BRUSSELS, Belgium, Dec. 23--The European Union is bracing for the expiry of import quotas on Chinese textiles at the end of the year amid fears of a new wave of T-shirts and trousers bearing “Made in China“ labels flooding in.
The quotas, which the EU and China agreed to put in place in 2005, are to be replaced with a joint monitoring system that will be on the lookout for new signs of an upsurge in Chinese imports over the ensuing year, AFP wrote.
Under the system, eight of the 10 clothing categories covered by the quotas will be tracked on the Chinese side through export licenses and will be monitored when they enter Europe. “The advantage is that we’ll at least know what to expect through the licenses,“ said Franceco Marchi at Euratex, a trade association for European textile makers.
Meanwhile, a top European official warned consumers against buying “cheap and tacky“ toys this Christmas, and promised new measures next month to make playthings safer, in an
interview on Sunday.
German European Commission Vice President Guenter Verheugen told the Bild am Sonntag weekly that people should “open their eyes“ when buying toys, and beware particularly of “tacky unbranded products“. He said that from the beginning of January new regulations would “adapt safety standards to the developments of the last 20 years and make them stronger“.
According to Bild am Sonntag, substances would be banned from toys that cause cancer or genetic damage, reduce fertility or trigger allergies, and EU member states would be obliged to step up controls.
Verheugen said he was opposed to a ban on imports of toys from China, which had been threatened earlier this year after mass recalls of Chinese-made goods. “The Chinese have acknowledged the serious nature of the situation,“ he said.
In another development, China-US trade amounted to $221.36 billion in the first three quarters of this year, a growth of 15.6 percent on the same period of last year, Xinhua reported.
According to customs data, China’s export to the United States increased by 15.8 percent to $169.99 billion, or 19.4 percent of China’s total exports. The country’s import from the US went up 15.1 percent to $51.37 billion dollars, or 7.45 percent of the country’s total import.

Andris Piebalgs

WASHINGTON,
Dec. 23--North Africa could become a leading supplier of natural gas to Europe, eventually rivaling Russia, an EU commissioner said.
EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs said the combined energy production of North African states could match Russia, which supplies about half of the European Union’s natural gas, by 2020, UPI reported on Friday.
“This is a major reliable and attractive market, offering multiple business opportunities,“ Piebalgs said of the EU for the North African countries of Algeria, Libya and Egypt.
Renewable energies such as solar, wind and biomass also could be supplied to the EU, he said.
“If we combine the potential gas production of Algeria, Libya and Egypt, by 2020 gas exports from the Maghreb to Europe could reach the level of Russian gas exports,“ said Piebalgs.
Russia is the EU’s largest single energy supplier, providing half of the EU’s gas imports. There was also a huge potential in the region for renewable energy, in particular solar, wind and biomass, said Piebalgs, while the EU was “a major reliable and attractive market, offering multiple business opportunities.“
Ministers from North African and Middle Eastern countries around the Mediterranean Sea and the EU endorsed a 2008-2013 Euro-Mediterranean energy action plan during EuroMed ministerial conference in Cyprus on Dec. 18.
The plan forsees the countries would work together in three priorities: harmonizing and integrating energy markets and laws across the region, promoting sustainable energy, and developing common interest initiatives, such as extending infrastructure, financing investments and research and development.
Integrating energy markets implies developing a comprehensive regional database to track energy sector reforms in the non-EU Mediterranean partner countries, said Piebalgs. “This database will also provide examples of best practice,“ he said. “It will serve as a permanent common reference and contribute to define benchmarks.“
Ministers agreed to work together to integrate Libya into the energy cooperation. The ministers suggested holding the next EuroMed ministerial conference in 2009 to review progress on the action plan.

BERLIN, Dec. 23--The head of Germany’s industrial federation has urged 15,000 company bosses to stick together in resisting any cap on executive salaries being mooted by some politicians, AFP wrote.
Juergen Thurmann’s round robin letter follows criticism of huge pay cheques for business chiefs from Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Horst Koehler in particular, the daily Bild reported Saturday.
And the head of the Saarland regional government, Social Democrat Peter Mueller, suggested a ceiling be fixed by law. The issue has boiled up following revelations that luxury sports car company ’Porsche’ paid its management board a total of 112.7 million euros ($161 million) in its last fiscal year, compared with 45.2 million euros in the previous year.
In his letter Thurmann said Germany’s left-right coalition government “must not let itself be led on to the wrong track of limiting by law the remuneration of employers for electoral reasons“.
“Together, let us recall what creates prosperity and growth in Germany: the numerous excellent businesses with their highly skilled employees. We businessmen and directors have clear values, morality cannot be measured in figures,“ he added in the second such attack by a leading industrialist this month.
On December 4, Ludwig Georg Braun, head of the national chamber of commerce and industry, said that “political leaders should not meddle“ in the issue.
The day before Merkel said she saw no problems with bosses who were “well paid“ when they “did a lot for their companies and its partners“.
But, Merkel added, “When directors’ failures are rewarded with fantastic bonuses, it damages trust in the social balance within our country.“
Braun retorted that “it is up to the supervisory boards of companies to decide on the salaries they are willing to pay to recruit the best managers.“
The speaker of the lower house of parliament, Norbert Lammert, said in an interview that he was also concerned that the gap between bosses’ salaries and average pay had become out of proportion.
There is no national minimum wage in Germany, and the issue has divided the coalition government.
Attempts by the Social Democrats to introduce a national minimum wage as is common in much of Europe have met with strong resistance from Merkel’s Christian Democrats.

