Brazilian employees work at the production line of juice drink producer Del Valle. (AFP File Photo)

PARIS, Nov. 25--Brazil's economic future depends vitally on improved education to achieve "enormous" productivity gains, AFP quoted a leading institute as saying.
"The shortage of human capital is the single most important obstacle to productivity growth," the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said in a survey of the Brazilian economy.
"There is widespread agreement that the gains to be made from faster human capital accumulation are enormous." Poor education indicators were more a problem of educational quality rather than of funding.
Brazil has a recent history of boom and bust, and the OECD said Friday the potential for growth without overheating was now "rather low" at about 3.0-3.5 percent per year.
In the OECD area of leading industrialized countries, potential growth was about 2.5 percent but was expected to rise to 3.0-3.5 percent. Brazil had to pursue reforms to do about five points better, implying growth of 8.0 percent, to catch up in the next quarter of a century, the report said.
The OECD also found that "the reduction of trade barriers seems to have played a crucial role in boosting productivity", and a big privatization program had also helped.
The economy had grown by 2.3 percent last year after 4.9 percent growth in 2004 and 0.5-percent growth in 2003. Praising recent reforms in Brazil for stabilizing inflation, strengthening the currency and reducing debt, the OECD said that "prospects are good for a broad-based recovery."
But the report highlighted three areas where vigorous action was needed:
1- The "overarching" challenge was to "continue to reduce the public debt overhang" while improving public finances by spending controls instead of mainly by tax increases so far. Pension reform was particularly important.
2- A "key policy challenge is to boost innovation in the business sector" because, although innovation performance was improving fast, it was too low and driven mainly by the state and universities.
3- The quality of education had to be improved because while funding was up to OECD levels it was not feeding through fast enough into qualification of the workforce.
However, steps should begin to remove credit controls and to reduce compulsory reserve requirements for banks so that returns for long-term savers would improve. This would also boost capital for innovation.

LA PAZ, Bolivia, Nov. 25--Emboldened by a series of political triumphs, President Evo Morales is pressing to expand his legal powers and push through his populist reforms--a power play both loved and loathed in this bitterly divided nation, AP said.
Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous president who has pledged to redistribute power and wealth to the Indian majority, suggested Friday that the nation's new constitution should eliminate the opposition-controlled Senate, rebuking conservative senators who have walked out of the chamber in a bid to block his sweeping land reform.
Six of Bolivia's nine state governors have angrily broken ties with Morales' government, and three regional assemblies have declared states of emergency to protest his reform proposals.
Anti-Morales protesters this week packed the center of Santa Cruz, the country's wealthiest city, to demand greater local autonomy.
But groups of Indians, landless peasants and coca farmers nationwide are marching toward the capital of La Paz for a demonstration next week to support Morales and to demand passage of his land reform bill.
"These are the impositions of a minority group that has been defeated in national elections, city elections and elections for the constitutional assembly," Morales said at a Wednesday press conference in response to the Senate boycott. "Now they want this process of change to fail."
His efforts to end to restructure Bolivian society have received a series of boosts recently.
On Oct. 28, foreign oil companies bowed to his nationalization decree and signed contracts giving the government a majority of their Bolivian revenues. The signings reversed Morales' sinking poll numbers and even his rivals acknowledged the contracts were a boon for South America's poorest country. In recent weeks, his government has also celebrated a US proposal to extend a key trade agreement and the Inter-American Development Bank's decision to forgive hundreds of millions of dollars (euros) of Bolivia's foreign debt.
The accumulated political capital is burning a hole in Morales' pocket.
This week, Morales asked Congress to pass a bill giving him power to oust state governors--two-thirds of whom hail from opposition parties and have been some of his most vocal critics.
Both land reform and the power to fire state governors face a difficult fight in the opposition-controlled Senate.
Talks between Garcia and the boycotting senators have yet to reach a compromise. The two sides were set to meet again on Saturday.
Morales has said that if senators block land reform, his supporters will use protests and blockades to pressure lawmakers.

