File picture shows holiday shoppers in New York.

WASHINGTON,
Nov. 18--US consumers, battered by a horrific housing slump and soaring energy costs, are expected to show caution in holiday spending this year, putting more pressure on retailers and the overall economy, analysts say.
Surveys project tepid growth in gift spending for the holiday shopping season set to begin Friday, the day after the Thanksgiving Day holiday, AFP wrote.
The grim outlook has retailers starting early promotions and discounts to get consumers out and ensure that stores are not stuck with too much merchandise.
The National Retail Federation is projecting a 4.0 percent rise in holiday spending. A separate survey by Ernst & Young suggests growth of 4.5 percent.
Ratings firm Standard & Poor’s predicts general merchandise sales to rise only 3.0 to 3.5 percent, well below increases of 4.9 and 5.8 percent in 2006 and 2005, respectively. That would keep nearly flat the 250-billion dollar holiday shopping season in November and December that typically accounts for about 23 percent of annual retail sales and even more in profits, according to S&P.
“As the critical holiday shopping season approaches, there is also a growing concern that the housing downturn could begin to spill over into consumer confidence and consumer spending,“ said S&P analyst Gerald Hirschberg.
“Compared to last year at this time, retail spending is distinctly slower as measured by same-store sales, as consumers have been squeezed by higher energy prices and higher mortgage rates.“
Chicago-based Mesirow Financial economist Diane Swonk predicts a rise of 4.6 percent, but that would be just 1.1 percent after adjusting for inflation.
Swonk said pressure from the housing meltdown and high fuel costs are squeezing many low- and middle-income households and that as a result inflation-adjusted spending will be the weakest since the start of the expansion.
“On net, consumer spending will continue to look better in the aggregate than it feels to the overwhelming majority of Americans. Middle-and lower-income households are expected to feel particularly squeezed as the subprime debacle exacerbates the sense of inequality,“ says Swonk.
Other surveys show many consumers may hold firm in holiday spending--a trend being watched because it is a make-or-break season for many retailers and because consumer spending accounts for some two-thirds of US economic activity.

ADB President Haruhiko Kuroda

SINGAPORE, Nov. 18--Asian economic growth will remain strong this year and in 2008 despite higher energy costs and recent market turbulence, Asian Development Bank President Haruhiko Kuroda said Saturday. He said there would be no change to the bank’s latest regional growth forecast of 8.3 percent this year and 8.2 percent in 2008--and that developing Asia, excluding Japan, could even beat that forecast, AFP reported.
“There are a few risks... but as I said, despite these risks, our main scenario for Asian economies is that growth will continue this year as well as next year,“ Kuroda said on the sidelines of an ASEAN business meeting.
“I think basically the figure is correct and appropriate. But as I say, there may be some possibility that the Asian economy may even outperform that latest guide,“ he told reporters. developing economies in the region grew 8.5 percent last year.
He acknowledged higher oil prices could have a “negative impact“ but he was upbeat about the prospects for the region, which has shown its resilience despite a steady rise in energy prices. Growth momentum in Asia is so strong that up until now the Asian economies have grown very rapidly despite very high level of oil prices,“ said Kuroda. “So at this stage, we are aware of the risks but (Asia’s) scenario will not be changing,“ he said.
Meanwhile, Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said on Saturday that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) needs further economic integration so that ASEAN remains attractive as an investment destination, Xinhua reported.
“The ASEAN Charter, which will be signed at the forthcoming (ASEAN) summit, aims to steer ASEAN in this direction,“ Lee made the remarks at the opening ceremony of the ASEAN Business and Investment summit. The charter is critical in enhancing ASEAN’s credibility and attracting investors, he added.
In his speech, Lee also urged “greater impetus to accelerate the deployment of emission-reduction technologies, promote energy efficiency, and protect the existing carbon sinks such as forests.“

