain had been detected in a wild duck found dead in France, Europe’s top poultry producer, the agriculture ministry said Saturday, making it the sixth EU country to be hit.
Tests on the bird, found in the central-eastern Ain department on Monday, confirmed that it was carrying the highly pathogenic strain of the flu, the ministry said in a statement.
As a precaution, the government has ordered all poultry and tame birds to be kept indoors, to prevent possible contamination from wild birds.
While the EU cases have concerned wild birds, the public’s fears about the spreading virus have led to a drop in poultry sales.
In the export market, French poultry producers have been especially hard hit in the Middle East, its third biggest market after Russia and Japan.
“The level of orders from the Middle East, for February and March, are down between 20 to 30 percent,“ said Cyrille Arcomone, a spokesman for Doux, a 1.4 billion-euro (1.7 billion-dollar) group that gets half its revenue from exports.
Last year the Mideast accounted for 165,000 tons of the total 672,000 tons exported.
France has been feeling the heat of competition in this lucrative market from the bigger poultry producing countries, namely, Brazil, the United States and Thailand.
Nearly 40 percent of the 1.8 million tons of poultry slaughtered in France is exported, according to Andre Le Peule of the Federation of Poultry Industries (FIA).

The United States has become one of the major sources of China's agricultural product import.

BEIJING, China, Feb. 19--China’s agricultural trade deficit against the United States, which stood at $1.53 billion in 2001, jumped 150 percent to 3.77 billion dollars in 2005, the China Economic Times reported Sunday.
Yin Chengjie, Chinese Vice Minister of Agriculture, made the remark at a recent economic forum on Sino-US trade relations held in Beijing, the newspaper said.
Since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, it has witnessed increasing net import of farm products, Yin said.
Figures showed that from 2001 to 2005, the Sino-US trade of agricultural products rose almost 2.4 times from 4.1 billion dollars to more than 10 billion dollars.
Meanwhile the proportion of the Sino-US agricultural trade in China’s total trade of agricultural products rose from 4.5 percent to 17.2 percent, according to figures from the Ministry of Agriculture.
“The United States has become one of the major sources of China’s agricultural product import,“ said Yin.
In 2005, China imported 26.59 million tons of soybeans and 2.65 million tons of cotton from the United States, and in the first ten months of 2005, the agricultural product export of the United States to China grew 28 percent, figures show.
Yin attributed the expanding trade deficit in Sino-US agricultural trade mainly to the unequal market opening of the two countries.
Although the United States imports horticultural products worth 16 billion to 18 billion dollars, and animal products worth 7 billion to 9 billion dollars from other parts of the world, many of China’s farm products with comparative advantages including pears and apples have no access to the US market, the newspaper said.
The two countries should enhance cooperation in farm field, and open their agricultural markets equally, so as to solve the unbalanced trade problem, said Yin.
Since 2001, China strictly implemented its obligation and promises to the World Trade Organization, through cutting down its import tariffs over farm products by large margins.
Now the average tariff rate over imported farm products only stands at 15.3 percent.
Meanwhile the Chinese government also eliminated the non-tariff trade barriers in this area, and set up fair and transparent systems on quota management.
Figures showed China’s trade surplus of agricultural products totaled 4.2 billion dollars in 2001, but it turned into deficit of4.64 billion dollars in 2004.
Insiders believe some other factors also contributed to the fluctuations in the country’s farm produce trade.

SINGAPORE,
Feb. 19--The double-decker super-jumbo Airbus A380 is expected to be a major star as it debuts at Asia’s premier air show this week, spearheading the European firm’s drive for dominance over US arch rival Boeing, AFP reported.
The world’s biggest passenger airliner, decked out in the colors of Singapore Airlines (SIA), landed at Changi Airport Saturday after a flight from Toulouse, France, for the Asian Aerospace event.
SIA, one of the world’s most profitable carriers, is to receive its first orders of the airliner in November. It will be the first carrier to fly the winged giant.
While the A380 can carry 555 passengers in three classes, SIA has opted for a 480-seat configuration for more space.
More than 900 exhibitors from 43 countries will display their civilian and military planes and related equipment during the six-day event starting Tuesday, organiser Reed Exhibitions said.
Leading Airbus’ charge will be the A380, which will conduct a daily flying display from Tuesday to Sunday.
US aircraft manufacturer Boeing, which had 55 percent of the global long-range order market last year, will show off its new fuel-efficient flagship Dreamliner 787 airliner and the 777-200LR jet, the world’s longest-range twin-engine aircraft.
Boeing says it recorded 1,008 firm orders for commercial jets last year, 41 percent of which were from clients in Asia.
Fresh from winning a contract to sell 12 F-15 Eagle fighter jets to the Singapore Armed Forces, Boeing is bringing in the strike aircraft to rattle the skies with demonstration flights.
But Airbus, which is 80-percent owned by European Aerospace, Defence and Space (EADS) company and 20 percent by BAE Systems of Britain, is determined not to be left in Boeing’s vapour trails.
Aircraft orders from Asia and the Pacific in 2005 accounted for more than 45 percent of the global total, with more than 500 firm Airbus orders, it said.

