Reallocation of existing WB loans to provide $450 mn for tsunami relief
New Delhi: The World Bank is likely to extend $450 million for tsunami reconstruction in the country, which has been estimated to cost a total $1.2 billion. ADB may chip in with $200 million while the Centre, the states and the NGOs will raise the remaining $550 million.

Loans worth 450 million dollars would be provided for tsunami reconstruction from International Development Assistance (IDA), the soft lending arm of the bank. India gets about one billion dollar in soft loans through IDA annually.

According to World Bank country director Michael Carter of the 450 million dollar, only a small portion would be from IDA exposure.

"Most of the funds will come through reallocation of the existing loans given to India," he said. There were some savings in the utilisation of existing loans due to the appreciation in exchange rate.

World Bank's total assistance is at over 3 billion dollars annually.
Back to News Review index page  

US: Pak law and order situation a barrier to trade
Washington: The United States has said that Pakistan's law and order problems and its failure to protect intellectual property rights have become a "barrier" to trade with the country.

"Businesses operating in Pakistan have repeatedly called for strengthening law and order. Corruption and a weak judicial system remain recurrent and substantial disincentives to investment," US Trade Representative (USTR) office has said in its annual report on trade barriers.

The report alleged that "Contract enforcement, was difficult in Pakistan.

The report pointed out that Pakistan's ranking in Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index dropped from 92 out of 133 countries in 2003 to 129 out of 145 countries listed in 2004.

It added that Pakistan's failure to adequately protect intellectual property constituted one of the most severe barriers to trade and investment".
Back to News Review index page  

Google goes 2G
San Jose: A year after unveiling a free e-mail service with a full gigabyte of storage, Google Inc is doubling the capacity of each account and plans to keep bumping up the limit in the future.

Once the upgrade takes effect today, Gmail users will be able to store up to 2 gigabytes of e-mail and attachments for each account. Even more capacity will be made available after that as it becomes feasible, the company said.

The announcement was made on the first anniversary of the Internet search engine's launch of Gmail.

Just last week, Yahoo Inc. said it would offer 1 gigabyte of storage to users of its free service. When Google introduced Gmail, Yahoo was providing just 4 megabytes of storage. Microsoft Corp's Hotmail now offers 250 megabytes, up from 2 megabytes at Gmail's launch.

Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are in a tight race to get their services on the world's computer desktops.
Back to News Review index page