HELSINKI, Finland, Nov. 25--Russia will not carve up its state-controlled energy giant Gazprom despite EU enthusiasm for separating production from distribution activities, President Vladimir Putin has said.
Speaking at a joint press conference after an EU-Russia summit, Putin said that the "final parameters" of the EU strategy were not yet known but that as long as there are price disparities in Russia and elsewhere that so-called unbundling is not an option.
"As long as there are price disparities in Russia and in the world markets, we will maintain the integrity of such companies as Gazprom," said Putin.
Such price disparities "cause the movement of goods towards the area where one can get a higher price," he added Friday.
According to AFP, Russia's increasingly hard-nosed approach to its vast energy reserves are fuelling concerns in European capitals, especially after Moscow halted gas deliveries to Ukraine at the beginning of the year in a dispute over prices.
The European Union relies on Russia for more than 40 percent of its gas imports and over 30 percent of its oil imports, according to figures from the European Commission.
Sitting alongside him European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said that unbundling the energy sector would be proposed in a comprehensive EU package on energy policy to be presented in January.
"There is not yet a formal decision on the precise modalities of unbundling" upstream and downstream operations--exploration and production from transportation and distribution," he said.
However Putin insisted that such decisions in Russia were for Moscow to decide.
"Dividing or unbundling our companies into transport and producing companies is a truly national responsibility of competence of the Russian federation," he said, while adding in more conciliatory tone, "We are going to work in close cooperation with our European partners."
Russia and the EU have agreed to work towards aligning price indicators, and the formulas for calculating prices "and we will gradually and smoothly... given changes in the social area... align prices and finally achieve this goal," he added.
European companies are struggling to gain footholds in Russia, a fact all the more painful for them as Gazprom has begun eating into their market share in their home markets and is eager for a bigger role in the European retail sector.
Underlining the problem on Friday, Gazprom vice president Alexander Medvedev told a press conference in Paris that the Russian gas monopoly is very close to a supply agreement with Gaz de France.

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast, Nov. 25--An official report into the dumping of hundreds of tons of toxic refuse in Ivory Coast that caused the death of at least 10 people points an accusatory finger at corrupt and indifferent officials, and the local company contracted to handle the waste, AFP reported.
The government-appointed commission of inquiry charged top officials with negligence, and apportions responsibility all along the administrative chain of command down to the level of local authorities, according to a report released this week.
It said the Abidjan port management "displayed notorious complicity" with the polluters, and singled out Ivorian company Tommy as the main architect of the deadly scandal.
The report also criticized the Dutch company, Trafigura, that chartered the ship on which the toxic material was transported.
While acknowledging that Trafigura informed local authorities of the toxicity of the waste before unloading, investigators said the company failed to respect the Basel Convention on the transportation of dangerous waste and "ignored Ivory Coast's incapacity" to treat such waste.
The panel underlined that the country's political crisis--which started after an armed revolt in 2002--"is characterized in particular by the intensification of corruption and impunity" and a weakened system of rule of law.
Tommy had neither the proper approvals nor the competence to deal with toxic waste, and the ministry of transport disregarded established procedure in licensing Tommy in July 2006, concluded the report.
The preliminary findings also outlined the chain of events leading to the health disaster.
On the morning of Saturday August 19, the Probo Koala--a ship chartered by an international company Trafigura--docked at the port of Abidjan with 528 tons of oil waste on board. It was first inspected by health services and customs police who said they did not detect "anything abnormal".
When customs officers arrived to inspect the ship, tankers hired by Tommy were already connected to the ship's drainage pipes.
Responding to queries by one customs officer on the strong odor emitted by the waste, the director of Tommy said that "analysis by specialists showed that the product did not present any danger."

