Chairman of African Union Commission Alpha Oumar Konare delivers a speech at an EU-Africa summit in Lisbon, Portugal on Saturday.

LISBON, Portugal, Dec. 9--Tensions over proposed new trade rules surfaced Saturday at a landmark summit hosted by the European Union, with Africa telling its former colonial masters it would resist pressure for a hasty agreement.
African nations should “no longer be merely exporters of raw materials or accept being a mere import market,“ African Union Commission president Alpha Oumar Konare told the opening session of the two-day conference, Bloomberg reported.
“It’s important we avoid patterns of thinking that belong to a different era. No one will make us believe we don’t have the right to protect our economic fabric.“
The EU is seeking new trade agreements with African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) nations to replace the current preferential system that has been ruled illegal by the World Trade Organization.
The Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) would require the 78 ACP countries to gradually open their markets to European goods.
In exchange they would be granted open access to European markets from Jan. 1, 2008, with the exception of rice and sugar.
But only 15 ACP countries--13 of them in Africa--have initialed interim trade accords with the EU. Others fear opening their markets, even partially and progressively, to cheap European goods could damage their economies.
The EU should “avoid playing certain African regions off against each other,“ said Konare. “No African country can forge ahead alone of others.“
He called on the European Union to “take time to reach fair agreements.“
EU development commissioner Louis Michel noted that the EPAs would include long transition periods and “generous“ regional funds to cover the financial impact. “All the questions that have been raised by our partners are fair,“ he told reporters. “But sometimes we feel that they forget that we have responded to them and that we are going in the direction that they want.“We can’t penalize these countries simply because others don’t find it useful or advantageous to have EPAs,“ he said.
But the charity Oxfam warned of “dire consequences“ if the trade deals are rushed through. “It is astounding that the (EU) Commission is prepared to push through such highly inequitable deals that will hurt poor farmers and undermine future development,“ Oxfam’s spokeswoman on trade, Amy Barry, said in a statement.

TOKYO, Dec. 9--Japan’s foreign minister Sunday said the Chinese version of a joint press statement released after high-level economic talks had not mentioned Tokyo’s wish to see the yuan rise in value. “The point that Japan raised about foreign exchange was omitted because of some sort of a mistake. So we are telling them, ’one whole item was dropped so please put it in’,“ Masahiko Komura told reporters, AFP wrote.
On Dec. 1, senior ministers from the two nations met in Beijing for the first high-level bilateral meeting on economic dialogue.
The two nations issued a joint press communiquŽ after the meeting.
In the part that was dropped from the Chinese edition, the statement said Tokyo “welcomed the Chinese policy direction to increase the flexibility of the rate of the yuan.
Japan also expressed its hope that China makes efforts to tolerate faster appreciation of the real exchange rate of the yuan.“
With their economic woes mounting, the United States and China will hold high-level talks this week on key issues amid concerns over a tightly-controlled Chinese currency and protectionism.
The cabinet-level talks in Beijing will also tackle the prickly issue of safety of Chinese-made products that have been targeted in a spate of overseas safety recalls this year, with toys in the spotlight.
“The meeting comes at a delicate time, as a new group of leaders move into China’s most senior positions,“ said Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who will lead the US side for the twice-yearly talks of the “Strategic Economic Dialogue“ on Dec. 12-13.
Among the changes in the Chinese leadership will involve Wu Yi, the Chinese vice-premier and Paulson’s counterpart at the dialogue, who will be retiring early 2008.
The meeting will be preceded by a critical round of talks of the US-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade, which seeks to open market opportunities and resolve trade disputes between the two powers.
Just like in previous economic meetings, the currency issue is expected to hog the agenda.
Before the last economic dialogue in May, Beijing announced a widening of the trading band of its yuan currency, apparently to counter foreign criticism that Chinese exporters have an unfair edge on world markets with an artificially low currency.

