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World Business Quick Take

■ China
FDI plunged in November
Foreign direct investment plunged nearly 40 percent last month from a year earlier to US$3.6 billion, statistics showed yesterday. Actual foreign investment in the first 11 months rose 0.2 percent year-on-year to US$47.15 billion, China's Ministry of Commerce said on its Web site. The ministry provided no explanation for the fall last month although analysts said the decline was related to a delayed impact from the SARS epidemic earlier this year.
In October, foreign direct investment plunged by more than 30 percent to US$3.2 billion for the same reason. Contracted foreign invest-ment, a measure of possible business in the future, reached US$11.82 billion last month, up 68.6 percent over the same month last year. During the January-November period the value of contracted investment rose 37.08 percent annually to US$100.5 billion, the ministry said.

■ Computers
IBM shifting jobs to Asia
International Business Machines Corp plans to move as many as 4,730 programming jobs to India, China and other countries from the US during the coming months, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing company documents. The unannounced initiative envisions replacing workers in Southbury, Connecticut, Poughkeepsie, New York, Raleigh, North Carolina, Dallas, Boulder, Colorado and other US locations, the newspaper said. The com-pany plan will happen over a number of months with about 947 workers that are set to be notified in the first half of next year that their work is moving overseas, the paper said. It wasn't clear how many of the 3,700 other positions slated to be moved would be done next year or later, the paper said. IBM told some managers that it has already hired 500 engineers to take on some of the work to be relocated, the paper said.

■ Utilities
Shanghai rates hiked
Shanghai is jacking up elec-tricity prices for factories by up to 5 percent to alleviate the power shortage it is facing, official newspapers said yesterday. The price increase comes on top of the closure of some small factories and orders to reduce production and shift some operations to night hours. The city of 20 million people needs another 2 million kilowatts at peak demand times above the 9.6 million kilowatts it is able to provide. Starting this week, industrial and com-mercial power consumers will see prices for electricity rise by 2.5 percent to 5 percent, the Shanghai Daily and other newspapers reported. Residential and agricultural users will not be affected, the reports said. Higher prices will also be charged during peak usage hours to encourage further conservation and nighttime production, they said.

■ Telecoms
HK to get 3G next month
Third-generation (3G) cellphones with video viewing and conferencing features will make their Hong Kong debut early next month, Hutchison Whampoa announced yesterday. Hutchison said in a news conference 3G handsets made by Japanese electronics giant NEC Corp will hit stores and provide service early next month. The Chinese-language c616 model cellphone, which NEC president Akinobu Kanasugi yesterday called the "most advanced" 3G handset, will be priced at HK$4,380 (US$561) each. The Hong Kong launch comes 10 months after Hutchison rolled out 3G services in Britain and Italy

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