The weekly average prices of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) continued to rise slightly last week, reaching 89.81 U.S. dollars per barrel, the Vienna-based cartel said Monday. OPEC weekly average prices kept increasing for the fourth week last week, hitting a record high since May 2008. Last Wednesday the average OPEC basket crude oil price exceeded 90 dollars a barrel, rising to 90.02 dollars. It was the first time the price has jumped above 90 dollars in recent 2 ...

Georgia has posted a foreign trade of 5.883 billion U.S. dollars in the first 11 months of this year, 19 percent up year-on-year against 2009. But the foreign trade total in the 11 months was 25 percent less compared with the corresponding period of 2008, Georgia's national statistical agency GeoStat said on Monday. The statistical agency broke the total into 1.394 billion dollars worth of exports and 4.489 billion dollars worth of imports, with a trade deficit of 3.149 billion dollars.h T ...

Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov said that declining of the national economy would be finally overcome in 2012. "If everything will go in an optimistic scenario, there will be 6 percent growth in 2011. In 2012 we would reach pre-crisis level," Azarov said at a press conference in Kiev on Monday. He noted the national economy declined 15.1 percent in 2009. Azarov reminded that the real gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to reach 4.5 percent in 2011. He also stressed that t ...

China will continue to implement its proactive fiscal policy in 2011 and better handle the relations between maintaining steady and relatively fast economic development, restructuring the economy and managing inflation expectations, Finance Minister Xie Xuren said Monday. Xie, speaking at a national finance work conference, said that finance departments across the country should put more focus on stabilizing overall commodity prices next year to promote stable and relatively fast economic dev ...

A water-tower-like chimney is eye catching in the desolate desert, where under the chimney is a glass-made house sitting above the ground. This is a solar chimney plant system in Jinshawan, Wuhai City of north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, which is the country's first power plant that combines solar and wind power into power generation. Starting operation on Dec. 10, the 200-kilowatt power generating unit can supply 400,000 kwh of electricity per year, saving the equivalent of ...

The People's Bank of China (PBOC), the country's central bank, reaffirmed Monday that it would give more prominence to stabilizing prices, and implementing a prudent monetary policy during the next year. Further, China will make its monetary policies more targeted, flexible, and effective, employing multiple monetary tools to control liquidity and guide the credit growth back to a normal level, said an online statement summarizing a meeting of the PBOC's monetary policy committee. The stat ...

China will actively promote auto imports over the next five years to help the country restructure and upgrade its auto industry, a Chinese official from the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) said Sunday. Qian Jingfen, an official in charge of imports at the MOC's Industrial Department, told an auto imports forum in Beijing that the auto import-promotion strategy will be implemented during the 12th Five-year Plan period (2011-2015) through corresponding financial, taxation and trade policies. Qian ...

France's BNP Paribas, one of the leading European banks, aims to double the value of its revenue in German businesses units over the coming five years, a local daily reported on Monday. Speaking in an interview to La Tribune, Joachim von Schorlemer, the head of the bank's subsidiary in Germany, said the objective is reachable. "Our objective to further double revenue within five years after having tripled it in ten years is reasonable. We want to grow with our existing clients, with new cl ...

In the thin holiday trade Tokyo stocks rose Monday, with the key Nikkei stock index adding 0.75 percent as confidence in global economic growth underpinned investor's optimistic sentiment and offset concern about China's second interest rate hike in as many months. China's Shanghai Composite Index, largely regarded as the benchmark for all the nation's bourses, climbed as much as 1.5 percent in early trading on speculation a second interest-rate increase since mid-October will reduce inflatio ...

LOOKING AHEAD Looking forward, Kwok from HSBC thought Hong Kong's economy will continue to roar, as the recent growth drivers are expected to hold firmly in place over the coming year, though the city remains vulnerable to a renewed U.S./EU-led global slowdown in demand or major global financial market disruptions. Thus, HSBC has raised its 2011 GDP growth forecast for Hong Kong to a consensus-busting 5.2 percent, higher than the 4.6 percent expected by the markets. According to BOCHK, ...