Tourism is Malaysia's second-largest foreign exchange earner.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Feb. 19--Malaysia is hoping to attract some 20.1 million tourists in 2007, up from 15.7 million in 2004 and hopes to increase revenues by 50 percent, officials were quoted as saying Sunday. The government is hoping the increased numbers of tourists will bring in a record 44.5 billion ringgit (12.0 billion dollars) next year, up from 29.7 billion ringgit in 2004, tourism ministry secretary-general Victor Wee was quoted as saying by the official Bernama news agency.
Malaysia is planning the boost in visitor numbers to coincide with celebrations for the 50th anniversary of the country’s independence.
The government had earlier set a target of 19 million tourist arrivals for next year.
Wee said he expected the bulk of the tourists to continue coming from neighbouring Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia as well as major markets like China, India, the Middle East, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. The number of Arab tourists visiting Malaysia doubled in 2004.
The government, drawing on its status as a Muslim majority country, targeted some 200,000 Arab arrivals in 2005, or a 40 percent increase.
Tourism is Malaysia’s second-largest foreign exchange earner.

ABU DHABI, UAE, Feb. 19--Dubai Aluminum Co (Dubal) and Abu Dhabi’s investment vehicle Mubadala agreed to invest six billion dollars (five billion euros) in building the world’s largest Aluminum smelter.
“This is an important strategic and historical alliance that will serve the UAE national economy and will capitalize on the excellent infrastructure already existing in the country,“ Dubal vice chairman Ahmed al-Humaid al-Tayer said in a statement.
The two entities will jointly build, own and operate the 1.2 million-ton per year capacity smelter at Khalifa port in Abu Dhabi’s Taweelah industrial zone, the statement said.
The project, which is expected to be completed in 2010, will create 4,000 jobs that will mostly be filled by UAE nationals.
“This is the first in a number of business synergies between Mubadala and Dubal, which will make the UAE a first-tier player and a global force in the Aluminum industry,“ said Khaldoon al-Mubarak, the chief executive officer of Mubadala after the signing ceremony.
The two companies will pursue “investment opportunities along the entire Aluminum supply chain“ in the Middle East and North Africa region.
Dubal, which is owned by the Dubai government, is the Middle East’s largest Aluminum producer with a capacity of 761,000 tons a year.

SYDNEY, Australia, Feb. 19--Australia has agreed to fast-track the controversial three-billion-dollar (2.22 billion US) privatization of the Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric Scheme, in what will be the country’s largest share market float for five years.
“The Snowy“ is a mammoth engineering feat described by Melbourne’s The Age newspaper as “Australia’s proudest nation-building project“ and credited by historians with helping to reshape post-World War II society in the country.
Hewn out of the rugged Snowy Mountains on the border of New South Wales and Victoria states, the project consists of 145 kilometers (90 miles) of interconnected tunnels and 80 kilometers of aqueducts.
The backbreaking construction work was carried out over 25 years from 1949 by some 100,000 workers, most of them immigrants from war-ravaged eastern European or Mediterranean countries.
The influx of refugees after the war is often described as Australia’s first experiment in multiculturalism.
Two entire towns, Jindabyne and Adaminaby--including cemeteries, churches and homes--were relocated to make way for huge dam catchments.
Since its completion, the Snowy has become Australia’s largest supplier of renewable energy, pumping 4,500 gigawatts of electricity a year into the national grid.
The New South Wales state government, facing increasing budget pressures, has decided to sell its 58 percent stake in the scheme, giving its Victorian counterpart, with 29 percent and the federal government, 13 percent, little option but to follow suit.
Unlike the privatization of telecoms giant Telstra, which has taken more than a decade to achieve so far and remains a hotly debated political topic, the sale of the Snowy scheme in June has been pushed through by the state and federal governments in little more than three months.
NSW Premier Morris Iemma said the Snowy needed a capital injection to complete its construction schemes and it was not appropriate for taxpayers to foot the bill.
Local communities, environmentalists and farmers downstream from the Snowy’s dams have condemned the sale, fearing increasing amounts of water will be diverted from the natural flow of the river system to generate power.
Opposition Labor politician Peter Garrett, the former front man for protest rockers Midnight Oil and a longtime environmentalist, said the chances of increasing flows into the river would be reduced if Snowy executives were answerable solely to shareholders, rather than public officials.
However, federal Finance Minister Nick Minchin said agreements to increase the river’s flows had already been finalized.

Iraqi firemen try to extinguish a burning oil pipeline following several explosions near the northern town of Kirkuk, Iraq. (Reuters File Photo)

BAGHDAD, Iraq,
Feb. 19--Iraq on Sunday said it lost over six billion dollars last year from its key economic lifeline of oil revenue due to sustained rebel attacks, despite the world witnessing a surge in crude prices.
Iraq’s oil ministry said rebels inflicted a total of 186 attacks in the whole of 2005 on various oil installations, making a huge economic dent at a time when the country’s security fiber was simultaneously torn threadbare.
“Iraq lost oil revenues worth 6.25 billion dollars in 2005 due to sabotage on the country’s oil infrastructure,“ Assem Jihad, spokesman for Iraq’s oil ministry told AFP on Sunday.
He said insurgents carried out a total of 186 attacks on the country’s oil installations last year, killing 47 oil engineers and technicians and another 91 police and security guards.
He said the loss includes 3.12 billion dollars lost from attacks on the domestic pipelines transporting oil and gas and 2.71 billion dollars from attacks on exporting pipelines.
Some 400 million dollars were lost from explosions at its crude oil wells and another 12 million dollars from attacks on pipelines between the wells and refineries.
Jihad said that during 2005, the average crude oil production was at 1.5 million barrels per day.
Oil is Iraq’s lifeline as the country virtually buys everything it needs from the revenue generated from oil sales, while consistent attacks on its oil network have often heated the world crude prices.