PARIS, Nov. 18--French postal and telecoms unions said on Sunday they would join a planned public sector protest on Tuesday as a transport strike headed into a fifth day amid a warning the action could start to hit factory output.
“In the absence of trains, factories, notably in the chemical and car manufacturing sectors, are going to be unable to work,“ Guillaume Pepy, an executive with state-owned rail company SNCF told Le Parisien newspaper in an interview, Reuters reported.
Parisian shops and restaurants have already complained the rail strike has cost them lost business, although analysts say the macroeconomic impact of the strike has so far been limited.
The railway unions, who are protesting at planned pension reforms, are due to announce their next steps late on Sunday.
Despite a tentative offer of talks from SNCF and the government, the rail strike is expected to continue until Tuesday, when civil servants and teachers are due to march in cities across the country in their own protest over pay and conditions.
Opinion polls show the rail strike is unpopular with most French voters, but the government struggling to meet growth goals knows it cannot afford to let the protest drag on too long or risk a wider social conflict.
Twenty six universities remained blockaded by students on Sunday in a separate protest over education funding.
The CFTC union representing staff at La Poste and France Telecom said on Sunday it would join Tuesday’s day of action, as has one union at airline Air France.
An opinion poll for Le Parisien newspaper on Sunday found most French people believe President Nicolas Sarkozy was best placed to tackle the strike, but the majority was slim.
Another poll for Journal du Dimanche found political support for the president down to 55 percent, a drop of four points in the month and his lowest score since being elected in May.
Union leaders are in a dilemma too, because their members have so far signaled little willingness to negotiate.
“It’s a strike that not many really wanted and, therefore, no one really knows how to get out of,“ Le Journal du Dimanche said in an editorial.
The rail unions oppose plans to scrap special pension privileges that allow some 500,000 public sector workers to retire on full pensions after paying contributions for only 37-1/2 years, instead of 40 years for other workers.

KLEINMOND, South Africa, Nov. 18--Finance chiefs from the G20 economic powers end two days of talks on the global economy on Sunday as a sinking US dollar, a painful credit crunch and soaring oil prices threaten stability.
The Group of 20 mostly industrialized and emerging economies were due to release a communiquŽ at 6:30 a.m. EST detailing resolutions, with the focus expected to be on currency imbalances and the risks to global growth from credit woes stemming from the US subprime mortgage crisis, Reuters reported.
Emerging economies were also expected to press for faster reform of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to give them greater say and voting power at those multilateral organizations, whose leaders attended the meeting.
The dollar’s fall to record lows against a basket of currencies (.DXY) as credit conditions have deteriorated in global financial markets since August has been a factor driving up the price of key commodities, particularly oil, fuelling inflation and putting world economic growth at risk.
Canada’s central bank governor, David Dodge, told Canadian reporters by telephone from Kleinmond on Saturday that discussions had made it clear the downside risks to world growth had increased. “It’s quite clear that the global financial turbulence that we were experiencing then (in October) is now going to be more prolonged and the volatility is likely to continue to be higher for longer, certainly longer than we anticipated when we met at the IMF last month,“ he said.
Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said on the same call that he had told his G20 colleagues the Canadian dollar had borne a disproportionate share of the fallout from the US dollar’s decline, causing problems for the export-reliant economy.
European finance ministers from euro zone economies feel much the same about the dollar’s fall to record lows versus the euro.
But Flaherty played down the prospect of a sharply worded statement on foreign exchange issues from the G20 meeting, even though he said countries such as South Africa and Brazil had expressed similar concerns.
Canada joined the US and Europe in singling out China as a country that has not let its currency adjust sufficiently to market forces. That has forced countries with floating currencies to adjust more sharply to global imbalances caused by a gaping US trade deficit and China’s huge surplus.

