America is a $9.5 trillion consumer, followed by China ($1 trillion) and India ($650b).

SYDNEY, Australia, Dec. 16--The US is heading for a recession and the rest of the world would be “dead wrong“ to think this will not impact on growing Asian economies, Morgan Stanley senior executive, Stephen Roach, said Sunday.
In an interview with Sky News in Australia, Roach said the US Federal Reserve Bank would “most assuredly“ cut interest rates again soon to boost the economy, following last week’s 25 basis points reduction.
“The US is going into recession,“ he was quoted by AFP as saying.
“They (the Federal Reserve) have a lot more work to do. They could cut their policy short-term interest rate by one to one-and-a-half percentage points over the next nine to 12 months.“
“What is interesting, and potentially disturbing, is that the rest of the world just doesn’t think this is a big deal any more,“ Roach, who is chairman of the investment bank and trading firm’s Asian arm, said.
“There is a view that the world is somehow decoupled from the American growth engine.
“I think that view will turn out to be dead wrong, and this is a global event with consequences for Asia and Australia.“
Roach, in Australia for a business roundtable, said economies outside of the US needed to determine how their internal consumer demand compared with demand from American consumers in terms of keeping their economies booming.
“My conclusion is: not nearly as much as you would like,“ Roach said.
Growth in Asia was export led, with the American consumer often the “end game“ of the Asian growth machine, he said.
“The US is a 9.5 trillion US dollar consumer. China is a 1.0 trillion US dollar consumer. India is a 650 billion US dollar consumer,“ he said.
“Mathematically, it is almost impossible for the young dynamic consumers of China and India to fill the void that would be left by what is likely to be a significant shortfall of US consumer demand.“

NEW DELHI, India, Dec. 16--India, Russia and China vowed to boost trade and investment with each other after a one-day meeting that saw officials and businessmen from the three countries gather in New Delhi this weekend, AFP reported.
A top Indian foreign official admitted that the three countries needed to do much more to further economic links, “Investment between these three countries is quite insignificant,“ said Nalin Surie Saturday, according to a Press Trust of India agency report. “India, China and Russia have huge raw material and energy reserves. All three of us should come together to form an India-China-Russia business partnership.“
The Russian ambassador to New Delhi, Vyacheslav I. Trubnikov, said he looked forward to further investment in his country’s energy resources by the energy-hungry Asian nations.
“The three of us can work together to promote joint ventures that could infuse more investments in oil exploration and production blocks in Russia, ensuring energy security in India and China,“ said Trubnikov, according to PTI.
But the countries vowed to work together in other arenas as well, including technology, pharmaceuticals and services, according to a statement from the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry.
Chinese delegate Bu Jian Guo said efforts needed to be made to surpass the three-way trade of $39 billion, the statement from FICCI, one of the conference organizers, said.
Bilateral trade between China and India stands at $25 billion, while trade between China and Russia is double that. Trade between India and Russia is at a mere four-billion dollars, much of it focused on military spending.
Saturday’s meeting marked the first joint gathering by the three nations on strengthening economic cooperation. The next three-way conference will take place in China in 2009.

MOSCOW, Dec. 16--Russian energy giant Gazprom Saturday set a gas price limit for Belarus at $119 (82 euros) per 1,000 cubic meters for the first quarter of 2008, a day after President Vladimir Putin promised Minsk to freeze natural gas costs.
Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kuprianov made the announcement on Echo of Moscow radio, saying it met with the conditions of the contract signed in Dec. 31, 2006, AFP said.
In comparison, gas prices in the first quarter of this year were at $100 per 1,000 cubic meters. In late 2006 relations between Moscow and Minsk soured over a sudden increase in gas prices.
Until then the former Soviet state had benefited from a special price, which had been a key way for Moscow to show support for Belarus’s authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko.
Belarus is again on Moscow’s good side after Lukashenko, a political pariah in the European Union and the United States, told Putin at a summit Friday that Minsk backed Russia’s opposition to US plans to install part of a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe.
Putin reassured Lukashenko that Russia would not raise prices for natural gas, also promising there would be no obstacles to delivery of Russian supplies this winter through Belarus to the European Union.

Toyota is expected to outdo General Motors in output this year as the carmaker steps up production overseas.

