BUSINESS BRIEFS
Interest rates not likely to change
By Advertiser News Services
WASHINGTON — Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues are widely expected to keep interest rates unchanged when they meet tomorrow for the final time in 2006. Fed officials have kept their target for short-term interest rates, which influences borrowing costs across the economy, at 5.25 percent since June. That's the highest in nearly six years.
CHINA FORECASTS 10.5% GROWTH
BEIJING — China's economy should expand by 10.5 percent this year as an investment boom surges ahead despite tightening government controls, the country's top planner said in comments reported today.
Total economic output should exceed $2.5 trillion, said Ma Kai, chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, according to the Xinhua News Agency and the China Daily newspaper.
The government reported economic growth of 10.7 percent for the first nine months of the year. But the expansion has slowed slightly as Beijing tries to cool off a boom in real estate development and bank lending. Chinese leaders worry that a surge in credit and spending will ignite inflation or leave companies and lenders with dangerously high debt.
ECUADOR REJECTS U.S. TRADE PACT
LIMA, Peru — Ecuador's President-elect Rafael Correa said yesterday that he will not sign a free trade agreement with the United States.
Correa, who takes office Jan. 15, said that the U.S. agreement would be "tremendously harmful" to Ecuador.
The Andean country adopted the dollar as its currency in 2000 to halt hyperinflation. But Correa says that a trade agreement with the U.S. — like the ones Colombia and Peru have already signed — could create "incalculable" damage for Ecuador since the country cannot control its currency's value.
"We don't have a national currency; we have the dollar," he said. "If as a result of the agreement, Peru and Colombia have a problem in the external sector, they reduce the currency's value and correct the imbalance. Ecuador can't do that and the consequences could be incalculable."
