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Name | Symbol | Market | Type |
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Icbccss&p500usd | LSE:CHIN | London | Exchange Traded Fund |
Price Change | % Change | Price | Bid Price | Offer Price | High Price | Low Price | Open Price | Traded | Last Trade | |
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0.00 | 0.00% | 11.348 | 11.37 | 11.45 | - | 0 | 09:47:10 |
Date | Subject | Author | Discuss |
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20/3/2007 02:25 | Mainland Land banks - at end-Dec.2006 ---- China Vanke... 18.00 mn sq.m ---- Shui On Land... 6.70 mn ---- Beijing Capital 5.55 mn Vanke plans to raise 10 billion yuan by issuing new A shares to fund development of 11 residential developments in Gaungzhou, Foshan, Zhuhai, Shanghai, Nanjing, Hangzhoun & Ningpo | energyi | |
02/3/2007 07:34 | Novartis Ag Novartis Hepatitis-B treatment Sebivo approved in China BASEL (AFX) - Novartis AG said it's Hepatitis B treatment Sebivo has been approved by Chinese health authorities and will be launched in April. The EU's Committee for Human Medicinal Products (CHMP) last week issued a positive opinion on the treatment. About 10 pct of the Chinese population suffers from Hepatitis B, the country's second largest cause of death. afx.zurich@afxnews.c at/lam | ariane | |
01/3/2007 13:24 | Jim Rogers Bloomberg interview - | bhg | |
28/2/2007 16:14 | I've decided to go for Jupitars China acc fund and liked the fact the fund only started in october at 50p which is now 69p. | aussiedonnie | |
18/2/2007 09:13 | China to strengthen controls on nuclear exports BEIJING - China said it will strengthen controls on the export of nuclear equipment, days after an international agreement was reached on phasing out North Korea's nuclear program. Prime minister Wen Jiabao signed a decree banning the use of Chinese nuclear goods and technology to carry out atomic explosions without prior agreement, state press reported. Importers of Chinese goods will also be barred from using them for nuclear proliferation, except under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Although the decree does not specifically mention North Korea, it comes hot on the heels of an agreement secured on Tuesday in the Chinese capital in which Pyongyang agreed to close its nuclear facility in Yongbyon and allow the return of IAEA inspectors, expelled in December 2002. Xinhua said existing Chinese regulations on the control of exports have not been tough enough to prevent nuclear proliferation. US President George W. Bush urged his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao Thursday to keep enforcing UN-imposed sanctions on North Korea. The United Nations adopted a resolution following North Korea's October 9 test imposing a raft of sanctions, including a ban on selling goods and technologies that could be used for nuclear programmes to Pyongyang. afp | waldron | |
15/2/2007 21:03 | Many thanks Flashheart and Woracle. : ) | aussiedonnie | |
15/2/2007 20:19 | Gartmore was good, but the fund manager jumped shipped to Jupiter and now his Jupiter China fund is now doing incredily well indeed. As they say, follow the manager... | woracle | |
15/2/2007 19:16 | Don't take this as gospel as you'll need to do your own digging but as far as investment trusts, look at JPMorgan China Investment Trust and for unit trusts look at Gartmore China Opportunities. (The latter is apparently quite well regarded. You can glean some very useful info at www.trustnet.com. Just type china or chinese in the search box and it should come up with all china related IT's and UT's. flash. | flashheart | |
15/2/2007 18:09 | Hi, does anyone know of a good fund manager investing in China they could recommend. | aussiedonnie | |
12/1/2007 11:48 | China will have 30 million more men of marriageable age than women by 2020, making it difficult for them to find wives, according to a national report. | don muang | |
10/1/2007 20:43 | Mainland set to overtake Hong Kong in IPOs.... | don muang | |
08/1/2007 17:59 | Power, corruption and lies To the west, China is a waking economic giant, poised to dominate the world. But, argues Will Hutton in this extract from his new book, we have consistently exaggerated and misunderstood the threat - and the consequences could be grave Monday January 8, 2007 The Guardian Consumers on Nanjing Road, Shanghai's major shopping street. Photograph: Getty Images/National Geographic The emergence of China as a $2 trillion economy from such inauspicious beginnings only 25 years ago is such a giddy accomplishment that the temptation to see its success as proof positive of your own prejudices is overwhelming. And the west's broad prejudice is that China is growing so rapidly because it has abandoned communism and embraced capitalism. China's own claim - that it is building a very particular economic model around what it describes as a socialist market economy - is dismissed as hogwash, the necessary rhetoric the Communist party must use to disguise what is actually happening. China proves conclusively that liberalisation, privatisation, market freedoms and the embrace of globalisation are the only route to prosperity. China is on its way to capitalism but will not admit it. Article continues -------------------- -------------------- But the closer you get to what is happening on the ground in China, its so-called capitalism looks nothing like any form of capitalism the west has known and the transition from communism remains