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World Business Quick Take

■ ELECTRONICS
Toshiba sells building
Toshiba said yesterday it is selling its building in Tokyo's plush Ginza district for ?161 billion (US$1.4 million) to concentrate on its core electronics businesses. Japanese electronics maker Toshiba Corp, which has been trying to strengthen its computer chips and gadget operations, said the sale of the building to Tokyo Land Corp will be completed next month. "This sale will increase the corporate value of Toshiba through realization of a fair value for the Ginza Toshiba Building and allowing concentration of resources in core businesses," it said.

■ AUTOMOBILES
Chery sees exports doubling
China's Chery Automobile Co (奇瑞汽車), a fast-growing private company, expects to double its exports this year from last year to 100,000 cars, a senior executive said yesterday. The rapid expansion of overseas shipments will help the nimble auto maker toward the ambitious goal of selling 1 million cars annually by 2010, company vice president Zhou Biren (周必仁) said. Chery, which was established just a decade ago, said its main markets abroad included the former Soviet republics, the Middle East and South America. Zhou confirmed that Chery intends to sell shares to the public, but gave few other details.

■ SINGAPORE
New berths to be built
A consortium led by Hyundai Engineering & Construction Co will build 16 new berths in Singapore to enable the island state to handle growing demand for container capacity, the Maritime and Port Authority (MPA) of Singapore said yesterday. In a statement, the MPA said the project will add 14 million twenty foot equivalent units (TEU) to Pasir Panjang terminal's container handling capacity. The authority said work on the new berths will commence in the last quarter of this year and will take about six years to complete.

■ AVIATION
Qantas adds green tax
Australia's flagship Qantas Airways Ltd and its popular budget carrier Jetstar launched a program yesterday allowing passengers to pay extra to offset the greenhouse emissions their flights cause. The scheme allows travelers to calculate the per-passenger emissions of their flights and buy carbon dioxide credits that would be paid to a variety of environmental projects, the airline said in a statement. A flight from Australia to Los Angeles generates around 1.4 tonnes of greenhouse gases per passenger, which the airline says can be offset by paying just A$17 (US$14.50) per flight. The money would be spent on government-approved carbon dioxide abatement schemes.

■ INDUSTRY
Mitsubishi eyes partnership
Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd plans to enter the market for power plant facilities in Russia under a tie-up with conglomerate Renova Group, a newspaper said yesterday. The partnership, which is expected to be announced in the next few days, will make Mitsubishi Heavy the first Japanese heavy electric machinery manufacturer to enter the Russian power systems market, the Nikkei Shimbun said. Under the plan, Mitsubishi will transfer its latest gas turbine technology to Ural Turbine Works, a unit of the Renova Group, the report said, without revealing sources. Ural Turbine intends to double or triple output capacity from five turbines a year.

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