S. Korea's economy grows 3.7%

S. Korea's economy grows 3.7%

SEOUL: South Korea's economy grew 3.7 percent year-on-year during the first quarter to March, slightly weaker than expected, the central Bank of Korea (BoK) said on Thursday.

The BoK attributed the slower growth rate to sluggish private consumption and corporate investment amid economic uncertainty due to the crisis over North Korea's suspected nuclear weapons programs and the spreading Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) virus.

The BoK, which had projected 3.9 percent gross domestic product (GDP) growth for the first quarter, said it has no plans to cut its annual growth forecast of 4.1 percent.

"First-quarter growth of 3.7 percent is lower than our latest projection of 3.9 percent," BoK's director general Cho Sung-Jong told a press conference.

"But it's not so bad to the point where we should change our full-year growth forecast of 4.1 percent, projected in April."

The BoK official did not rule out another weaker-than-expected growth figure in the second quarter.

"Second-quarter GDP, seasonally-adjusted, may fall quarter-on- quarter too, but it's too early to tell whether it will grow or fall as we have to look into output data further," Cho said. -- AFP ;Agencies; ANPAf..r.. Moneymatter-China-jobless China's jobless shoot up 11% JP/16/Money

China's jobless shoot up 11%

BEIJING: China's jobless have risen 11 percent over the past year and are likely to continue to increase, state media warned on Thursday.

At the end of March, the number of urban residents without a job reached 7.75 million, a jump of 750,000 from one year earlier, China Daily reported.

The result was an urban jobless rate of 4.1 percent, a rise from 4 percent last year, the newspaper said.

China is struggling to keep its unemployment rate under 4.5 percent but the projections for the coming years do not look promising.

Up to 23 million workers will be looking for employment over the next three to four years, but only eight to nine million jobs are expected to be on offer, statistics from the labor ministry show. -- AFP

;Agencies; ANPAf..r.. Moneymatter-Germany-Schroeder-deficit Schroeder expects higher deficit JP/16/Money

Schroeder expects higher deficit

POTSDAM, Germany: The German government's budget deficit will total around 38 billion euros (US$44 billion) in 2003, twice as high as previously calculated, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder warned late on Wednesday.

Originally, the 2003 budget had estimated a shortfall of 18.9 billion euros, but the economic downturn has drawn a line through those calculations as the slump eats into tax revenues and pushes up the cost of unemployment.

Schroeder told a conference of his Social Democrat SPD party here that the government would draw up a supplementary budget to cover the shortfall.

Already last week, Finance Minister Hans Eichel had said the federal budget deficit would exceed 30 billion euros this year.

The government has already said the total German public deficit, which includes the federal, regional, municipal and social security budgets, was expected to exceed the EU limit of three percent of gross domestic product (GDP) this year. -- AFP

;Agencies; ANPAf..r.. Moneymatter-US-Bahrain-negotiate-trade Bahrain to negotiate trade pact JP/16/Money

Bahrain to negotiate trade pact

WASHINGTON: The Bush administration plans to negotiate a free trade agreement with Bahrain as a stepping stone to a regional free trade pact with countries in the Middle East, U.S. officials said on Wednesday.

The announcement followed a meeting between U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick and the Gulf state's Crown Prince Sheikh Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa.

In a bid to reach out to Muslim countries following the war in Iraq, President George W. Bush set a goal earlier this month of creating a regional free trade agreement with Middle East countries by 2013.

Bush administration officials said they will pursue that effort by negotiating bilateral agreements with countries ranging from Morocco to Iran and eventually stitching them together in a single trade pact.

The United States already has free trade agreements with Israel and Jordan and hopes to conclude another pact with Morocco by the end of this year. The Bush administration hopes to begin talks with Bahrain early next year. -- Reuters