TOKYO, Dec. 16--Japanese car giant Toyota Motor Corp. plans to raise its global output to near 10 million units next year, out-distancing its rival General Motors Corp. of the United States, AFP cited a news report Sunday.
Toyota now expects its group’s global production to expand to some 9.9 million vehicles in 2008, about 500,000 units more than the projection for the current year, the Nikkei newspaper said.
The expansion is mainly due to expectations of continued robust sales in China, the Middle East and other emerging economies, the business daily said.
Toyota is expected to outdo General Motors in output this year as the carmaker steps up production overseas, and the gap is likely to widen in 2008, it added.
Toyota projects its global output for this year will climb by four percent year on year to 9.42 million cars, while General Motors earlier this month announced a production forecast of a one percent gain to 9.26 million units.
As the result, the Japanese company is likely to become the world’s number one carmaker in terms of production volume for the first time.
Toyota’s overseas output, excluding group firms, is likely to grow more than five percent in 2008 from 4.2 million units projected for the current year, exceeding its domestic production, Nikkei said.
On the sales front, Toyota is neck-and-neck with General Motors for the rank of the world’s top selling automaker.
Toyota overtook GM in the first quarter of 2007 in terms of global sales and remained in pole position for the first half of the year, but GM regained its lead for the nine months to September. While Toyota is expanding its overseas production facilities, GM has been laying off workers and shuttering factories to try to reverse losses that hit two billion dollars last year.

SANAA, Yemen, Dec. 16--Yemen has asked for an annual quota of jobs in the expatriate workforce of its oil-rich Persian Gulf Arab neighbors for its impoverished population, the official Saba news agency said on Saturday.
The technical and vocational training ministry made the request to the six-member Persian Gulf Cooperation Council recalling Yemen’s longstanding request for membership, Saba said.
“Yemen currently has surplus workers who could progressively replace the expatriate workforce of the PGCC countries, if the political leadership decides to commit itself a little more than now to the path of integration,“ it said.
Expatriate workers, mainly from the Asian subcontinent, make up some 37 percent of the 35 million strong population of the six PGCC states--Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Yemen with a population of more than 20 million is one of the world’s poorest countries despite its proximity to the oil-rich Persian Gulf.
It was granted membership in December 2001 of four PGCC ministerial councils--education, health, social affairs and sport affairs--giving it hope of gradual integration into the wealthy club.
Neighboring Saudi Arabia expelled hundreds of thousands of Yemeni workers in the aftermath of Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait in retaliation for Sanaa’s perceived support for Saddam Hussein’s regime.

HOLETA, Ethiopia, Dec. 16--The smell of flowers is displacing the aroma of coffee as a driving force in the Ethiopian economy.
Booming floriculture is set to upstage decades-old coffee production as the top foreign exchange earner, with projected revenue looking rosy, AFP reported.
Boosted by government incentives and favorable market conditions, horticulture producers are targeting earnings of $1.4 billion (960 million euros) within five years, more than Ethiopia’s total exports in 2006.
The country expects to earn more than $125 million from flower exports in 2007, a five-fold increase on the 2006 figure.
The coffee sector exported around 176,000 tons of produce, earning $421 million last year, according to official estimates.
“By developing 70,000 hectares (173,000 acres) of land for vegetables and fruits, as well as another 4,500 for flowers, we can anticipate a major increase in production,“ said Tsegaye Abebe, the head of the Ethiopia Horticultural Producers and Exporters Association.
In recent months, dozens of private flower farms have sprouted up across the country owing to tax exemptions and long-lease arrangements for farmland.
In Holeta, 50 kilometers (30 miles) west of the capital Addis Ababa, greenhouses for the culture of roses line the road on land which was barren five years ago.
More than a 100 foreign firms were cultivating flowers by the beginning of this month, and of these eight operate in Holeta, one of Ethiopia’s flower heartlands, according to the Ethiopian trade ministry.
“There is a thriving flower industry in this country...the climate, cheap labor and production costs have appealed to growers from many countries,“ said Dhairyasheel Shinde, manager of Ethiopian-Indian flower firm, Holeta Rose plc.
“We grow nine types of flowers, the country’s climate offers opportunity to grow both high altitude and low altitude flowers depending on your flavor,“ added Shinde, who employs 450 local people on 15 hectares of land.

DHAKA, Bangladesh, Dec. 16--The World Bank increased its aid pledge to cyclone-hit Bangladesh by $75 million on Sunday but warned that total pledges stand at less than a quarter of the $2.2 billion sought.
Cyclone Sidr smashed into the Bangladesh coast on Nov. 15, killing at least 3,300 people and followed devastating floods there earlier this year that caused combined economic losses of more than three billion dollars, AFP said.
The government last month appealed for at least $2.2 billion for food aid and to rebuild infrastructure shattered by both natural disasters. But total pledges so far have only reached $545 million even after the World Bank increased its pledge to $325 million from $250 million, its South Asian chief Praful Patel said after an inspection of cyclone-hit areas.
“The preliminary numbers on damages suggest that the magnitude of loss suffered by the economy due to the two natural disasters is very large--floods caused over one billion dollars and the cyclone probably over two billion dollars,“ Patel said.