Global Economic growth is set 4.75%

Global economic growth is set to reach 4.75 percent this year, International Monetary Fund (IMF) managing director Horst Koehler said recently.

"The outlook for the world economy is the best we have seen in over adecade.

The IMF staff expects the global economy this year as a whole to grow by about 4.75 percent," Koehler said. The IMF's previous forecast in May was 4.2 percent growth rate, compared with economic growth of 3.3 percent in 1999.

In his first US public address since he took over as IMF chief from French national Michel Camdessus on May 2, Koehler, of Germany, said: "A major engine driving this is undoubtedly the unprecedented non inflationary growth in the US economy."

Koehlef pointed out that evidence exists that US growth "is slowing down to a more sustainable pace and thus I trust in a soft landing."

Emerging market countries, meanwhile, "are now also experiencing strong growth," after being hit by the Asian financial crisis.

Meanwhile in Manila, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) may ask the Philippines to take steps to comber money laundering in its next review of Manila's loan program central bank governor Rafael buenaventur said recently.

Banking sources said that the IMF executive board has expressed concern that the country's strick bank secrecy law many be conductive to the launching of criminal proceeds.

US computer sets world

The Blue Mountain supercomputer at the US department of energy's Los Alamos nuclear weapon laboratory has set a world record by running 17.8 years of equiva lent single processor computing in just 72 hours.

Silicon Graphics International (SGI), whose servers are used by the computer more than 15,000 simulations that required 10 hours each were conducted across 31 of Blue Montain's 48 SGI origin 2000 servers. The system simulates nuclear physics for the US stockpile stewardship programme to ensure to continued safety, reliability and performance of America's nuclear weapons with out periodic underground testing.

The calculations analyzed variables to simulate how well a nuclear weapon would survive upon impact with the ground.

German investments in India touch $78 million

The German investments are on the rise in India and stood at $78 million during January June 2000 period. With this, Germany has moved four steps higher to become India's fourth largest investor.

Germany's investments declined considerably in 1998 and picked up again in 1999. The favorable trend is being carried in this year a swell, says Indo German Chamber of Commerce regional director, Ajay Singha.

Further the financial collaborations are more than two third of the total number of approvals. Out of the 100 approvals in the current year, 69 cases of foreign direct investment cases have come and another 31 are for foreign technology transfer.

Computer software and engineering constancy services are the two upcoming sectors which attracted increased German investments. There has been an unprecedented increase of 35 percent in investment in the computer software sector and around 48 percent increase in engineering constancy services. All these collaborations involve foreign equity participation.

Global bank lending rose by 5%

Global bank lending rose by five percent in the first three months of the year to 7,538 billion dollars, but lending to developing countries continued to fall slightly, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) said recently.

The decline in lending to developing countries was due to the effects of currency exchange rates, rather than the repayment of bank loans, the BIS, the central banks' central bank, said.

Japanese banks, which pulled back in their lending in all regions, also saw their share of lending to developing countries fall below 10 percent of the total for the first time, the basal based BIS said.

On the other hand, banks in Europe continued to increase their share of lending to developing countries and reversed a previous decline in lending to offshore centuries.

Breaking down the figures region by region in its consulted international banking statistics for the period until the end of March, the basal based BIS said outstanding lending to Asia fell by two percent.

"However one can estimate that only 1.6 billion of the reported 6.6 billion dollar decline in positions outstanding on Asia was due to repayments," it said.

World chip sales rise to record high

Continued demand for chips used for Internet infrastructure and consumer electronics pushed worldwide semiconductor sales in June to another record high, a chip industry trade group announced recently.

According to data released by the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), chipmakers made a record sale of 16.6 US billion dollars in June, 48 percent from last June's 11.2 billion dollars.

It's also the fourth consecutive month in which the SIA reported chip sales had reached a record high.

"June's numbers exceeded our expectations and affirm our forecast for a strong 2000," George Scalise, SIA's president, said. Earlier this year, the SIA revised upward its growth rate forecast to 31 percent.

German inflation on rise

Inflation showed no signs of abating in Germany, the biggest economy in the 11-country Euro zone, zone, in July, official data showed recently.

The cost of living in the whole of Germany rose by 0.5 percent in July from the figure for June and increased by 1.9 percent over a period of 12 months, final data published by the Federal Statistics Office showed.

The annual rate of change was therefore as high as it had been in June and was still perilously close to the key 2.0 percent level which the European Central Bank regards as the upper limit in its definition of price stability.

In fact, when calculated according to the European harmonised index of consumer prices (HICP), which is the real year stick for the ECB, German inflation actually stood at 2.0 percent in July.

'African growth depends on capital outflow'

Africa must focus on reversing the flight of capital rather than on aid if it is to achieve the UN target of halving poverty by 2015, the head of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) said.

"Aid is an important issue, but it is subordinate to the real issue of domestic capital formation and investment," Mark Malloch Brown said.

This required "a vision of governance" to encourage "the rule of law, a strong banking system, and a stable business environment," he added in an interview with AFP.

Last month, the UN conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) called for a doubling of official financing to sub-Shaharan Africa, from 10 billion dollars a year to 20 billion.

It said this was "the only feasible way to end aid dependence" and to sustain rapid growth for long enough to allow domestic savings and external private flows to gradually replace official aid.

"People bemoan the lack of foreign investment in Africa and they are right to do so," Malloch brown said, "but I also bemoan the astonishingly high rates of capital flight"