Sat, Aug 06, 2005 page12

• World Business Quick Take

  • AGENCIES
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  ■ Computer
  Dell hungry for Asian market

  Dell Inc, the world's largest PC maker, said it aims to double its share of the Asia-Pacific computer and server market as it increases sales in the region. "Asia Pacific will continue to be a vehicle of growth for Dell for a long time," the company's president and chief executive Kevin Rollins told reporters in Kuala Lumpur yesterday. "What I would hope is Dell's share of the Asia-Pacific market will go from about 10 percent today and grow over time to maybe 20 percent," he said, declining to give a timeframe for achieving the target. The US is Dell's largest market, while the Asia-Pacific and Japan account for 11 percent of its revenue. The company this week announced plans to open a second factory in China in the first quarter of next year. Dell's plants in Malaysia, its manufacturing base for Asia outside Japan and China and producer of more than 95 percent of the company's notebook computers sold in the US, are increasing output at 30 percent a year.

  ■ Fuel

  China imposes rationing

  Surging demand for fuel in China's southern province of Guangdong, an export-oriented manufacturing center, has led to severe shortages of gasoline and diesel, prompting officials to impose rationing, news reports said yesterday. Many filling stations in the Guangdong provincial capital of Guangzhou were limiting each car or truck to adding 50 yuan (US$6) worth of fuel, newspapers said. They said some stations were completely sold out and cheaper types of fuel weren't available anywhere. Officials blamed the shortages on surging demand, plus the reluctance of Chinese refineries to raise output at a time when soaring world crude oil prices have cut into profits, according to the reports. There was no immediate indication that the shortages were hurting businesses in Guangdong.

  ■ Oil industry

  Countries mull cooperation

  Venezuela's state oil company plans to process Ecuadorean crude at its refineries to help supply Ecuador's domestic demand, an official said. "The plan we are discussing with Ecuador is to place its crude in our refining system ... We can process [Ecuador's] oil to meet its domestic requirements," Rafael Ramirez, president of state-owned Petroleos de Venezuela SA, said on Thursday. He said the company could also sell products produced from Ecuadorean crude in the international market. Oil is Ecuador's main export product, but the country has no oil refineries.

  ■ Automakers

  Honda praises India

  Despite unrest at a Honda factory near New Delhi, the chief of Honda Motor says India carries fewer risks than China due to its relative political transparency and lack of anti-Japanese sentiment. In an interview with Japanese media, Honda Motor president Takeo Fukui said that China, for all of its economic growth, was just beginning to come of age as a hub to produce cars for export. Late last month, at least 130 people were injured as police clashed with striking workers at a Honda group motorcycle factory in Gurgaon near the Indian capital to protest the sacking of employees. "I acknowledge that India often has strikes but the strike has calmed down and the environment for talks with the union is almost ready," Fukui said, as quoted by yesterday's Tokyo Shimbun daily. He doubted the fallout would last long.

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