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■ Soy Sauce
Kikkoman plans expansion
Kikkoman Corp, the world's largest producer of soy sauce products, announced plans for a US$100 million expansion over 10 years of its plant near Lake Geneva. Yuzaburo Mogi, president and chief executive officer, made the announcement Friday before the start of an economic development conference here on revit-alizing the economies of the US and Japan. Kikkoman first opened the factory in 1973 as its US headquarters. It originally produced 9.08 million liters of soy sauce and related products a year and now produces 94.63 million liters a year. With the expan-sion, annual production at the plant is projected as growing to 128.70 million liters. Mogi said the first US$13 million of the expansion would come in the first year.

■ Free trade
LDC's meet in Bangladesh
Trade ministers and officials from some of the world's poorest nations gathered in Bangladesh yesterday to hash out a unified position on trade concessions from rich countries. Ministers and officials from 35 Asian and African nations categorized by the UN as least developed countries were expected to adopt a declaration ahead of the WTO's ministerial meeting scheduled for September in Cancun, Mexico. Bangladesh Commerce Minister Amir Khosru Mahmud Chowdhury said Friday that the free movement of people from developing nations to industrialized countries would be a key issue at the three-day meeting. Chowdhury said developing nations will also ask industrialized nations not to apply antidumping clauses against their products.

■ Airlines
JAL forces staff to take leave
Japan Airlines Co (JAL) has decided to ask all its employees to take unpaid leave to offset a sharp drop in demand following the outbreak of SARS, a news report said yesterday. Asia's biggest carrier will ask its workers to take one month of unpaid leave, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun said. The airline has already asked cabin crews to take unpaid leave, affecting about 7,000 of its domestic work force of around 18,000. The recent sharp cutback in the number of flights due to the SARS outbreak has forced the airline to expand the program to include about 11,000 ground staff, pilots and other employees, the newspaper said. The company expects the move to help cut costs by hundreds of millions of yen, the Nihon Keizai said.

■ IRAQi development
Singapore to reap windfall
Businesses here are lining up for contracts to help rebuild Iraq as part of a "war windfall" Singapore is to reap for supporting the U.S.-led strikes, a newspaper reported Saturday. "More than 50 local companies, spanning the infrastructure, business services, health care and shipping sectors have expressed interest in this war windfall," the < This story has been viewed 1699 times.