fundamentally problematic. The alpha and omega of China's political economy is that the Communist party remains firmly in the driving seat not just of government, but of the economy - a control that goes into the very marrow of how ownership rights are conceived and business strategies devised. The western conception of the free exercise of property rights and business autonomy that goes with it, essential to any notion of capitalism, does not exist in China. The truth is that China is not the socialist market economy the party describes, nor moving towards capitalism as the western consensus believes. Rather it is frozen in a structure that I describe as Leninist corporatism - and which is unstable, monumentally inefficient, dependent upon the expropriation of peasant savings on a grand scale, colossally unequal and ultimately unsustainable. It is Leninist in that the party still follows Lenin's dictum of being the vanguard, monopoly political driver and controller of the economy and society. And it is corporatist because the framework for all economic activity in China is one of central management and coordination from which no economic actor, however humble, can opt out. In this environment genuine wholesale privatisation is impossible and liberalisation has well-defined limits, as President Hu Jintao himself brutally reminds us. The party, he says, "takes a dominant role and coordinates all sectors. Party members and party organisations in government departments should be brought into full play so as to realise the party's leadership over state affairs". It may be true that party organisations in the provinces (some with populations bigger than Britain's) and in the chief cities are jealous of their autonomous local political control, but all retain the discretionary power to do what they choose and override any challenge or complaint from any non-state actor - or, indeed, from state actors if they cross the will of the party. Absolute power corrupts, and the Chinese Communist party has become one of the most corrupt organisations the world has ever witnessed. The combination of absolute power and an ideology that palpably no longer describes reality is a virus that is morally and psychologically undermining the regime. And if the regime wobbles, then its capacity to sustain the unsustainable economic structures will wobble and Leninist corporatism will unravel. Beijing's authority could fragment and China's provinces reassert their destructive independence as they did in the 1910s and 20s, or a new and fiercely repressive regime could try to hold the country together abandoning economic openness and market reforms - and even pick some international fights (such as invading Taiwan?) to rally the country to its side. It is because this prospect is so real that the task of peacefully moving to a sustainable capitalism, and building the necessary institutions to do it, is so vital for both China and the world. Ever since the late 1990s the party leadership, then under Hu's predecessor Jiang Zemin, has rightly become more and more preoccupied with how corruption is corroding the party. "If we do not crack down on corruption, the flesh-and-blood ties between the party and the people will suffer a lot and the party will be in danger of losing its ruling position, or possibly heading for self-destruction," Jiang declared in 2002, in his last political report to the National Congress. High-level officials had been arrested and imprisoned for embezzlement and racketeering; they included the party secretary and mayor of Beijing, Chen Xitong, a member of the Politburo. Cheng Kejie, vice-chairman of the National People's Congress, was executed for taking pounds 2.5m in kickbacks for arranging land deals and contracts for private business. In the financial system the highest-profile casualties were three of prime minister Zhu Rongji's hand-picked "can-do commanders", selected to sort out the financial crisis of the late 1990s, and one of whom, Li Fuxiang, leaped to his death from the seventh floor of Beijing's Hospital 304 while under investigation. To put this in a British context, it is as if the Mayor of London, the speaker of the House of Commons, the chief executive of HSBC, along with a deputy governor of the Bank of England and the deputy chief executive of the Financial Services Authority had all been imprisoned for fraud with one committing suicide. For all the strengthening of the anti-corruption and Orwellian sounding "Central Discipline Inspection Committee", corruption remains deeply embedded. The number of arrests of senior cadres members above the county level quadrupled between 1992 and 2001, and since then have included a ring of officials in Gansu, one of China's poorest provinces, caught embezzling pounds 500m. Four provincial governors and one provincial party secretary have been charged recently - the top posts in China outside Beijing. And in September 2006 came the arrest of Shanghai party secretary and member of the politburo Chen Liangyu for his involvement in the misappropriation of pounds 206m of social security funds. The Chinese economist Hu Angang, in his trailblazing book Great Transformations in China: Challenges and Opportunities, calculates that over the late 90s the cumulative annual cost of corruption was between 13.3% and 16.9% of GDP and is still around that level today. Every incident of corruption - smuggling, embezzlement, theft, swindling, bribery - arises in the first place from the unchallengeable power of