PARIS, Dec. 9--Emerging countries, notably oil producers but also China, are using ever-greater inflows of foreign currency to buy businesses in industrialized economies arousing suspicions that their motives are political, the OECD says.
And, suggesting last week a code of conduct for “opaque“ state sovereign wealth funds (SWFs), it also foresaw that they would move some of their money out of top-rank bonds thereby pushing up long-term interest rates, and into stocks, pushing up share prices, AFP wrote.
“Some SWFs are becoming large players in financial markets and their importance is set to go on increasing rapidly as a significant part of global reserve accumulation (currently around one trillion dollars annually) is likely to be deployed into such funds.“
“Altogether SWFs are thought to already manage combined assets of 1.5-2.5 trillion dollars,“ the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development says in a review of the world economy published last week
The OECD argues for transparency in the strategies of SWFs which, it said, some suspect of being fronts for political purposes. And it sees a rise in defensive measures in the old industrialized economies against the purchase of businesses in their increasingly privatized economies by state investment vehicles.
The largest of these funds by far is operated by the United Arab Emirates, followed by funds in Norway and probably Singapore.
“The more recent Chinese SWF will manage assets of $200 billion but two-thirds of this amount will be placed in investments designed to recapitalize Chinese banks, leaving around $67 billion dollars to be invested in world markets.“
“Until now, countries with large inflows of foreign currency had invested mainly in high-quality, fixed-income paper, thereby putting downward pressure on long-term interest rates. Any shift away from such assets would “tend to push up long-term interest rates.“
The OECD also estimates that “SWFs are likely to invest a fair share of their portfolio in equities, which may have some impact on equity prices.“
They could also have a “quite noticeable impact“ on the valuation of assets in emerging markets.
The OECD warned that although it was right and good for the global economy that countries with big holdings of foreign assets manage them efficiently, the way they functioned across borders was out of step with general expectations that decision-makers acted on a rational commercial basis.

MANILA, Philippines, Dec. 9--For more than 20 years the Philippine economy has been held to ransom by political bickering and a succession of failed coup attempts, but there are signs that this is now changing.
The short-lived siege of a luxury Manila hotel by a group of soldiers on Nov. 29 hardly made an impact on the economy with the stock market ending the day 1.2 percent higher.
In the past these events would have sent the economy into a tail spin. But the Economist Intelligence Unit recently forecast that economic growth in 2007 would hit 6.8 percent, the highest in 20 years, AFP wrote.
Similarly the economy now seems unperturbed by constant corruption accusations against President Gloria Arroyo, who is determined to stay the course and end her term in 2010.
Filipinos are tired of all the political bickering and military adventurism, said Nestor Aguila, president of DA Market Securities. The Philippine Business Leaders Forum, part of The Economist group, said in a recent commentary, “Growth is up, the budget deficit is down, the peso is going through the roof, remittances are at an all-time high in spite of the fall of the dollar and business confidence is booming.“
James Lago, of Westlink Global Equities, said, “The Arroyo administration may have its problems but the local investment community has come to terms with that. The fact is there is no solid alternative.
Even concerns over corruption no longer seem to be a deterrent to foreign investment. “The top countries in the world for foreign investment today are China and India and they have an extensive history of corruption,“ remarked John Forbes, director of the local American Chamber of Commerce.
Forbes said that if the right reforms are implemented, the Philippines could see $35.8 billion in new foreign investment from 2007 to 2010.
He identified 17 bills that are ready to be passed into law and could help accelerate economic growth but which have largely been ignored by the legislature.
The World Bank, in a report on Asia-Pacific economies, praised the Philippines as “the best performing economy among Southeast Asian middle income countries.“ “This indicates that (economic) growth for the year could reach or exceed 6.7 percent,“ the World Bank said.

