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.