Pakistan Steel Mills increased the prices of all products in the range of Rs 1500 to Rs 2000. According to sources of the Steel Mills increase of prices of hot and cold Rolled Steel were increased by Rs 1500 to 2000 per ton. The prices of the galvanized products were increased by Rs 1500 while the prices of other products of steel were increased by Rs 2000 per ton.
The Steel Mills’ administration told that the increased prices have been implemented with an immediate effect and said that this step has been taken due to increased prices of products of steel in the international market.
The Steel Mills’ administration stated that the increased rate of the steel prices would also cause the increase in the prices of the local steel products.

Sourced from: A Pakistan News

It is time to spring forward, a term used to help people remember to set their clocks forward one hour. Most Americans need to do that before going to bed on Saturday night.

Daylight Saving Time begins Sunday morning at 2 a.m. Its beginning is always on the second Sunday in March. It ends on the first Sunday in November when citizens set their clocks back to standard time.

The change to Daylight Saving Time is designed to help Americans conserve energy by taking advantage of the longer and later daylight hours. During the eight-month period the designation of time zones change. Central Standard Time becomes Central Daylight Saving Time.

DST began in the U.S. during World War I to take advantage of longer daylight hours between April and October. The theory was the change would save energy for war production.

While the change wasn’t mandatory after the war the federal government instituted the change again after the country entered World War II>

Since 2007 Daylight Saving Time is four weeks longer due to the passage of the Energy Policy Act in 2005. The federal government estimated the extension of DST by four weeks would save 10,000 barrels of fuel per day because businesses would use less power during daylight hours.

Arizona, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands do not observe Daylight Saving Time.

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Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao rebuffed calls for the yuan to appreciate, risking a further downturn in relations with the U.S. where lawmakers and economists say his stance is hampering a global recovery.

“I don’t think the renminbi is undervalued,” Wen said yesterday at a press conference in Beijing marking the end of China’s annual parliamentary meetings, using another term for the yuan. “We oppose countries pointing fingers at each other and even forcing a country to appreciate its currency.”

U.S. lawmakers, including Senator Charles Schumer, are proposing that China should be hit with stiffer tariffs to compensate for the unfair export advantage they say comes from an undervalued currency. Economist Paul Krugman says that global growth would be about 1.5 percentage points higher if China stopped restraining the value of the yuan.

“Currency is the issue in Washington that is really welling up and getting more and more pressure,” said James McGregor, a senior counselor in Beijing at APCO Worldwide, a public-affairs group advising clients including China Cosco Holdings Co., operator of the world’s largest dry-bulk fleet. President Barack Obama “has tried to be low key and work with China behind closed doors — the problem is they have given him no face in return and he is under real pressure in Washington because he’s looking weak against China.”

‘Concrete Steps’

Wen also urged America to “take concrete steps to reassure investors” about the safety of dollar assets, repeating concerns that he expressed a year ago, sparked by a growing U.S. fiscal deficit.

The U.S. currency has climbed about 7 percent from last year’s Nov. 25 low, according to the Dollar Index, a six- currency gauge of the greenback’s value.

Treasury Department figures show China’s holdings of Treasury securities dropped for a second month in December to $894.8 billion. Only Japan holds more U.S. Treasury assets.

Wen, 67, echoed central bank Governor Zhou Xiaochuan’s comments that China needs to be cautious in ending crisis policies, which have included pegging the yuan at about 6.83 per dollar since July 2008 as the global financial crisis took hold.

The premier reiterated that the nation will keep the yuan “basically stable” and maintain a moderately loose monetary policy and a proactive fiscal stance. He said it’s “essential” for the timing of any policy changes to be appropriate.

One-Off Revaluation

“This is a sign that there will be no one-off revaluation in coming months,” said Lu Ting, an economist at Bank of America-Merrill Lynch in Hong Kong. “China’s top policy makers do have their own currency reform plans but coercion from other countries will do disservice to this cause.”

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators including Schumer, a New York Democrat, wrote Commerce Secretary Gary Locke last month, saying imports from China are being subsidized by that nation’s intervention in the currency market.

The Chinese premier said that pressure for currency gains can amount to trade “protectionism,” adding that “I’m a strong supporter of free trade.” Protectionism affecting China will backfire because much of the nation’s trade involves foreign-invested exporters, Wen said.

The yuan rose 21 percent against the dollar between July 2005 and July 2008, before the government halted its advance to protect exporters. Non-deliverable yuan forwards show that traders are betting on a gain of about 3 percent in the next 12 months.

The dollar and the yuan have strengthened against the euro this year, pushing up the cost of Chinese exports in the European Union, the Asian nation’s biggest market.

‘Depressing Effect’

Krugman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, said China’s currency policy has a “depressing effect” on economic growth in the U.S., Europe and Japan. If the yuan were not undervalued, it would have a “significant” impact on the global recovery, he said in a March 12 speech in Washington.

