Singapore Central Bank Raises Inflation

Singapore's central bank has raised its inflation forecast for this year because of higher expected housing and transportation costs. Monetary Authority of Singapore Managing Director Ravi Menon said in a speech Thursday that the bank expects an inflation rate between 4 percent and 5 percent, one percentage point higher than its previous forecast. Menon said the government's 2011 economic growth forecast between 5 percent and 7 percent remained unchanged. Menon said a stronger Singapore dollar has helped lessen the impact of higher global oil and food prices. Singapore's inflation rate fell to 4.5 percent in May from 5.5 percent in January. politics story In a story July 8 about a Singapore public opinion survey, The Associated Press erroneously quoted Member of Parliament Vikram Nair as saying he was less concerned with the 40 percent of the electorate who did not vote for his party in recent polls than the 60 percent who did. The correct quote is: "One of the things one of my friends reminded me was, you can change, but don't forget, don't change for the 40 percent, also the 60 percent who voted for you."

Maruti Stops Swift Production

India's largest carmaker Maruti has ended the production of its highly selling premium hatchback Swift, to make way for the next generation Swift, which will be launched in late August or early September. Dealers have started accepting bookings for the new Swift. Maruti has codenamed the new Swift as YP8 and its trial runs are on in the Manesar plant, reports Economic Times. According to a report in Business Standard, The car will come with 1.2-litre petrol and 1.3-litre diesel variants. It was reported that the new model, built on a slightly longer yet new platform, will be little extra roomy, lighter and return better mileage than the current generation Swift. Besides, engineers have also achieved a substantial reduction in the overall weight of the car by replacing the metal fuel tank with a plastic tank. This will improve its fuel efficiency by a little over 13 per cent. This will be the first major face-lift for the Swift since it was launched six years ago. Pricing details of the new car has not been shared by the company. It was also reported that the new Swift will be produced at the company's Manesar facility in Haryana, which has recently seen labour unrest. The petrol variant will return a mileage of around 20 km a litre, as compared to 17.9 km per litre certified by the Automotive Research Association of India. Similarly, the diesel model will deliver around 23.8 km per litre, as against the existing 21 km a litre. The report stated that for installing the plastic fuel tanks, Maruti Suzuki India has tied up with France's Plastic Omnium, the world's largest manufacturer of plastic fuel tanks as it was mentioned that plastic fuel tanks are usually 25-35 per cent lighter than the conventional metal tanks. Besides, these are corrosion-free, durable, non-explosive and easily recyclable. Maruti Suzuki India has entered into a tripartite joint venture with Suzuki Motor Corporation and Plastic Omnium to manufacture fuel tanks at the Manesar facility. The new plastic tank manufacturing facility, Inergy Automotive Systems Manufacturing India Private Ltd, was inaugurated in Manesar on Monday.

Tata Motors

Tata Motors, the auto arm of the iconic Tata group, said it will challenge in court the West Bengal government's decision to reclaim land in Singur, another instance of conflict over land that is the biggest block for rapid growth in Asia's third-largest economy.
Tata Motors , India's top vehicle maker, abandoned plans in 2008 to build a plant on the land to manufacture what it says is the world's cheapest car, the Nano, in West Bengal after violent protests by farmers.
Returning the land to farmers was a central point of the campaign by the populist Trinamool Congress party during elections in the state in April, which saw voters throw out a three-decade old communist government. Trinamool is the largest ally of the Congress party.
Debasis Ray, a Mumbai-based spokesman for Tata Motors said on Wednesday the firm would contest the decision by the local government in the High Court in Kolkata, but did not elaborate.
Across India, several multi-billion dollar projects are being delayed as poor farmers resist the forced takeover of their lands, often at below market prices. Analysts warn this could deter foreign direct investment (FDI) and trip up plans for speedy industrialisation in India.
West Bengal has pledged to improve conditions for Indian and foreign investors after the state was shunned for years. Major companies are forced to look at each of India's 28 states when deciding where to invest as rules, often opaque, differ from state to state, a fact that often deters investors.
On Tuesday, local protests forced local authorities to stop acquiring land for South Korean POSCO's $12 billion steel plant in Orissa, further delaying what would be the single largest FDI into India.
Central and state governments have dithered on taking firm decisions, mindful of the wrath of the over 500 million farmers who make up their core vote base, but also wanting to accelerate economic growth to double digits.
That ambition is overshadowed by declining FDI, policy paralysis from a series of corruption scandals and slowing industrial activity due to high inflation and interest rates.
Economists, bankers and industrialists have said that without structural reforms, India could go into a slump that would be difficult to recover from.
India plans a new land acquisition law that will give farmers market or better rates for their land, taking off the edge from protests. The current law gives little or no compensation for land taken over for a "public purpose."
It remains to be seen whether the Congress-led government in the capital will push through the legislation in parliament given it is fighting an increasingly assertive opposition bent on blocking proceedings over rampant corruption.

Pleasant Day Ahead For Delhiites

A bright morning greeted Delhiites Friday and the weatherman forecast a pleasant day ahead. The minimum temperature was 24.5 degrees Celsius, three notches below average for this time of the season. 'The skies will be partly cloudy later in the day, although there is no likelihood of any rainfall. It will be a bright day,' an India Meteorological Department (IMD) official said. The maximum temperature is expected to hover around 38 degrees Celsius. The humidity levels stood at 76 percent. The maximum temperature recorded Thursday was 36.8 degrees while the minimum was 22.8 degrees.