communist officials and the lack of any reliable, independent system of accountability and scrutiny. Corruption has become part of the system's DNA, now threatening the integrity of the state. To see how, look no further than the combination of one-party control and corruption and how it deforms the legal system. The judicial apparatus is politicised from top to bottom. Every president and vice-president of a court is appointed by the party; and the courts are funded by provincial governments. The court bureaucracy works on the same basis as the rest of the government, with a party committee system superintending each rung of the court hierarchy. Judges often make decisions at the instruction of the committee or government independently of the legal merits of the case. Many judges still have no formal legal training - the majority are retired army officers, only too ready to do the party's bidding. The scale of the corruption is stunning. In 2003, 794 judges were tried for corruption (out of a national total of 200,000). In 2003 and 2004, the presidents of the provincial high courts of Guangdong and Hunan were both found guilty of corruption. When the party does not or cannot influence the judgment in a case, it can use its influence over the police to decide whether to slow down or not enforce the judgment. Enforcement rates in China are lamentable; for example, only 40% of provincial high court decisions are enforced. The lack of a clear system of property rights, with the party-state claiming particular privileges, can make debt enforcement against state organisations close to impossible. As a potential watchdog to correct any of this, the media is crippled. China now has more than 2,000 newspapers, 2,000 television channels, 9,000 magazines and 450 radio stations, but they are all under the watchful eye of the party in Beijing or provincial propaganda departments. These authorities issue daily instructions on what may and may not be reported; journalists who digress will be suspended from working or even imprisoned. China is estimated to have 42 journalists in prison, the highest number in the world. Editors know roughly how much slack they have; but recently, under Hu Jintao, there has been a tightening of the leash. The right to travel independently and report from a non-local city had allowed more aggressive reporting of corruption; but it has been rescinded. Some prominent editors have been fired. For instance, Yang Bin, editor of China's most forceful tabloid, the Beijing News, was dismissed in 2005 for reporting village protests against unfair confiscation of land. Other journalists have been prohibited from publishing. The Committee to Protect Journalists, in its 2005 report on repression of the media, quotes the government-run People's Daily: "[During 2004] censorship agencies permanently shut down 338 publications for printing 'internal' information, closed 202 branch offices of newspapers, and punished 73 organisations for illegally 'engaging in news activities'." In February 2006, three of China's most distinguished elders - Li Rui, a former aide to Mao Zedong, Hu Jiwei, former editor of the People's Daily, and Zhu Houze, a former party propaganda chief - published a letter condemning the approach: "History demonstrates that only a totalitarian system needs news censorship, out of the delusion that it can keep the public locked in ignorance," they wrote. Far from ensuring stability, they continued, such media repression would "sow the seeds of disaster". All this is obvious to western eyes; what is less obvious is the way the same system of control undermines the economy. Successful businesses have to be successful in business terms - with managers freely exploiting opportunities, developing products and brands and promoting on ability. No such autonomy is possible within Leninist corporatism; party needs come before those of business, enforced by a national system of party committees in every enterprise, finance from state-owned banks and a complex system of accounting and ownership rights that leaves majority ownership of most enterprises with the state. Private shareholders have very limited ownership rights; companies' fixed assets are separated out in company accounts and can still only be legally owned by state and public bodies. And as MIT economist Yasheng Huang argues, government shareholders interfere, especially if a firm is successful. Countless Chinese firms, he says, have been driven to bankruptcy or thwarted in their growth ambitions because the government has exercised its ownership privileges to meet party objectives. In short, the party state is at the centre of a spiderweb of control of the economy, radiating out from the tight ownership and direction of the 57 sectors the party considers the economy's strategic heart like steel and energy to a more relaxed stance the less important the party considers an enterprise's activity - such as packaging or hairdressing. Even they can be controlled if need be. The general rule is that the more politicised and controlled a Chinese enterprise, the lower its productivity and performance. Thus the performance of China's State Owned Enterprises (SOEs), which control two-thirds of industrial assets, has hardly improved during 20 years of reform. One in three of their employees is estimated to be structurally idle. SOEs are on a financial edge and barely profitable. According to one influential estimate, even the tiniest upward movement in interest rates or the slightest