RI wheat policy may gurt Aussie

RI wheat policy may gurt Aussie

CANBERRA: Australia's AWB Ltd. is worried its wheat export
trade to Indonesia could suffer collateral damage as a result of
others dumping flour there, Matthew Foran, AWB's government
relations manager said Friday.

Wheat sales haven't been affected yet, he said, but when
current forward contacts expire, sales to major Indonesian miller
PT Bogasari Flour Mills could fall, one of the world's biggest
wheat buyers and a major AWB customer, he said.

AWB, which doesn't export flour to Indonesia, is "caught in
the middle" of a dispute in which Indonesia's antidumping
authority, or KADI, has found dumping of flour occurring "from a
variety of sources, not just from Australia, and that dumping is
causing material injury to the domestic industry," he said.

KADI has recommended to its minister that a variety of
antidumping duties of between 5 percent and 30 percent be applied
to provide some relief to the domestic industry, he said.

The Indonesian government hasn't yet decided whether it will
impose the antidumping duties, he said.

Foran said Bogasari purchased about 1.8 million metric tons of
wheat a year from Australia, or about 10 percent of its expected
total exports this marketing year ending Sept. 30.

Bogasari mostly buys Australian wheat. --Dow Jones

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ANPAf..r..
Business-corporatebrief
Restaurant chain leaves 1,700 jobless
JP/16/brief

Restaurant chain leaves 1,700 jobless

HONG KONG: Hong Kong's oldest restaurant chain has closed,
leaving nearly 1,700 workers jobless as the territory's economic
woes show no signs of abating, the labor department said.

The Treasure Restaurant Group, founded in 1977, collapsed on
Wednesday in one of the worst mass lay-offs in Hong Kong's labor
history.

The Labor Department spokesman said Friday that some 1,670
employees of the Treasure Restaurant Group had put in claims for
wages in lieu of notice and severance payment as well as
outstanding wages.

It was believe to be the biggest mass lay-off in recent years.
Hong Kong's largest telephone company Pacific Century CyberWorks
sacked 858 workers in March.

The jobless rate has risen to a record 7.1 percent in the
three months to April.--AFP

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ANPAf..r..
Business-corporatebrief
Sony, NEC to tie up on PDP

JP/16/brief

Sony, NEC to tie up on PDP

TOKYO: Japanese consumer electronics giant Sony Corp. said
Friday it had agreed to tie up with hi-tech firm NEC Corp. on a
plasma display panels (PDPs) deal after rejecting an earlier
agreement with two rivals.

"We have come to a basic agreement but on what conditions and
in what way we can cooperate is still being discussed. We haven't
signed a formal contract yet," said Sony spokeswoman Yuriko
Nakatani.

Sony at the end of May spurned a deal to acquire PDPs for its
PDP television sets which would have required a five billion yen
(US$40 million), 15 percent stake in a joint venture of Fujitsu
Ltd. and Hitachi Ltd. which make the display panels.

Instead it is seeking a non-equity deal with NEC, Nakatani
said.

Sony is looking eagerly at the flat-panel large television
market, in which 120,000 units were sold in Japan in 2001, with
growth expected to rocket to 210,000 units in 2002.--AFP

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ANPAf..r..
Business-corporatebrief
Honda plans second plant in China
JP/16/brief

Honda plans second plant in China

TOKYO: Japanese automaker Honda Motor Co. plans to build a
second passenger-car manufacturing plant in China as early as
2004, a local newspaper reported Friday.

Honda is in talks with the Chinese government to construct the
plant in the southeastern Chinese city of Guangzhou, the Nihon
Keizai financial daily said.

Masaya Nagai, a spokesman for Tokyo-based Honda, said the
company has been discussing a "variety of ideas" with Chinese
officials. "But nothing has been decided in concrete terms,"
Nagai said.

Honda is Japan's second-largest automaker. Its existing
factory in China is also in Guangzhou.

Under the plans, Honda and Guangzhou Auto Group Corp., Honda's
current joint venture partner, will set up a new company to
operate the plant with annual production capacity of 100,000
cars, the daily said in a dispatch from Guangzhou. It did not
quote any sources. --AP