Sunday World Business News

Inflation, increasing air fare hits tourism in Goa Press Trust of India . Panaji
Goa expects a net downfall by almost 12 per cent in its tourist inflow for the next season beginning from October due to inflation and the state getting expensive for the guests. The state has already registered almost ten per cent slide in chartered flights arrival for the season gone by and the drop will continue for the coming season as well as one of the chartered flight operator has pulled out. ‘The various factors will contribute for this downfall in Goan tourism. Inflation is a major factor which has triggered upheaval in almost in all the sectors,’ Travel and Tourism Association of Goa chief Ralf D’Souza told the news agency. The industry, which is getting ready to cater to the next season, feels that travel getting expensive will have a negative impact on Goa’s tourism. Goa, known for its beaches, attracts around 25 lakh tourists, of which four lakh are foreigners, with the UK topping the list. ‘Travel is getting expensive after air fares have gone up. Everywhere there is recession’, D’Souza said. Corporate houses too have curtailed their expenses reducing the incentives, which will directly affect corporate clients holidaying in the state. The state tourism industry is feeling the heat with the summer season occupancy going down by almost 20 per cent compared to last year.
Indonesia to shift factory hours amid blackouts Agence France-Presse . Jakarta
Indonesia will move manufacturers’ working hours to weekends in a bid to avoid prolonged rolling blackouts across the country, the vice president said Friday. The move, which will also see working hours shifted to off-peak times, has been brought in to avoid burdening the overstrained grid during peak hours. ‘A joint ministerial decree will be signed this afternoon, and will become effective in August,’ Jusuf Kalla told Dow Jones Newsires, without giving further details. State power monopoly PLN started two weeks of rolling blackouts in Jakarta on Friday after six months of frequent outages on the dense Java-Bali grid cost businesses millions of dollars in losses. The rolling blackouts in Jakarta are officially due to maintenance work that will interrupt gas supplies to two state-owned generating stations in North Jakarta, but analysts have blamed the country’s crumbling infrastructure. Analysts have warned electricity shortages could limit economic growth and discourage local and foreign investment in Southeast Asia’s largest economy. ‘The economy will not be able to grow above six per cent if can’t increase supply by nine per cent annually,’ said Purbaya Sadewa, chief economist at the state-owned investment bank PT Danareksa. Rising demand for electricity has led to increasing numbers of blackouts across the country in the past few years despite its vast resources of oil, natural gas, coal and geothermal energy. The power crisis appears to be deteriorating even though only 53 per cent of the archipelago’s 234 million people has access to electricity. The government is planning to boost capacity by some 30 per cent to about 40,000 megawatts by 2011, but the first new power station is not expected to be operational until mid-2009.
Russian oil sector at ‘critical juncture’ Agence France-Presse . Severodvinsk, Russia
Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin on Friday expressed concern over the country’s declining oil production and said the sector was at a ‘critical juncture.’ Putin also said, however, that Russia would not engage in ‘economic egoism’ and would continue to fulfill export contracts even as it met the energy needs of its own growing economy. ‘The prospects are good but some tendencies worry us. The rate of growth of production has gone down ... In the first quarter of this year, production even declined 0.3 per cent,’ Putin told ministers and oil executives. ‘The oil sector has reached a critical juncture,’ Putin said after visiting the Sevmash shipyard in Severodvinsk where Russia’s first Arctic oil rig is under construction. He said tax cuts approved this year had already given oil companies more money to spend on development and added that the government was considering additional tax breaks for companies operating in oil-rich regions of Siberia. The government will also ease bureaucracy for companies opening new oil fields and develop infrastructure in remote areas to encourage investment.