decline in sales would mean that 40%-60% of their enormous bank debts would not be serviced, rendering the entire Chinese banking system bankrupt. They are commercial and business disaster areas. Even large private companies, although better performing, are still affected. Davin Mackenzie, managing director of iVentures, which is based in Beijing, says that almost no private company, however well run, wants to leave the opaque, informal world of guanxi personal relationships in which the main aim is to hide revenue, cash, and profits from potential political direction. The vast majority, he says, run themselves out of the "cash box in the back of the Mercedes". Most private Chinese companies have three sets of accounts - one for the banks, one for the tax authorities, and one for management. Most do not last long; the average duration is three years. The law of the jungle prevails: you do what you can get away with. China is the counterfeiters' paradise, where intellectual property rights are neither respected nor enforced. Between 15% and 20% of all well-known brands in China are fake; two-thirds of the imports confiscated by US Customs as fakes were made in China. Counterfeiting is estimated to represent 8% of GDP - eloquent testimony to Chinese business strategies and the ineffectiveness of the legal system. The cumulative result of all this is economic weakness, despite the eye-catching growth figures. Innovation is poor; half of China's patents come from foreign companies. Its growth depends on huge investment, representing an unsustainable 40% or more of GDP financed by peasant savings. But China now needs $5.4 of extra investment to produce an extra $1 of output, a proportion vastly higher than that in economies such as Britain or the US. But 20 years ago, China needed just $4 to deliver the same result. In other words, an already gravely inefficient economy has become even more inefficient. China's national accounts tell the same story. Hu Angang calculates that China is now back to the Mao years in term of the inefficiency with which it uses capital to generate growth. Behind all these problems lie Leninist corporatism. Capitalism, I contend, is much more than the profit motive and the freedom to set prices which China's reforms have permitted. It is a system in which many different actors freely take different decisions according to their best judgment; some are right and some are wrong, but the system never has to bet on any one being right for everyone - as in an authoritarian system of centralised economic control. But this economic pluralism is closely intertwined and dependent upon the wider political capacity of different citizens to be able to be part of a public space in which they can debate options and choices. It is because democracies possess such public spaces that, over decades, even the weakest tend to manage themselves better than authoritarian states. There is less likelihood of group-think, conformism and top-down plans that militate against good decisions - or of the quick reversal of poor decisions. This public sphere is a whole network of "soft" independent processes of scrutiny, justification, transparency and accountability that range from a free media to independent justice. Representative government in which the people regularly vote for their governors is but the coping stone of this structure. And the processes of scrutiny and deliberation do not stop just with the state - the same processes are extended to capitalism and the market economy, and through having to justify themselves, makes them more honest and better performing. But none of this can happen if individuals are not free and capable of being involved - and having the capacity, through the independence that property ownership, education, trade union membership and citizenship confers, freely to challenge and change individual policies, whether they are those of the government or the company they work for. These social processes work best the less social distance there is between people. The more inequality and the more social distance, the less well these processes of pluralism, capabilities and accountability can function. And the less well capitalism then functions. So China leads to an unexpected insight. Capitalism works best the more inequality is capped - and the more and better developed its democratic institutions. The west is unforgivably ignorant about China's shortcomings and weaknesses, which leads it vastly to exaggerate the extent of the Chinese "threat". China is certainly emerging as a leading exporter, but essentially it is a sub-contractor to the west. It has not bucked the way globalisation is heavily skewed in favour of the rich developed nations. Its productivity is poor; it lacks international champions; its innovation record is lamentable; it relies far too much on exports and investment to propel its economy. To characterise China as an unstoppable force whose economic model is unbeatable and set to swamp us - the stuff of almost every ministerial and business lobby speech - is to make a first-order mistake. Rather, the west needs to understand the depth of China's problems and the possibility, if not probability, of an economic and political convulsion as China seeks their resolution. What the west must avoid is a position where it forces the Chinese leaders' hand and China retreats towards economic isolation and freezing the reform process. The challenge to the global trading and financial system would be profound; not only