BII launches Masterphone

BII launches Masterphone

JAKARTA (JP): Bank Internasional Indonesia (BII) launched a
Masterphone Telephone Service yesterday by turning its MasterCard
into an international calling card.

The assistant vice president of BII's Card Center, Rudy
Hamdani, said with a BII MasterCard, the cardholder can make a
direct call to almost any part of the world from 49 countries by
using touch-tone telephones.

"Payment is automatically billed to the caller's monthly
MasterCard account, even if he uses someone's telephone in a
foreign country," Hamdani said.

Since its establishment five years ago, BII's Card Center has
amassed 118,000 BII Visa and MasterCard cardholders, and expects
the number to rise by another 20,000 this year. (09)

U.S. industrial output up

WASHINGTON (AFP): Industrial production in the United States
was up 0.3 percent in April for the 11th consecutive monthly
increase, the Federal Reserve said yesterday.

The rise was in line with what most economists had predicted.

The Fed also said that the operating rate at industrial
companies in April was steady at 83.6 percent. Economists had
expected this figure to rise by 0.1 percent.

On an annual basis to the end of April, industrial production
was up five percent and the operating rate up 2.2 percent, the
Fed said.

Egypt's cotton exports soar

CAIRO (Reuter): Egypt's resurgent cotton producers have
secured export orders for at least 320,000 bales (230 million
lbs) of cotton this year, a six-fold increase from last year, an
official said yesterday.

The official at the state-owned cotton holding company said
India, whose own crop slumped badly this year, increased orders
to 78,000 bales (56 million lbs) and helped push Egypt's exports
to a seven-year high.

Exports for the 1993/94 (September-August) marketing year have
also been boosted by sharp price cuts, increased production, and
poor harvests in other cotton-producing countries like Pakistan
and China.

The official declined to put a value on the orders secured so
far. Most of Egypt's export varieties sell for between 80-90
cents/lb, with some of the higher quality long-fiber crop
fetching as much as 165 cents/lb.

Exports of Egyptian cotton, once a byword for quality, have
slumped in the past 20 years due to increased local consumption
and poor harvests. Farmers, discouraged by the low prices offered
by the state, switched to more profitable crops.

Turkey to get WB loan

ANKARA (Reuter): Turkey, battling a financial crisis, could
get a structural adjustment loan from the World Bank as early as
late September, a World Bank official said.

Fred Levy, the bank's division chief for country operations in
a region including Turkey, said after a week of exploratory talks
in Ankara he expected a World Bank mission to return in six to
eight weeks' time for detailed discussions.

"This time-table is optimistic, but we are aiming to have an
operation to put to the (World Bank) board in late September,"
Levy told Reuters in an interview.

He said no authorized lending target existed yet, but added
that the loan could be "in the range of US$300-500 million".

Turkish Prime Minister Tansu Ciller announced a package of
austerity measures and economic reforms on April 5 to try to
control a spiraling budget deficit seen as the main engine for
inflation, which hit an annual 107 percent in April.

Biggest taxpayers in Japan

TOKYO (AFP): Consumer financiers and the Israeli widow of a
computer game czar topped the list of Japan's biggest taxpayers
for 1993, while real estate dealers bowed out of the limelight as
the end of the "bubble economy" investment boom became more
apparent.

Only 46 people in the list of the top 100 taxpayers issued by
the national tax administration agency yesterday had made their
fortunes through the sale of real estate.

The figure, the lowest in 10 years, was down 20 from the
previous year and down 40 from the peak year in 1991, the agency
said.

But 30 people made the top 100 by selling stocks, up 11 from
the previous year. Of them, eight were related to share sales by
consumer financing companies.

Yasuo Takei, the 64-year-old founder of Takefuji Co., which
offers unsecured loans to consumers, topped the list by paying
4.3 billion yen (41 million dollars) in tax.

Asya Kogan, the 69-year-old widow of Taito Corp. founder
Mikhail Kogan, was second on the list after paying 2.2 billion
yen in tax. The Israeli citizen sold 2,000 Taito shares when the
company was listed on the second section of the Tokyo Stock
Exchange in August.

Vietnam raises steel output

HANOI (AFP): Vietnam expects to be self-sufficient in steel
production by the end of the century due to a rush of foreign
investors setting up mills here, a report said yesterday.

But the country will have to import a huge amount of steel
over the next few years as local producers can meet less than
half of the expected demand of 800,000 tons this year, the Lao
Dong newspaper reported.

Construction on two joint venture steel mills began in April
with a combined capacity of 440,000 tons a year, while work has
started on upgrading production at the Thai Nguyen Steel Corp.
from 120,000 tons to 300,000 tons.

The two new plants, joint ventures with South Korea's Posco
and Kyoei of Japan, are due to come on line in 1996, bringing
Vietnamese steel production up to about one million tons a year.

Further expected investment from 1996 is expected to bring
production up to 1.5 million tons by the end of the century,
which is expected to meet the rising demand from the country's
booming construction sector, the labor newspaper said.

Illegal gold sales in China

BEIJING (AFP): Illegal sales continued to plague China's gold
sector in the first quarter of 1994, with state purchases
unchanged despite a 17 percent jump in output over the same
period last year, it was reported yesterday.

Sales to the state, unchanged on 1993, were down 35 percent on
the first three months of 1992, the China Daily quoted Ministry
of Metallurgical Industry gold bureau vice president Cui Dewen as
saying.

Cui blamed the drop on a booming illegal trade between gold
producers and processing factories, which offer higher prices
than the central bank.

Last year, gold sales to the state plunged 40 percent on 1992,
the first fall in 15 years.

The government tried to reverse the trend in September by
raising its purchasing price from 51.2 yuan (US$8.80) to 96 yuan
($16.70) a gram, in line with the world market.

However, when the value on the London gold market subsequently
climbed, the Chinese government failed to keep its pledge to peg
its purchase price to this level, forcing sellers back to the
black market.

U.S., Japan to resume talk

WASHINGTON (Reuter): The United States and Japan will open
exploratory trade talks in Washington Thursday, a U.S. official
said yesterday.

"I don't yet know people. I don't yet know how many (envoys
are coming from Tokyo). But Thursday is correct," the trade
official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Thursday's meeting will probe the possibilities for reopening
the formal dialogue.

The United States and Japan agree that their US$60 billion
trade imbalance must be cut but have parted ways over how.

U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor has laid down precise
conditions for a resumption in trade talks, with both sides
aiming to get back on track before a July economic summit in
Naples.