WASHINGTON,
Nov. 18--German telecommunications giant Siemens AG paid about $17.5 million (12 million euros) in bribes to government and industry officials in Nigeria, Russia and Libya in a bid
to win contracts,
AFP reported.
Using documents released last month by a court in Munich, The Wall Street Journal Europe reported on its website Saturday and published a list of alleged recipients of 77 bribes from the three countries, detailing how much money went to each of the officials.
Earlier this month Siemens admitted 1.3 billion euros (one billion dollars) in dubious transactions, showing the extent of a corruption scandal that has engulfed the company.
The revelation came as a surprise as Siemens had previously only admitted a slush fund of 449 million euros and had said it was limited to its telecommunications division.
It said on November 8 it had uncovered an additional 857 million euros in money believed to have been used to obtain contracts for the group and the list of countries where it is now investigating possible corruption includes China, Greece, Hungary, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Norway and Russia.
Siemens’ new chief executive, Peter Loescher, who took over the reins in July, said the internal investigation into the corruption was “largely completed,“ suggesting that the company now believed it had discovered the full extent of the slush funds.
Loescher said he hoped a fine of 201 million euros imposed by German authorities in October would help it draw a line under the affair in its home country.
The court document seen by The Journal indicated that about 10 million euros went to Nigerians, including an immigration official, a senator and four former telecommunications ministers: Bello Mohammed, Tajudeen Olanrewaju, Cornelius Adebayo and Alhaji Elewi, the WSJ report said.
It said that in Russia, 38 bribes totaling about two million euros went to the heads of nearly two dozen regional state-controlled telephone companies in the east and west of the country.
Six bribes totaling about 300,000 euros were received by two officials at Libya’s state-run General Post and Telecommunications Co., the paper said.

ALGIERS, Algeria, Nov. 18--Algeria has formally demanded the extradition from Britain of former Algerian bank chief Rafik Khalifa, sentenced to life over a massive embezzlement scandal, the British ambassador said Sunday.
“Algerian judicial authorities have put forward a request that is now in the hands of the British authorities,“ said Andrew Anderson, adding that the request had been lodged at the end of October, AFP reported.
Khalifa, who is in his early 40’s, was sentenced in March to life in prison in absentia by an Algerian court over fraud and embezzlement offences related to the collapse of the bank he founded.
He started living in exile in London in 2003 after hundreds of millions of dollars (euros) were discovered missing from the Khalifa Bank, until then Algeria’s largest private bank.
He was detained in Britain in March under a European arrest warrant issued by a court in France, which is also seeking to extradite him over allegations of embezzlement from the Khalifa Group and French-registered subsidiaries.
A British judge granted his extradition to France at the end of August subject to appeal.
Khalifa lodged an appeal which is expected to be heard by the High Court in London before the end of the month.
A court in Blida, southern Algeria, sentenced Khalifa to life imprisonment in March over the collapse of the country’s largest private bank.
His wife received a 10-year-sentence, whilst other former high-ranking Algerian officials, including a former governor of the central bank and a former industry minister, were handed lengthy jail terms.
The court also ordered the seizure of the assets of all those convicted.

NEW DELHI, India, Nov. 18--Indian firms engaged in carbon reduction projects under the Kyoto Protocol are facing hurdles of unclear government policy and lack of information, according to a survey.
India has the highest number of registered projects under the Kyoto Protocol’s clean development mechanism (CDM), which has led to a flourishing global carbon market, Zeenews.com. reported.
The biggest challenge facing this new business is how revenues should be treated, said the survey conducted by Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI).
The survey, conducted among 50 companies from 17 industry sectors, pointed out that the government should come out with a clear policy that the revenue earned from carbon credits be treated as export earnings and stressed the need for defining a CDM-friendly legal and regulatory framework.
Sectors such as cement, pulp paper, hotels, oil and gas, mining, poultry, manufacturing and textiles have almost unanimously underscored the need for greater information dissemination on CDM and carbon market in the country like prevailing prices of carbon credits and buyers, and many such details which are essential for carbon market transactions.
Over 66 percent of the respondents have indicated there is huge information gap related to CDM projects, while almost 54 percent have highlighted the lack of adequate capacity as a major problem.
High transaction costs, according to 41 percent of respondents, emerged as the most important financial impediment to CDM project development since it is a capital-intensive process and the agencies involved have to bear large expenses as consultancy fees.
Absence of CDM-related competence at the local level, besides lack of information on sector-specific methodologies, has come up as a critical barrier for project proponents, the survey found.