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World Business Quick Take

■ Auto Industry
Toyota mulls US price hike
Toyota Motor Corp, the world's second-largest automaker by sales, may increase prices in the US when it releases new vehicles in its new model year, chairman Hiroshi Okuda said. The price increase will differ on each model in the US, Okuda said yesterday at a Tokyo press conference by the Japan Business Federation, of which he's also chairman. The Asahi newspaper reported on Friday that Toyota may boost prices of most models by between 2 percent and 3 percent on average in October. Toyota, which raised US auto prices by up to 2 percent on average in the past few years, wants to protect its earnings from surging steel costs. It's raising prices while its top ranking in quality surveys is trouncing US competitors General Motors Corp, Ford Motor Co and DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler unit.

■ China's Economy
Foreign investment dips
Foreign direct investment in China fell slightly in the first five months of the year, though contracts for future investment rose by 15 percent on-year in the same period, the government reported. The US$22.4 billion in foreign direct investment from January to May was down 0.8 percent from the same period last year, the state-run newspaper China Daily reported yesterday, citing statistics from the Ministry of Commerce. Foreign direct investment in May totaled US$4.89 billion, down 22 percent on-year, the report said. Contracted direct investment, an indicator of future spending, rose almost 15 percent on-year from January to May to US$65 billion. Although foreign companies continue to build up investments in China, the pace of growth has been slowing in recent months.

■ Telecoms
DoCoMo, LG to cooperate
NTT DoCoMo Inc, the world's second-largest mobile-phone company, said it agreed to develop high-speed FOMA handsets with LG Electronics Inc, South Korea's second-largest electronics maker. The companies will start selling the handsets early next year, DoCoMo said in a faxed release. The phone, equipped with DoCoMo's i-mode Web-accessing technology, would be able use both the high-speed W-CDMA platform and older networks. This would be the first time for LG Electronics to supply to a Japanese operator. Tokyo-based DoCoMo is looking to domestic and foreign suppliers as it tries to catch up with KDDI Corp. KDDI, DoCoMo's smaller rival, which has 57 percent of Japan's 32.6 million high-speed customers, offers the only service in Japan that allows users to download full songs to their phones.

■ Banking
Banks move into debt
International banks are wading deep into debt markets to the detriment of traditional lending, the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) said in a report released yesterday. The bank also noted Chinese banks had repatriated US$16 billion from offshore British and US accounts in the final quarter of last year, which it attributed to changes in Chinese banking regulations rather than abandoning the sagging dollar. With bond markets continuing to grow, BIS said the amount of bonds held by international banks had quadrupled between 1995 and last year, rising from US$604 billion to US$2.4 trillion. The BIS said growth was particularly strong in issuing of bonds in the eurozone and by emerging countries in their local currencies.

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