Tag: Business

Toyota, the world’s biggest automaker, on Monday said production in Japan plunged 62.7 percent year on year in March, putting it in danger of falling this year from the global top spot it claimed from General Motors in 2008.

Domestic output slumped to 129,491 vehicles, which Kyodo News agency said was the lowest since records began in January 1976.

Negotiations on the sum and payback conditions in a deal expected to involve tens of billions of euros follow an evaluation mission last week to Lisbon by the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

The government of Prime Minister Jose Socrates government fell last month when parliament rejected an austerity plan, forcing Lisbon to bow to market pressure and seek an European Union-IMF bailout.

The bank had to be taken over by Afghanistan’s central bank after claims that former executives granted themselves off-the-book loans worth a reported 900 million dollars which were partly used to buy luxury properties in Dubai.

The crisis has highlighted chaos and corruption in Afghanistan’s financial system, more than nine years after Karzai’s Western-supported government replaced the Taliban regime following a US-led invasion in 2001.

The central bank re-released Friday’s quarterly Tankan survey to show the breakdown in the replies it received before and after the disasters.

With most of the responses from companies received before March 11, the survey does not fully reflect the impact of the quake.

In Gamzyuki, a tiny village in the Kaluga region, around 200 kilometres (125 miles) south of Moscow, a fish farm has the ambitious goal of producing 16 tons of the sturgeon eggs per year by 2014.

Opened three years ago, it is one of dozens of sturgeon farms that have opened in Russia recently, aiming to rebuild the nation’s reputation as the world’s premium exporter of caviar.

“If history is any guide, real GDP growth will be negatively affected through mid-2011,” the Bank said in its latest East Asia and Pacific Economic Update report.

But growth should pick up in subsequent quarters “as reconstruction efforts, which could last five years, accelerate”, it added.

Nuclear plant operator TEPCO dived almost 24 percent on fears of a meltdown at one of its reactors while producers such as Sony and Toyota tumbled as power shortages prompted blackouts and factories remained closed, hurting production.

The Bank of Japan said it would pump a record 15 trillion yen ($184 billion) to help stabilise the short term-money market, making good on its pledge Sunday that it would unleash “massive” funds following the quake.

Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, lifting the lid on government plans for the financial year from April 1, scaled up spending for farmers, fertiliser subsidies, food programmes, education and rural employment.

“The country has carried for long enough the burden of hunger and malnutrition,” Mukherjee told parliament, saying the money earmarked for social spending would amount to 36 percent of the total budget.

David Wei and Elvis Lee resigned as chief executive officer and chief operating officer respectively, accepting responsibility for “systemic breakdowns” that allowed the fraud to happen, the company said in a statement.

“The investigation confirmed that Mr Wei and Mr Lee and other members of senior management were not involved in any of the activities that led to the claims by buyers against fraudulent suppliers,” the statement said.