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World Business Quick Take

■ Economics
Bank inks research deal
The World Bank and the organizers of a regional Chinese forum agreed yesterday on a three-year research program to pro-mote economic cooperation and integration in Asia, the bank said in a statement. The World Bank and the Boao Forum for Asia want to foster "a more intense network of expertise" providing "robust intellec-tual underpinnings" for decisions on economic integration, regional poli-cies and institutions, it said. "Economic integration has become a necessity for all regions to cope with the challenges of the world economy today and we would like to ensure its success in Asia," said Long Yongtu (龍永圖), the forum's secretary general. China wants the forum to become an Asian version of the World Economic Forum, bringing together decision makers and opinion leaders from government, business and academia. However, the first meeting, in April last year, was widely criticized for poor preparation and logistical chaos.

■ Telecoms
Singapore market growing
Singapore's saturated mobile-phone market keeps expanding with the penetration rate up to 80.6 percent of the population, official figures showed yesterday. Total mobile subscribers for the three operators stood at 3.36 million in July compared to 3.34 million in June and 3.27 million in January, accord-ing to the Infocomm Devel-opment Authority (IDA), the industry regulator. The increase was attributed to attractive offers from Singa-pore Telecom, MobileOne and StarHub. The penetra-tion rate at the start of this year was only 78.6 percent, the IDA said. Paging sub-scriber numbers continued the downward trend as more people turned to cellular phones, dropping from 222,100 in June to 210,600 in July. There was a sharp fall in the Internet dial-up subscriber base to 1.76 million in July from more than 2 million at the start of the year.

■ Tourism
Seoul mulls charters
South Korea will likely allow charter planes to fly to North Korea, possibly as early as this month, in what would be the first commer-cial flights between the rival countries, an official said yesterday. The decision stems from a travel agency's application to take 2,000 South Koreans to Pyong-yang between Sept. 15 and Dec. 25. The application was approved by the Unifi-cation Ministry, whose permission is needed by all South Koreans to go to North Korea. "As it [the tour] has already been approved by the Unification Ministry, we plan to give approval for the flights," an official of the Construction and Transport Ministry said on condition of anonymity. He said Korean Air and Asiana Airlines and the north's Air Koryo will likely receive permission to start chartered flights between Seoul and Pyongyang. A total of 40 flights are envisaged, the official said.

■ Tires
Fire hits Bridgestone plant
A huge fire at a tire plant owned by Bridgestone Corp in north-eastern Japan was burning fiercely eight hours after it broke out yesterday, forcing 5,000 people to flee their homes. There were no injuries, but more than 80 fire engines were trying to bring the blaze under control. A company spokes-woman said it was unclear when production could resume at the plant, the company's main tire-making facility in Japan. The fire broke out in the plant's rubber mixing area.

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