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Commercial debt

JAKARTA: Indonesia is planning to try to negotiate the rescheduling of some 300 million dollars in government debt to foreign commercial banks, a report said here on Monday. The 300 million dollars are due in 2000 and 2001, Bank Indonesia director Burhanudin Abdullah said, according to the Jakarta Post.ÑAFP

Saudi telecoms

RIYADH: The telephone network in Saudi Arabia will be totally digital by the end of this year, the Saudi Telecommunications Company (STC) announced on Sunday. "STC will become 100 percent digital by the end of 2000," STC director general Abdul Rehman ibn Ahmad al-Yami told the official Saudi Press Agency. More than 1.5 million existing lines have already been replaced in old exchanges, he said.ÑAFP

Mobile phones

BEIJING: The future of the Internet in China is the mobile telephone, delegates to a conference were told in Beijing this week. At the three-day gathering, Internet China 2000, several thousand young Chinese and upcoming entrepreneurs debated the merits of new technologies and foreign investment needed to develop the Internet. The country's burgeoning Internet market reached 8.9 million users by the end of December but has found itself confronted by a series of constraints, including the 600 to 730 US dollar cost of a computer, far in excess of the average annual Chinese salary.ÑAFP

Japanese aid to Indonesia

TOKYO: Japan's new Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori assured Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid Sunday that the recent political change here would not alter Tokyo's aid to Indonesia's reforms. The pledge was made when Wahid called on the premier during a five-hour stopover in Tokyo on his way home from a tour of South Africa, Mexico and Cuba, a Japanese government official said.ÑAFP

Throws support behind protesters

HAVANA: Having just wrapped up a summit on how to spread the world's wealth, 133 developing nations looked to the north and saw another group making the same point. The developing nations threw their support behind protesters who have been massing in Washington to criticise the world financial system, which they say has left millions destitute.ÑAP

Few reforms in RoK after polls

SEOUL: A go-slow on economic reforms in South Korea is expected to persist after general elections which strengthened the hand of the opposition, investors say. With little change tipped on the policy front, investors are glued instead to slumping technology stocks in the United States and fretting about the possible impact on American demand for South Korean exports, they said.ÑAFP

Overhaul

SHANGHAI: Foreign creditors have been left on the sidelines a domestic wrangles over the financial overhaul of China's troubled international trust and investment corporations (ITICs) have slowed the cleansweep of the sector to a snail's pace. China's trust firms, the fund-raising arms of local governments and ministries, hit the international headlines in October 1998 when flagship Guangdong International Trust and Investment Corp (GITIC) collapsed under a 4.7 billion mountain of debt.ÑAFP

Asia urged to use technology

SINGAPORE: Surging domestic demand and robust exports will drive Asian countries to higher growth over the next few months after a strong first quarter, with rates in key economies in Northeast Asia surpassing those in the Southeast, regional analysts say. Crucial to recovery in the longer term however is how regional economies further deregulated and utilise information technology to improve productivity and efficiency as growth resumes following the Asian financial crisis which began in mid-1997.ÑAPP

Lanka battles hit foreign confidence

COLOMBO: This year's budget in Sri Lanka banked on peace, but as fighting between Tamil rebels and troops escalates the stock market is taking a severe beating as foreigners flee. The budget for 2000 presented in mid February was designed to maintain the military "status quo" with Tamil Tiger guerrillas and help push a peace bid backed by the Norwegian government, Treasury officials said at the time.ÑAFP