Two Burkina Faso cotton workers pile up cotton in Boromo, central Burkina Faso. (FP File Photo)

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso,
Nov. 25--Africa's largest producer of cotton, Burkina Faso, is to introduce transgenic cotton to the market in June 2007 in a bid to increase production and fortify a crop susceptible to insects, the country's largest textile firm said.
The plan has sparked concern from organizations that believe genetically modified organisms pose a potential danger to the environment and human health and will not solve Africa's farming problems, said AFP.
"There is no longer any obstacle to introducing transgenic cotton in Burkina. It was scheduled to be introduced in 2008 but the authorities want it to be in 2007," said Celestin Tiendrebeogo, director of the Society of Burkina Fibers and Textiles (Sofitex).
"This new technology will reduce the cost of production for farmers and eliminate the predators of the cotton sector," added Agriculture Minister Salif Diallo. Burkina launched trials of genetically-modified Bt cotton in 2003.
Cotton production accounts for 60 percent of state revenue and supports four million people.
Producers hope transgenic cotton will lead to a 30-percent increase in production per hectare and a reduction in the use of insecticides, Tiendrebeogo said.
But the Coalition for the protection of African Genetic Heritage (COPAGEN), a grouping of sub-Saharan farming and consumer organisations, voiced concern at the prospect.
"We have real concerns about a hasty (decision) ... on the introduction of transgenic cotton in Burkina Faso," the association warned.
COPAGEN and another regional organization called JINKUN said in a statement in September that the Burkina government had begun trials of Bt cotton in 2003 without first setting up any regulatory controls, under pressure from US biotech firms Monsanto and Syngenta, and the US state departments for development aid and farming.
Introducing transgenic cotton was "a Trojan horse" that would allow such biotech multinationals to bring a whole range of GM crops into Africa, they said.
"The problems of cotton in the sub-region today have nothing to do with seeds or productivity or yields," their statement said.
"In general terms, GMOs are not a solution for Africa. The major problems that agriculture faces in our countries include incompetent water management, low soil fertility in many regions, lack of access to the means of production, in particular around issues related to land, lack of access to loans at acceptable interest rates, and the processing of our raw materials on our own continent.

LONDON, Nov. 25--Creditors of Anglo-French cross-Channel tunnel operator Eurotunnel are expected to approve a restructuring plan on Monday, should the vote be attended by enough to form a quorum, Reuters quoted sources close to the talks as saying.
Fifty-three creditors holding about 4.2 billion pounds of debt are scheduled to vote on Monday at a Paris court on the plan, which is aimed at saving the company from liquidation.
More than half of the 53 creditors, or their representatives, are required to be present for the vote to take place.
Holders of two-thirds of the debt are required to back the plan for the proposal to go through. At least 27 creditors need to approve the plan as well for it to pass.
"If there's quorum, there's a good chance the 'yes' will have more than 66.6 percent of the votes," one of the sources said. "The big issue is the quorum."
Oaktree Capital Management LLC, an investment management company, will not attend the vote as it would interfere with its present litigation, a source close to Oaktree said.
Oaktree has publicly opposed the plan, which could give shareholders as much as 13 percent of the company after the restructuring.
Such restructuring often leaves shareholders, who rank after bondholders as creditors of a troubled company, with around 4 to 6 percent of the equity.
"It is a very generous amount of equity left to existing shareholders," said Phil Roantree, who indirectly owns senior Eurotunnel debt as part of the 3 billion pounds of bonds he helps oversee at New Star Asset Management Ltd. in London.
Still, he would vote in favor of the deal.
"I would vote in favor just to get this resolved. It has been dragging on for such a long time," Roantree said.
If creditors voted against the debt restructuring plan, Eurotunnel would be liquidated, with its assets sold.
Eurotunnel has struggled to meet interest payments on its 6.2 billion pounds of debt.
Following months of often acrimonious negotiations, Eurotunnel Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jacques Gounon presented a plan last month under which part of the company's debt would be turned into equity. Under the plan, the company would refinance and sign a new loan of 2.8 billion pounds.