would an important source of global demand be scaled back, a key source of financing the US trade deficit would be removed. China's progress would be shaken to its core. The interest of the west is to help China avoid this fate and encourage a peaceful transition to a pluralist China within a legitimate system of accountability; a country that is comfortable with liberal globalisation and the international rule of law. To describe the goal of policy in this way is demanding enough; more demanding still is to execute it. The simple extrapolations of China's growth, predicting that it will eventually become a one-party, economic colossus, lead to an alarmist climate in which it is easier to justify trade protection or, in the United States, potential military activism. Such responses are naive. We have to play it long, encourage and help to co-manage the change that must come. Only thus will the world be a safer and still prosperous place. Will Hutton's The Writing on the Wall is published on January 18 at pounds 20. To pre-order a copy for pounds 18 with free uk p&p go to guardian.co.uk/books | maxk | |
31/12/2006 13:58 | US panel to review CNOOC-Iran gasfield development deal - US lawmaker WASHINGTON (AFX) - A US congressional committee will review a gasfield development deal between China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC) and Iran to determine if US sanctions are called for against the Chinese company, a US lawmaker said. Congressman Tom Lantos, a California Democrat and chairman-elect of the House International Relations Committee, said that "when the Congress convenes next week, the International Relations Committee will closely examine the reported 16-billion-dollar Memorandum of Understanding China's state-owned oil company signed with Iran to develop Iranian gas fields." "Specifically, we will examine whether this agreement activates United States law requiring sanctions against companies involved in Iranian energy development, as is potentially the case here," Lantos said in a statement Friday. "Congress recently extended and strengthened the Iran Sanctions Act, as part of legislation which I co-sponsored, and China needs to be warned of the serious penalties it may incur if it pursues implementation of this agreement," he added. Iran and CNOOC signed a preliminary 16 bln usd deal to develop a giant natural gas field, Iran's semi-official Fars news agency reported earlier this month. The deal is aimed at developing Iran's northern Pars gas field and building plants to produce liquefied natural gas, with each party taking 50 pct of the produced LNG. afp | waldron | |
29/12/2006 11:11 | China yuan hits record final high of 7.8051 on OTC market at end-2006 BEIJING (XFN-ASIA) - The yuan finished at a record high of 7.8051 to the dollar on the over-the-counter (OTC) market today, the last trading day of 2006. It strengthened from 7.8141 yesterday. On the exchange-traded market the yuan also closed at a record high level of 7.8050 against its previous close of 7.8138, according to a Shanghai-based trader. The central bank set the yuan central parity rate at a "surprisingly high" level of 7.8087, traders said. This compared with Thursday's 7.8149 -- which had been a record central parity rate against the dollar. Despite the record central parity rate, the yuan failed to break through the 7.8 barrier during trading today. The 7.8 level is a key psychological barrier as it is the Hong Kong dollar's exchange rate against the US dollar. There has been considerable speculation about the yuan's trend once it reaches parity with the Hong Kong dollar. The yuan, however, has already exceeded the Hong Kong dollar at least for retail exchanges of bank notes. Mainland banks are now buying Hong Kong dollars at rates that value the territory's currency slightly below the value of the yuan. On the OTC market today, the yuan traded between 7.8102 and 7.8030 while it moved between 7.8095 and 7.8040 on the exchange-traded market. The yuan rose nearly 3.4 pct against the US dollar this year, and traders said they expect a greater increase in 2007. "The high central parity rate might be a central bank signal, that the yuan will increase at a faster pace next year," a Shanghai-based trader said. Fan Gang, a central bank adviser, said that a modest appreciation of the yuan is good for China though a large adjustment would be impossible for the Chinese government to accept as it would hurt employment. juan.chen@xfn.com | don muang | |
28/12/2006 15:35 | nd a bit of lite relief.... A Chinese court has ordered two local firms to stop selling generic versions of the anti-impotence drug Viagra. | don muang | |
28/12/2006 10:12 | a 'milestone'..... Hang Seng above 20,000.... | don muang | |
28/12/2006 08:12 | Maywillow, there's an increasing number of interesting articles & comments about hong kong and china on: | energyi | |
