MANILA: Philippine exports continued to slip in August as

MANILA: Philippine exports continued to slip in August as electronics shipments dropped sharply, the government said on Friday, raising fears that a recovery in this key sector will fail to materialize this year.

The National Statistics Office (NSO) said August 2003 exports fell 2.2 percent from a year earlier to US$2.966 billion following a 7.9 percent decline in July.

Total exports for the eight months to August this year of $23.002 billion were only marginally higher than the $22.967 billion posted in the same period last year, an NSO statement said.

The fall in August exports was attributed to a slump in the dominant electronics sector, which was down 7.2 percent to $1.907 billion compared to last year, the NSO said.

Trade Secretary Manuel Roxas, however, remained optimistic that export growth could still reach five percent by the end of the year, remarking that there were signs of an impending recovery in the last four months of 2003.

"Holiday consumer spending across all markets and the (traditional) increases in year-end inventories ... will almost certainly (enable) our electronics business to" get through this patch, Roxas said in a statement. -- AFP

;AFP; ANPAf..r.. Money-Singapore-economy S'pore hopes electronics output to rise JP/16/Money

S'pore hopes electronics output to rise

SINGAPORE: Electronics manufacturers in Singapore expect production levels to rise by up to 15 percent on the year in the September to November period ahead of the Christmas holidays, an industry group said on Friday.

Apart from this seasonal factor, the gradual recovery in the global economy is also helping to spur growth, the Singapore Manufacturers' Federation said.

"Production levels for September to November are positive," federation president Lew Syn Pau told financial news service AFX Asia.

Manufacturers expect growth of up to 15 percent, Lew said but added that companies remain generally cautious as the pick-up is not yet broad-based, with demand largely coming from the consumer electronics segment.

The electronics sector, which accounts for the largest share of Singapore's export-dependent economy, has been in the doldrums for most of the year but is now on a gradual recovery.

Recently released data showed that output from electronics industries rose 1.90 percent from a year earlier in August, extending a modest 0.60 percent rise in July. -- AFP

;AFP; ANPAf..r.. Money-China-auto China's auto imports up nearly 44% JP/16/Money

China's auto imports up nearly 44%

BEIJING: China imported 117,024 motor vehicles in the first eight months of 2003, up 43.7 percent over the same period last year and largely due to the growing purchasing power of consumers and falling automobile tariffs, state press reported on Friday.

In 2002, China imported 127,000 automobiles, Xinhua news agency reported citing custom figures.

More than half of this year's vehicle imports were sedans, it said.

Import tariffs on automobiles last year fell from 80 percent to 50 percent on cars with engines bigger than 3.0 liters, while tariffs on smaller engine vehicles fell from 70 percent to 44 percent in accordance with China's World Trade Organization (WTO) commitments.

China committed to cut car import tariffs to around 25 percent by 2006 when it joined the WTO in 2001.

Auto sales have boomed in China this year with 842,800 units being sold in the first half of the year, up 82 percent from the same period a year ago. -- AFP

;DJ; ANPAf..r.. Japan-Russia-oil Japan, Russia to hold oil pipe talks JP/16/money Japan, Russia to hold oil pipe talks

TOKYO: Japan and Russia plan in late October to hold a fourth round of talks on a Japanese-proposed project to build an oil pipeline spanning eastern Siberia and terminating on Russia's Pacific coast.

A working group of Japanese and Russian government officials meets in Moscow later this month to discuss issues related to the feasibility study of the construction of the pipeline, financing, and cooperation in oil exploration in eastern Siberia, a Japanese government official said Friday.

"A series of the talks, so far, is going very smoothly...I don't see any stumbling blocks," the official said.

Sept. 26, Kazumasa Kusaka, the newly appointed director general of Japan's Agency for Natural Resources and Energy along with the former director general, met his Russian counterparts and agreed to continue talks on the pipeline project.

Both Japan and China have been lobbying Moscow intensively for an agreement to get crude oil from the Siberian Angarsk field, in an effort to diversify their oil import sources and reduce reliance on oil from the Middle East. -- Dow Jones

;AFP; ANPAf..r.. UAE-economy-GDP UAE 2002 GDP grows 2.5% JP/16/money UAE 2002 GDP grows 2.5%

ABU DHABI: The gross domestic product (GDP) of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) grew 2.5 percent to US$71 billion in 2002 despite lower oil revenues, according to official figures released on Friday by the planning ministry.

"The UAE's GDP totalled 260.6 billion dirhams ($71 billion) in 2002 compared to 254.2 billion dirhams in 2001 at a growth rate of 2.5 percent," Planning Minister Sheikh Humaid bin Ahmed Al Mualla said in a statement.

"The GDP growth was due to the impressive growth of the non- oil sector whose revenues totalled 188.5 billion dirhams in 2002 compared to 179.2 billion dirhams in the previous year," he said.

Non-oil sectors accounted for 72.3 percent of GDP in 2002, compared to 70.5 percent the previous year, while the oil sector accounted for 27.7 percent.

Official figures also said investments in the UAE last year totalled 16.8 billion dollars, up 2.6 percent on 2001. -- AFP

;AFP; ANPAf..r.. Switzerland-banking-executives Former executives at Swiss bank charged JP/16/money Former executives at Swiss bank charged

LAUSANNE, Switzerland: Eleven former executives of one Switzerland's largest regional banks, the Banque Cantonale Vaudoise (BCV), have been charged in connection with accounting irregularities at the bank in recent years, a Swiss magistrate said on Friday.

The charges include falsified company information, forgery and unfair management, the chief investigating magistrate for the Swiss canton of Vaud, Jacques Antenen said in a statement.

The move followed an independent inquiry earlier this year into massive losses under previous management at BCV, which is ranked in the top five in Switzerland behind commercial banks UBS and Credit Suisse.

The report by former magistrate Paolo Bernasconi, which was made public this week, found that BCV's accounts had been manipulated since 1996 with the approval of former chief executive Gilbert Duchoud and other executives.

Antenen declined to name those who had been indicted.

The independent inquiry had been ordered by the cantonal government after it was forced to pump more than two billion Swiss francs (US$1.5 billion) of public funds into BCV in three successive capital hikes until last year. -- AFP