KUALA LUMPUR: Crude palm oil (CPO) prices on Malaysia's

KUALA LUMPUR: Crude palm oil (CPO) prices on Malaysia's Derivatives Exchange are likely to trend further south amid a lack of fresh leads, dealers said Friday.

CPO prices for February closed at 1,626 ringgit (US$428) a ton at the end of the week.

"The market will initially be softer," a dealer with a local brokerage said.

"Export figures to be released Monday are not expected to be impressive and there has been no demand from China, Pakistan and India."

The dealer said news that India would not reduce import duties for palm oil would also drag down the market.

"The market will try to test the 1,600 level and could even go down to 1,570," said another local dealer.

In the futures market, the February contract fell 51 ringgit over the week to settle at 1,626 a ton. The March contract was down 47 ringgit to 1,623 a ton while April fell 41 ringgit to end at 1,619.

The average daily price for February was 1,648.80 ringgit a ton. -- AFP

Farm subsidies ineffective: Study

PARIS: Government farm subsidies largely do not work and most of the money never ends up as an income gain for farmers, according to a new report by the OECD released on Friday.

The Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said its study showed that only 25 percent of the estimated US$1 billion (939 million euros) in state agriculture subsidies ends up as extra income for farmers.

"None of the support measures we studied would seem to provide long-term income benefits for farm households efficiently," the study concluded.

"It is clear that widely prevailing approaches to support are not efficient in improving farm household income, and even have the opposite effect of raising costs and reducing farm profitability over the longer term," it said.

The study said that because most of the aid is calculated on the basis of production, larger and richer farms tend to be the recipients of the taxpayer subsidies.

It also found that 40 percent of the aid wound up going to farm suppliers while 14 percent went to extra rent for non- farming landlords.

The report suggested that governments wanting to increase the income of farmers look to other methods besides agricultural policy. -- AFP

G7 finance summit delayed

PARIS: A finance summit of the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations, scheduled for Jan. 31 and Feb. 1 in Paris, has been delayed, a French finance ministry spokesman said Thursday.

"Several G7 finance ministers told us they had a problem in attending the Feb. 1 meeting," the spokesman said. "We are in consultations to find a new date," he added.

Finance Minister Francis Mer later said the meeting would be postponed "15 days."

"One cannot hold a G7 without the Americans, because Mr Snow ...," he said, without completing the sentence.

According to a source close to the discussions, the postponement mainly was due to the fact that the nomination of the new U.S. treasury secretary, John Snow, had not yet been approved by the U.S. Senate.

Snow, named in December to replace Paul O'Neill, is to be interviewed by the U.S. Senate finance committee on Jan. 28. -- AFP

S'pore exports bounces back

SINGAPORE: Singapore's key exports bounced back to mild growth last year from a sharp contraction in 2001 but the recovery was below market expectations, the government trade body said Friday.

Non-oil domestic exports (NODX) grew 1.9 percent to S$98.6 billion (US$57 billion) in 2002, swinging back from a 14.5 percent contraction the year before, International Enterprise (IE) Singapore said.

With global electronics demand still subdued, Singapore's pharmaceutical and petrochemical exports boosted the overall growth. Electronics make up about 60 percent of the NODX.

For the month of December, NODX grew 4.4 percent to US$8.0 billion, much slower than the 19 percent rise registered in November.

Singapore's total trade in 2002 rose 1.5 percent to S$432 billion, reversing a 9.4 percent decline in 2001.

Analysts said Singapore, which narrowly escaped a second recession in the final quarter of 2002, needs a stronger export showing for it to achieve the upper end of its gross domestic product (GDP) forecast of between 2.0-5.0 percent this year. -- AFP

ADB lends Vietnam $45m

MANILA: The Asian Development Bank (ADB) said Friday it has approved a US$45-million loan to Vietnam to support efforts for improving public administration.

The bank is also extending three million dollars in grants to support the program which is intended to produce better-trained and more professional civil servants.

Among the objectives of the program are improved efficiency, reduced wastage of time, money, red tape, transaction costs and corruption, the bank said in a statement from Manila.

Officials will be trained to give better service while the administrative system will be modernized, including the computerization of some functions and electronic linkage of government agencies, the ADB added.

The loan only covers the first phase of the reform program, extending from 2003 to 2005.

Further loans totaling $105 million, covering the second and third phase of the program from 2006 to 2010, may be extended, depending on the government's requests and the performance of the first phase, the ADB said. -- AFP