28/12/2006 08:05 | China and India strive to keep economies booming By Elaine Kurtenbach The Associated Press Tuesday, December 26, 2006 SHANGHAI Poverty, water shortages, environmental crises: China and India confront daunting challenges as they strive to keep their economies expanding fast enough to raise growing numbers of their 2.3 billion people out of poverty. For each, the potential is huge, but then so are the risks. By the numbers, both economies look poised to continue their remarkable performances in 2007. The Chinese economy grew 10.4 percent in the July- September quarter compared with a year earlier, with forecasts for growth in 2007-8 at about 10 percent. The Indian economy is close behind. It grew 9.2 percent in the quarter that ended in September - its strongest performance since 1991. The International Monetary Fund estimated that inflation-fighting measures could slow growth to 7.3 percent in the year starting in April 2007, down from the 8.3 percent expected for this year. Such stratospheric figures highlight China's rise as an export power and India's newfound cachet as an outsourcing center for the high-technology industry, as well as robust growth in its agricultural, industrial and services sectors. But the gleaming new office buildings in cities like Shanghai and Mumbai, with their legions of newly affluent consumers snapping up the latest cellphones and new sedans, stand in stark contrast to the poverty that persists in both countries, particularly in rural areas. Some 10 percent of the 1.3 billion people in China live on less than $1 a day, according to the World Bank. In India, with a population of 1.1 billion, about 40 percent do. "There is an India of bursting growth, and there is an India of widespread want," Sonia Gandhi, the leader of the governing coalition in India, said at a recent business conference in New Delhi. More than a third of all Indians can neither read nor write, and a fifth of them have no access to safe drinking water. Poverty and unemployment are fueling insurgencies and Communist-led rebellions in many parts of the country. Still, both economies have proven remarkably resilient, adapting outdated trade and industrial policies while blunting the impact of those reforms on their poorest citizens with price controls and subsidies to farmers. Tens of billions of dollars of foreign direct investment, coupled with strong domestic spending, is supporting heavy investment to build railways, ports and other infrastructure needed to support further growth. Steel making, cement and many other industries have prospered. And in both countries, share prices have surged because of optimism over growth and rising corporate competitiveness, with Indian stocks trading at all-time highs and those in Shanghai just below the peak they hit in 2001. But leaders in China and India are realizing that greater equity, better protection for the environment and stewardship of scarce resources are needed to sustain growth and lift tens of millions more out of poverty. Both governments have stepped up rural spending and increased subsidies to the poor while attempting to attract more investment for backward inland regions cut off from the growth centers along the coasts. The Indian government plans to spend $26 billion in 2005-9 to build rural homes, expand irrigation coverage and provide drinking water, electricity and phone connections for all the nation's villages. It is too early to say whether those initiatives, as well as a rural employment scheme, will be able to meet their objectives or will degenerate into populist rhetoric. The Communist leaders of China, who face no electoral pressures and do not tolerate public or organized dissent, have acknowledged the threat to their nearly six decades of rule as public anger increases over ubiquitous corruption and the widening gulf between rich city dwellers and the rural poor. Raising rural incomes has become a top priority, both for ensuring political stability and for bolstering the domestic consumer demand required to sustain growth over the long term. Leaders in China have abolished farm taxes and made schooling free for rural families, hoping to help redress the huge gap with city dwellers. More such gestures are likely ahead of a Communist Party congress in late 2007. "Can China sustain 8 percent to 10 percent growth?" asked Yiping Huang, an economist with Citigroup in Shanghai. "It has to do more to stimulate consumption, a lot more." He added, "It needs to do more for social welfare so that people can feel comfortable and spend more." At the same time, China is just barely beginning to address the huge environmental costs of its headlong rush to industrialize: fouled water and air, rural villages drowning in waste and massive shortages of water and other resources. Another risk that China faces is an overheating economy. Worried that soaring investment in real estate and construction could leave banks with bad loans, authorities have raised interest rates and implemented other measures to curb borrowing. In meetings this month, officials said they would continue those policies. Economists have repeatedly warned that despite multibillion-dollar write- offs of bad debt and spectacular international stock offerings, state-owned Chinese banks could fall prey to bad debts, especially if growth slows. "When the economy is doing well, we don't see big financial risks," Huang said. "But when economic growth slows, nonperforming loans rise." India faces an uphill battle to rein in the insurgencies and terrorism that threaten the country's investment climate. Beyond the unrest in Kashmir, analysts worry about a growing Maoist rebellion in parts of southern and eastern India that they have said is fueled by economic deprivation and uneven growth. Insurgent groups are also active in remote northeastern India, where local people often accuse the federal government of exploiting the region's rich mineral resources without bringing much benefit to its inhabitants. India is also vulnerable to domestic risks and so-called external risks like volatile oil prices and a resurgence of protectionism, which