Maiden International Flight

A solar energy plane made the world's first international flight powered by the sun on Friday to show the potential for pollution-free air travel. The Solar Impulse took off from an airfield at Payerne in western Switzerland on Friday morning and landed at Brussels airport after a 13-hour flight. "The objective is to demonstrate what we can do with existing technology in terms of renewable energy and energy savings," project co-founder and pilot Andre Borschberg told Reuters by telephone during the flight. Borschberg believes such solar-harnessing technology can be used to power cars and homes. "It is symbolic to be able to go from one place to another using solar energy," he said. The Solar Impulse project began in 2003 with a 10-year budget of 90 million euros ($128 million) and has involved engineers from Swiss lift maker Schindler and research aid from Belgian chemicals group Solvay. The plane, which requires 12,000 solar cells, embarked on its first flight in April 2010 and completed a 26-hour flight, a record flying time for a solar powered aircraft, three months later. With an average flying speed of 70 km/h (44 mph), Solar Impulse is not an immediate threat to commercial jets, which can easily cruise at more than 10 times the speed. A flight from Geneva from Brussels can take little more than an hour. Project leaders acknowledged it had been a major challenge to fit a slow-flying plane into the commercial air traffic system. Friday's flight was Solar Impulse's fifth. Previous flights did not leave Switzerland. A larger prototype is scheduled to fly around the world in 2013.

Demographic Destiny In Asia Braces

If demography is destiny, as the French philosopher Auguste Comte put it, then Asia faces daunting challenges in the coming decades. Markets understandably track the rate and composition of gross domestic product to gauge short-term economic shifts. But it is changes to the underlying productive capacity of an economy that count in the long run. Swing factors include openness to outside capital and ideas as well as the quality of education and governance. Another is the impact of population trends on the supply of labour and on savings and investment rates. Witness North Africa and the Middle East. One reason behind the turmoil engulfing the region is the failure of governments to address a youth bulge, spawning large cohorts of angry, unemployed young men. With the notable exception of India, most Asian countries have the opposite problem. The region is growing old, as harrowingly illustrated by the March 11 earthquake in northeast Japan. Many elderly are among the 27,000 dead or missing in the double disaster. So are many of the survivors: the populations of many of the shattered coastal towns have been declining for years as the young have moved to big cities to find work. How Japan helps the survivors to rebuild their lives may be a big first step toward finding out how to tackle the issue of an ageing society with a low birth rate, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told Reuters. POLITICS OF AGEING The rest of the world will be paying heed. Japan is the fastest-ageing nation, but others are catching up. By 2030, the share of the population aged over 60 in Japan will have grown to 37 percent from 30 percent last year. Germany and Italy will be just behind on 36 percent. Just as striking, the proportion of elderly South Koreans is projected to double to 32 percent, according to the McKinsey Global Institute, the economics research arm of consultants McKinsey & Co. Richard Dobbs, a director of the institute, said Japan had the advantage of a health system that was not as expensive as America's. But a lot hinged on whether politicians can rise to the challenge of extreme ageing. "Is Japan able to make these difficult decisions? The demographic cards you are dealt matter less than the ability of the political system to cope," Dobbs said. Japan, at least, is a rich nation and can afford to grow old. China might not be able to. Thailand is asking itself the same question [ID:nMSGE71R09] Right now, China has an old-age dependency ratio of 0.11, meaning there is just over one elderly Chinese for every 10 of working age. This will rise to 0.24 in 2030 and may exceed 0.43 by 2050, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, a Paris-based forum for industrial democracies. In an echo of northeast Japan, the increase in the dependency ratio will be much more pronounced in Chinese villages, passing 0.6 by 2050 compared with 0.3 in urban areas. In short, according to the OECD, China will face an old-age problem as severe as that in Italy, Germany and Japan but without -- as yet -- the pensions, health care and welfare set-ups those countries can pay for. Chinese pensioners might not be as rebellious as Arab youths, but the potential for friction is evident, especially as replacement rates -- the percentage of salary that a pension provides -- are projected to fall further from already low levels. Nearly 30 percent of urban retirees in China scrape by on less than half the median income. "Poor coverage, even for those in cities, accentuates the problem of relative poverty amongst the elderly," the OECD said in a report. "This may be politically difficult to sustain in a rapidly ageing society, where the elderly live less and less with their descendants." OFFSETTING FACTORS Not surprisingly, Beijing is aware of the problem. Like governments around the world, it is considering raising the retirement age, currently 60 for men, 55 for women civil servants and 50 for female workers. "Delaying the retirement age is a very complicated issue and we will study it according to the situations of population and employment and consider different groups of people," Yin Weimin, minister of human resources and social security, said this month. One problem, according to Richard Herd, who covers China for the OECD, is that the system is unduly generous to government officials. The bill for their pensions, which provide replacement rates of up to 80 percent, has jumped to almost 1 percent of GDP. "They need considerable reforms to pensions, especially to the retirement age in the public sector," Herd said during a visit to Beijing. China is not alone in facing a pensions bulge. In a report published last week, the World Bank said middle-income countries in East Asia can expect five times as many people as now to become eligible for a pension over the next two to three decades. Health care costs for a greying population will also jump. Yet as uncertainty over the repercussions of Middle East unrest and Japan's post-quake nuclear crisis shows, complex events are never black and white. Other factors will mitigate the economic impact of ageing. As people live longer, they will work longer. As workers become better educated, productivity will rise. So ageing should reduce per capita income growth rates by at most half a percentage point a year on average in developing East Asian countries, the World Bank estimates. "While favourable demographics of a young population fifty years ago had a significant positive impact on growth, unfavourable demographics of an ageing population will have a much less important negative impact," it concluded.

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