Saudi Arabia allows foreign capital into its market if the investors are based in one of five other Persian Gulf Arab states.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, Dec. 9--Saudi Arabia plans to allow foreigners to invest in its stocks and initial public offerings through domestic funds, the stock market regulator said.
Most Persian Gulf oil producer states place some restrictions on investors from outside the region buying shares, TradeArabia reported.
Saudi Arabia allows foreign capital into its market if the investors are based in one of five other Persian Gulf Arab states.
’Gradually ... we will allow some funds to be established by licensed firms through which investment from outside the kingdom would be allowed in a transparent fashion,’ Abdulrahman Al Tuwaijri told Al Arabiya television.
Tuwaijri, who heads the Capital Markets Authority (CMA), did not give a time frame for the move. ’We are concerned about hot money which enters and exits quickly,’ said Tuwaijri, when asked why the CMA had put the largest Arab bourse virtually off-limits to foreign money.
Persian Gulf Arab countries are easing restrictions on foreign investment after a share market rout last year, when four of the region’s seven stock benchmarks lost most than 35 percent of their value.
Regulators hope foreign institutional investors will eventually overtake domestic retailers as the main drivers of trading, making their markets less volatile.
’The door is not fully shut. We are keen that the changes at the stock market are made through an organized process ... without causing any jolts,’ he said. ’We are keen on knowing who is trading on our floor.’
Foreign investors are driving a recovery in the other markets, especially, Oman, Dubai and Abu Dhabi, the region’s three best performers this year.
Having more than doubled in 2005, the Saudi benchmark tumbled 52.53 percent in 2006, becoming the worst performing Arab market. The index is up 24 percent this year.
In October, the cabinet ordered the CMA to remove constraints on investors from five other Persian Gulf oil producers in line with a 2002 agreement by the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council.

axNEW DELHI, India, Dec. 9--Three leading Indian private mobile operators have announced the launch of a new company to share communications infrastructure to cut costs and help speed the rollout of a nationwide phone network.
India’s cellular market is growing by eight million subscribers a month and totals over 217 million customers, making it the world’s fastest expanding, AFP wrote.
Now three major private mobile firms--Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular--say they will merge their wireless infrastructure operations in what they say is a move to make growth even faster.
They announced on Saturday they would set up an independent communications tower operator company, Indus Towers, to lower costs and push the mobile phone network deeper into rural areas.
“This is the first such venture to be launched in India and we’re inviting other players --government and private--to join us in helping roll out mobile phone services to every nook and corner of this country,“ Akhil Gupta, managing director of Bharti Enterprises, said in an interview. Bharti Airtel, led by billionaire Sunil Bharti Mittal, is India’s biggest private mobile phone operator.
The companies will pool existing communications towers so Indus Towers will start out with 70,000 tower sites and will be an independently managed company, sharing profits from rents charged to firms which use it.
“This company is a major leap forward in reducing costs,“ Gupta said. “No longer each company will have to build a tower where it wants to go.“
India’s teledensity--the number of people owning a phone out of every 100 people--stands at just 21 percent compared to the West where the market is saturated.
So far India’s “mobile revolution“ has been mainly confined to the cities but analysts say the real prize lies in the vast rural hinterland where 70 percent of the 1.1 billion population lives. Telephone penetration in urban India is around 25 per 100 people but just under two percent in rural areas.

NUSA DUA, Indonesia, Dec. 9--Australia’s new government will redouble efforts to secure a deal in the Doha round of international trade talks, the new trade minister said Saturday, but warned of tough times ahead.
“I think the reality is that an outcome from Doha is doable, but it’s going to be tough,“ Australia’s Simon Crean said after meeting World Trade Organization (WTO) head Pascal Lamy, AFP reported.
“But I want to make sure that our efforts, our support, to achieve that outcome are redoubled,“ he told reporters on the sidelines of a key climate change conference on Indonesia’s resort island of Bali.
He said he thought the next two to three months were critical in hammering out the deal, which has been deadlocked since the Doha Development Round was first launched in 2001.
Developed and developing countries are at loggerheads over agricultural subsidies and industrial tariffs, but Lamy said last month that he hoped the WTO’s 151 members would be able to reach agreement by the end of 2008.
The Labor Party’s Kevin Rudd won elections in Australia, a major agricultural producer, ousting John Howard, who had also pushed for the success of the global trade deal.