Ballooning sovereign debt and high unemployment around the world could send the global economy into a second, or “double dip” downturn, Wen said. In China, inflation, combined with wide income gaps and official corruption, could lead to social instability “and even affect the government’s hold on power,” he said.

Policy makers have made managing “inflation expectations” a key task for this year. February’s gain in consumer prices was 2.7 percent, compared with Wen’s target of about 3 percent for the year. Zhou said yesterday that while the increase was a little higher than forecast, it hadn’t altered the central bank’s plans.

Unbalanced, Unsustainable

China’s difficult task is to grow without stoking inflation and while adjusting an economic model that has led to an “‘unbalanced, uncoordinated and unsustainable” expansion, Wen said. Officials will maintain “appropriate and sufficient” liquidity and keep interest rates at “reasonable” levels, he added.

Wen blamed strains in China’s relationship with the U.S. on Obama’s meeting with the Dalai Lama and American arms sales to Taiwan. He expressed hope for an improvement in “our most important diplomatic relationship.”

Asked about increasing dissatisfaction among foreign businesses in China over the investment climate, the premier sought to reassure international investors.

In January, Mountain View, California-based Google Inc. said it may close down its Chinese Web site because of alleged cyber attacks and China’s ongoing online censorship.

“China will unswervingly pursue the policy of opening up to the outside world,” Wen said. “Foreign businesses are welcome to come to China to set up businesses according to the law.”

–Michael Forsythe, Eugene Tang, Li Yanping, Kevin Hamlin. Editors: Paul Panckhurst, John Liu

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GENEVA: Information on 24,000 HSBC customers with Swiss accounts has been stolen, the British bank said Thursday, potentially exposing large numbers of international clients to prosecution by tax authorities in their home countries.

A former IT employee of Swiss subsidiary HSBC Private Bank (Suisse) SA, identified by French authorities as Herve Falciani, stole the information between late 2006 and early 2007, the bank said. The accounts, held by individuals worldwide, were all opened before October 2006 and some 9,000 have since been closed.

“We deeply regret this situation and unreservedly apologize to our clients for this threat to their privacy,” said Alexandre Zeller, chief executive of the Swiss subsidiary.

The bank said it has contacted the affected customers and doesn’t believe the stolen data has or will allow any unauthorized person to access the affected accounts. The stolen information only affects accounts in Switzerland with the exception of its former subsidiary HSBC Guyerzeller Bank, it said.

However, the theft could leave some of those account holders exposed to prosecution by tax authorities.

In recent cases of data theft from banks in Switzerland and Liechtenstein, the information was offered to foreign governments seeking to track down nationals who avoided paying their taxes by hiding money in Swiss accounts.

The French government said last year it had obtained a list of 3,000 French HSBC clients compiled from “numerous sources” including the former HSBC employee – identified by prosecutors in the French city of Aix-en-Provence as Falciani.

France later agreed to return the files to Switzerland, who in turn handed “copies of a significant portion of the data” back to the bank on March 3, HSBC said. “Based on the facts it would appear that the French authorities have copies and the Swiss authorities have copies,” HSBC spokesman Jezz Farr said.

The bank said French authorities had informed their Swiss counterparts that the data they still hold would “not be used inappropriately.” It remained unclear whether that means France will not use the data to prosecute tax evaders.

Farr said the theft affected customers worldwide. “The accounts were held in Switzerland but the client base is international,” he said.

HSBC PLC said offering private banking services for rich customers remains “a core business” of the group, which has about 100,000 private banking clients.

Shares in HSBC were down 0.05 percent at 7.01 pounds ($10.54) on the London exchange.

WASHINGTON: The US posted its largest budget deficit on record in February as the government boosted spending to help revive the economy.

The excess of spending over revenue increased to $US221 billion last month, compared with a deficit of $US194 billion in February 2009, according to Treasury Department figures released today in Washington.

In fiscal 2009 that ended in September, the shortfall reached a record $US1.4 trillion.

A deficit that will probably exceed $US1 trillion for a second year underscores the challenges facing the Obama administration and Congress as they seek to preserve the recovery, spur job growth and pass health care reform.

The loss of 8.4 million jobs the last two years has been limiting tax revenue, while stimulus efforts such as the first-time homebuyers credit have added to expenses.

“It’s mostly the recession if you look at the deficit numbers,” said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor’s in New York. To finance the shortfalls, “we’re borrowing a lot of money from abroad. At some point, foreign investors are going to be unwilling to fund it,” he said.

The February deficit was in line with the $US222 billion economists anticipated, based on the median of 31 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey. Projections ranged from shortfalls of $US180 billion to $US225 billion.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, in a report issued March 5, projected a deficit of $US223 billion for February.

Spending for February increased 17 per cent from the same month a year ago, to $US328.4 billion. Revenue and other income rose 23 per cent to $US107.5 billion, according to the Treasury.