Russia could sell Venezuela the license to make AK-103 automatic rifles, said a leading executive at Russian state arms firm Rosoboronexport. Russia has sold Venezuela 100,000 AK-103, or Kalashnikov, rifles for $54 million, although only 30,000 have so far reached their destination.
Russian gas major Gazprom will invest up to $2 billion in energy projects in Bolivia. The president of Bolivian state-owned oil company Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB), Jorge Alvarado, announced the partnership on Wednesday. Gazprom is interested in gas exploration and extraction in Bolivia, in constructing plants, and the export of Bolivian gas to other markets worldwide.
Hungarian Prime Minister-elect Ferenc Gyurcsány said yesterday that the public sector deficit will be 8% of GDP this year. Finance Minister János Veres said that the 2006 gap is likely to come in 1,000 billion Hungarian forints above the government projection of a HUF 1,546 billion. István Zsoldos of Goldman Sachs said this was bad news because the fiscal situation is worse than some market participants expected, and it also increases the chances of a downgrade from rating agencies.
China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) announced measures to relax limits on outward investments. SAFE said that the government has decided to scrap quotas for purchase of foreign exchange by Chinese companies, planning to make investments in overseas markets. The Chinese government had kept a ceiling of $5 billion on foreign currency bought for overseas investment. The revised guidelines will be effective from July 1.
More than half of Taiwan's new private banks; those that became operational between 1992 and 1993; saw earnings decline considerably in between January and May this year. The decline was largely due to bad credit card and cash card loans. During the period, only three of the new banks had pre-tax profits of more than one billion Taiwanese dollars: Taishin International Bank, Bank SinoPac, and E Sun Bank. Ta Chong Bank recorded the biggest loss: nearly TWD 5 billion.