Geely rules out price cuts

Mainland car maker Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd will not cut prices this year despite slower growth in the country, the world's second-largest automobile market, its top executive said yesterday.

Geely is also confident it can achieve its sales target of 230,000 units in 2008, an increase of 27 percent from last year, despite a weak market, Chairman Li Shufu said. The target was set earlier this year.

Geely, one of the country's few homegrown automakers which began by selling some of China's cheapest cars, is now trying to make more expensive vehicles to fatten up profit margins and the move has started to bear fruit.

Steel exports surge

China's exports of steel products in August hit a record 7.68 million tons, up 43 percent from the same month a year ago and surpassing the previous peak in July, reflecting slowing domestic consumption in recent months.

As China's steel mills push exports in the hope of higher profits, analysts said the move could nudge the government to tighten curbs aimed at keeping more products at home, although it is unlikely to happen in the near term.

China Telecom issues bonds

China Telecom has won the securities regulator's approval to issue 20 billion yuan in corporate bonds, market sources said yesterday.

The issuance is part of a plan to float up to 80 billion yuan in bonds to bankroll an acquisition in a sweeping domestic telecoms restructuring.

China Telecom, the country's top fixed-line carrier, will pay as much as $8.6 billion to use its parent's newly acquired wireless network for the next three years, as it enters the more lucrative mobile market with the hope of more than doubling its subscriber numbers by 2010, top executives said.

Vying for huge India order

Telecoms equipment makers Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks are competing with four other firms in a tender potentially worth $9 billion to provide wireless infrastructure to India's Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL).

Bidders in the tender for a total of 93 million GSM lines, the world's largest such order, include Huawei Technologies, ZTE Corp, Alcatel-Lucent and Nortel Networks, BSNL Chairman Kuldeep Goyal said.

"Only Motorola is not there. Other major vendors are there," Goyal told reporters on Wednesday after the bids were submitted, adding the telecoms firm was looking to pay less than $100 a line.

HK dollar nudges higher

The Hong Kong dollar edged higher against the US dollar on Wednesday, despite a drop in the domestic stock market.

The local currency was trading at 7.7985/88 per US dollar at 0906 GMT, slightly firmer than late Tuesday trade in Asia.

Dealers said the market was likely to remain volatile amid a poor stock market, which plunged 2.4 percent on Wednesday to just off a 17-month low.

Local interbank interest rates were mostly steady on Wednesday, with the one-month rate staying at 1.80/1.85 percent.

Reuters

(HK Edition 09/11/2008 page2)