would crimp export growth. And India has yet to bring surging prices under control: Finance Minister P. Chidambaram had termed the nation's 5 percent-plus inflation rate "worrisome." Yet with growth at its highest level in 15 years, Chidambaram remains upbeat. "Just savor the moment," he said. Beijing to push rural lending China plans to give rural lenders more flexibility to set deposit and lending rates as well as to cut their tax burdens in a government effort to strengthen the rural economy, the chief banking regulator said Tuesday, Bloomberg News reported from Shanghai. The government could also allow Agricultural Development Bank, one of the nation's three policy banks, to offer loans to small enterprises in the countryside, Liu Mingkang, chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, said in Beijing. | maywillow | |
12/12/2006 06:39 | China to remain key growth engine for Asia Pacific in 2007 - S&P BEIJING (XFN-ASIA) - Economic growth in the Asia Pacific will continue to be driven in 2007 by India, Japan and particularly China, Standard & Poor's said. An economic slowdown in the US is expected to dampen China's growth momentum only "marginally," S&P said in a research report. It said Chinese real GDP growth in 2006 is likely to hit 10.5 pct, after reaching a high of 11.3 pct in the second quarter. GDP growth in 2007 should be close to 10 pct, due to continuing macroeconomic stabilization measures, a tightening fiscal stance, and an overperforming stock market in 2006. "The theme of stability in 2007-2008 will be more crucial than ever in guiding policymaking. The new set of party leaders will be installed in key government positions during the March 2008 National People's Congress. This will come just before the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Over this period, conservativeness and gradualism will be even more apparent in implementing key policy changes," the report said. Overall credit metrics of the Chinese corporate sector are likely to remain sound, but the divergence in corporate sector credit quality and the higher proportion of sub-investment grade ratings is likely to bring a higher level of volatility to the rated corporate credit portfolio, S&P said. "Recently introduced austerity measures to cool down real estate prices may rapidly weaken the credit profile of small developers with limited financial flexibility. And high raw material cost and increased price competition due to overcapacity will put more pressure on profit margins for downstream companies in China," the note added. It said the outlook on China's banking industry is positive. "Reform efforts by the rated banks are producing some tangible benefits. Lending is likely to grow in a more controlled manner in 2007, as government is expected to continue to manage the economy to avoid overheating and overcapacity in certaining industries. "Having said that, the sector's risk management capability is little tested and remains a key rating factor. A slowdown in economic growth could turn the sector's large portfolio of special mention loans into NPLs," S&P added. China's insurance sector should remain strong due to its low penetration and the burgeoning economy. "The increasing focus on improving operational fundamentals, strong potential growth, and regulatory commitment to policyholder interests are likely to offset challenges, such as tough competition, lack of personnel talent, weak capitalization as a result of ongoing growth, and the industry's need to improve reserving and strengthen risk management," the note said. On the equity side, S&P remains positive on China although it is concerned that the stock market rises of over 80 pct for the A-shares and 50 pct for the H-shares in 2006 are "too exuberant." "We note, however, that for the A-shares, which remain largely a domestic-only equity market, 2006 represents the first year of gains following five years of consolidation. As such, share ownership level remains historically low and valuations are not demanding," S&P said. The report said its interest in the A-shares, however, is mainly due to their significance to the performance of the H-shares. "A rising A-share market is likely to pull H-share prices higher although the converse is not necessarily true given the lower PERs of the H-shares. Our preferred entry to the China market remains through the H-shares," the report said. andrew.pasek@xinhuaf | ariane | |
11/12/2006 11:48 | Jarlway H1 profits fall to 435,000 stg from 578,000 on higher costs, provisions LONDON (AFX) - Jarlway Holdings PLC, which makes equipment for the construction industry, unveiled a fall in profits for the six months to June 30 as higher costs and provisions outweighed a sharp rise in sales. The group, which is heavily involved in the Chinese market, said pretax profits fell to 435,000 stg from 578,000 stg a year earlier despite a 40 pct jump in sales to 3.6 mln stg. Jarlway blamed "higher overheads, reflecting an increased spend on sales and marketing, ongoing costs associated with the AIM Listing and a further increase in bad debt provisions" for the fall in profits. Gross margins slipped slightly to 38 pct from 40 pct. Looking ahead, the company is forecasting a reduction in costs in the second half and reiterated the board is "very positive about current trading and believes the company is on course to deliver a considerably improved performance in the current year." newsdesk@afxnews.com cw | energyi |
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