JAKARTA: The Indonesian central bank said Tuesday that its

JAKARTA: The Indonesian central bank said Tuesday that its one-month SBI promissory notes yielded 12.93 percent at its weekly auction, slightly down from 12.99 percent last week.

The central bank said it accepted Rp 10.87 trillion (US$1.2 billion) in bids for the one-month SBI notes, or 78.6 percent of the total bids received.

Bank Indonesia has pushed rates lower this year to spur economic growth and to help lower the cost of bailing out the local banking sector.

The one-month SBI note yielded more than 17 percent at the beginning of the year.

Bank Indonesia usually holds the weekly auction Wednesday. But this week's auction was held Monday as local money market will be closed Tuesday and Wednesday for holidays over the New Year. -- Dow Jones

Vietnam lowers tariffs on 760 goods

HANOI: Vietnam will lower customs duties on 760 new products in line with its commitments under the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) which comes into force in 2003, state media said Monday.

Vietnam hopes the move will prepare the ground for its full entry into the Association of Southeast Asian Nations free trade zone in 2006.

Among the products earmarked for tariff cuts next year are cement, electronics goods, paper and building materials.

The official VNA agency said Vietnam had so far reduced customs duties on 5,500 imports from fellow ASEAN members Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.

ASEAN hopes its free trade area will allow it to compete with giant neighbor China, and around 25 percent of Vietnamese trade is with fellow ASEAN members.

ASEAN's six founding members Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand are committed to cutting import tariffs to a maximum of five percent by 2003 and abolishing tariffs completely by 2010. -- AFP

S'pore tourist arrivals surge 10.1%

SINGAPORE: Tourist arrivals in Singapore increased 10.1 percent in November from a year ago, bolstered by a surge in visitors from neighbouring countries, the tourism board said Monday.

A campaign to promote the city-state in other Southeast Asian countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia along with continued upticks in arrivals from China helped to negate falls from Australia, Hong Kong and South Korea.

"Aggressive promotion of the Singapore Visitor Kit in Southeast Asia led to an increase in visitor arrivals from Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines," the board said in a statement.

Indonesian arrivals grew 5.8 percent to 105,497, Malaysia was up 4.4 percent to 48,305, Thailand rose 6.1 percent to 18,935 and the Philippines increased 3.9 percent to 15,169.

Of the 12 biggest markets, Indonesia provided the largest source of incoming tourists last month, followed by China with 56,406 visitors, up 36.9 percent from a year ago. -- AFP

China 2002 growth to reach 8%

BEIJING: China's economy is expected to have grown by eight percent this year, state media reported the country's top statistician as saying Monday.

The estimate was given by Zhu Zhixin, director of the National Bureau of Statistics, earlier in the day, the Xinhua news agency reported.

The figure is slightly higher than a 7.9 percent forecast for growth in 2002 made earlier this month by the State Information Center, a government-run think-tank.

Monday's figure marks a 0.7 percentage point rise from 7.3 percent growth in 2001.

Economists have attributed China's fast growth to brisk exports and large-scale government spending. -- AFP

British bankruptcies hit 8-year high

LONDON: More British business went under in 2002 than at any time in the last eight years, a financial consultancy said Monday.

Analysts Dun and Bradstreet (D&B) said 43,500 businesses went into liquidation or bankruptcy this year, a 7.2 percent increase on 2001 and the highest number since 1994.

During the recession of the early 1990s, business failures topped 60,000 a year in Britain.

Most of this year's failures were among small companies, but D&B said the worldwide economic slowdown made larger firms increasingly vulnerable. -- AP