PARIS, Dec. 23--Air France-KLM Group canceled about 20 percent of Air France-KLM flights taking off on Saturday from Orly, Paris second-largest airport, because of a strike by runway workers.
Flights from Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport near Paris and regional airports are unaffected by the walkout, said a spokesman for the Paris-based airline, declining to be named, Bloomberg wrote.
Air France said in an e-mailed statement that 80 percent of flights out of Orly are likely to go on Sunday. There were fewer strikers than anticipated, the spokesman said, allowing the airline to reduce the number of cancellations from Friday, when a third of flights were canceled.
Eighty percent of scheduled flights have been or will be able to fly out of Orly Airport on Saturday, Air France said. Passengers will be able to cancel or delay their travel without penalty for a month, or exchange their airplane tickets for train travel, the company said in the statement.

This file photo shows Port Authority of Singapore container port.

SINGAPORE,
Dec. 23--Singapore is set to spend two billion Singapore dollars ($1.41 billion) to increase its port’s annual capacity by about 40 percent, AFP reported.
The project is scheduled for completion by 2013 and is expected to allow Singapore’s port to handle higher volumes from increased global trade, the Straits Times wrote.
The expansion will add 16 berths to the Pasir Panjang terminal, increasing its annual handling capacity to 14 million standard containers, the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore said in the report.
Singapore is one of the busiest container ports in the world. The city-state’s port operator PSA said in September that it had invested five billion Singapore dollars over the last 10 years to develop 26 berths at Pasir Panjang terminal by 2009.
That project would boost annual handling capacity across PSA’s four Singapore terminals to 35 million containers.
Kuah Boon Wee, chief executive of PSA for Southeast Asia and Singapore, told the Straits Times in June Shanghai is set to overtake Singapore as the world’s busiest port in 2008 on the back of China’s continued stellar economic growth.
In the first eight months of the year, PSA handled 17.8 million TEUs (20-foot equivalent units), up 13.7 percent over the last year.
PSA Singapore Terminals is the flagship terminal of PSA International which is owned by state-linked Singapore investment firm Temasek Holdings.

HAVANA, Cuba,
Dec. 23--Visiting Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and acting Cuban President Raul Castro signed agreements Saturday in the energy, mining and oil sectors.
The agreements, closing a four-day visit by Chavez to Cuba, also include a 122-milion-dollar loan for Cuba to buy tanker ships to transport crude oil and its derivatives, AFP reported.
Two agreements will almost double the new southeastern Cienfuegos oil refinery’s capacity from 65,000 to 150,000 barrels per day, and reopen an oil pipeline between the eastern Matanzas and the refinery, located 260 kilometers (160 miles) south of Havana.
Two agreements provide a 170-million-dollar loan to build a new power plant in northeastern Holguin and expand the existing power network supplying Havana.
During his visit, Chavez met with ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro, inaugurated the Cienfuegos refinery and attended the fourth summit of Petrocaribe, a Venezuelan initiative to provide oil to Caribbean neighbors at preferential prices.
Cuba imports about 92,000 barrels a day of Venezuelan oil, some of it paid indirectly by supplying Venezuela with 36,000 Cuban workers, most of them medical doctors.

GENEVA, Dec. 23--Saudi hands in UBS buyout as the world’s largest money manager posts another $10 billion in writedowns, Reuters wrote.
Saudi investors bought a large stake in UBS along with the Singapore government, UK daily the Financial Times reported, amid rising shareholder discontent over the Swiss bank’s losses.
UBS sold a roughly 9 percent stake to the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation this month to stop a fresh round of subprime writedowns and a second, smaller stake to an undisclosed Middle East investor.
The newspaper reported that the mystery investor was Saudi, quoting a figure with knowledge of the negotiations.
It was reasonable to assume that the kingdom’s ruling family was involved in the deal and approved it, the FT said.
The bank declined to comment on the report. UBS, the world’s largest wealth manager, announced further writedowns of around $10 billion this month, bringing the total to around $14 billion and making it one of the most prominent victims of the credit crisis among banks so far.
UBS will seek approval for the deal at an extraordinary shareholder meeting in February, including its plans to issue a mandatory convertible bond for a total of 13 billion Swiss francs ($11.26 billion) to its two new investors.
But investors in Switzerland have set the stage for a stormy meeting, with advocacy group Ethos on Thursday urging more clarity from UBS over its losses, threatening it would call for an independent probe at the Swiss bank.
UBS woes have raised pressure on its chairman, Marcel Ospel, and a number of fund managers at an investor day this month said they were surprised Ospel was still in his job.
In a show of directness rarely see in the otherwise secretive industry, Ivan Pictet--a partner at Swiss private bank Pictet and head of a lobby group for the Geneva financial centre--openly criticized UBS this week.
“The loss of image for the financial centre stemming from UBS’s problems is worrying me,“ Pictet told Bilan magazine. “This loss is not negligible for Switzerland. The image of prudential management, one of the strong characteristics of our country, is put in danger,“ he said.