US Strikes Investment Deals With Abu Dhabi, Singapore Funds

“The US Treasury said Thursday it had reached a series of agreements with two powerful sovereign wealth funds based in Abu Dhabi and Singapore covering investments in US markets. …  

‘The US welcomes sovereign wealth fund investment and looks forward to continuing to work with these two countries and others to support the initiatives underway at the International Monetary Fund and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to develop best practices for sovereign wealth funds and recipient countries,’ the US Treasury chief [Henry Paulson] said. …” [Agence France Presse/Factiva]

FT notes that “…The agreement also stated that sovereign wealth fund investment decisions ‘should be based solely on commercial grounds, rather than to advance directly or indirectly the geopolitical goals of the controlling government,’ the need for ‘strong governance structures’ and internal controls for the funds and respect for host country regulatory disclosure rules. …” [The Financial Times (UK)]

NYT reports that “…Paulson praised the two funds for embracing a set of principles that not only disavowed political motives in investing but also made commitments to maximum disclosure of investment activities and to strong internal controls, including management of risk in investments. …” [The New York Times]

WSJ adds that “…The Abu Dhabi and Singapore funds are considered significant because of their size, the difference in the sources of their capital - Abu Dhabi's money comes from oil; Singapore's from export revenue - and their unwillingness thus far to disclose much about their operations. …” [The Wall Street Journal/Factiva]

Japan Vows To Aid Extensive Infrastructure, Investment In Africa.

“Japanese Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura announced on Thursday night a seven-point plan for Japan's support for Africa, including emphasis on agricultural and extensive infrastructural development, as well as the use of financial aid to promote private-sector investment.  

Addressing a dinner event at the ministerial preparatory meeting of the Tokyo International Conference on African Development in Libreville, Gabon, Komura said Japan hopes to further expand the network of support for development on the continent created through Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD). ...

The pillars of Japan's plan include extensively improving infrastructure such as roads and power grids, utilizing its official development assistance to attract investment from the private sector, developing agriculture, fighting contagious diseases such as AIDS, improving education, water and sanitation, and promoting peace building. In particular, Komura emphasized that in order to improve infrastructure and achieve economic growth to eradicate poverty, ensuring human security and peace will be an important prerequisite. …” [Kyodo News (Japan)/Factiva]  

The International Herald Tribune (Herald Asahi) reports that the “… two-day preparatory meeting for the fourth TICAD started in Libreville Thursday with Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura and Senior Vice Minister Itsunori Onodera acting as chair. They, along with Cabinet-level officials from nations across Africa, are to draft the Yokohama Declaration, which will be adopted at the end of the TICAD, sources said. Japanese officials have also proposed including in the declaration a mechanism on following up on aid to Africa. It was the first time for Tokyo to present a draft of the declaration. …” [The International Herald Tribune (Herald Asahi)(Japan)/Factiva]

Angola Press Agency notes that “… Two technical meetings will precede the conference, which will end with the holding of the fourth International Conference to happen from May 28 to 30, in Japan. The third conference was held in September 2003, in Tokyo, in which that Asian country increased its assistance to Africa to $1 billion for a five-year term.  

TICAD was founded in 1993, as an initiative for Africa, through a joint effort among Japan, the United Nations and the Global Coalition for Africa. The World Bank has been one of the organizers of the event since 2000.” [Angola Press Agency/Factiva]

UN Bodies Team Up To Address Global Lack Of Toilets

“The UN agencies for world health and children are teaming up to tackle a new problem: a global lack of toilets. The agencies say that more than six in 10 Africans lack access to a proper toilet, leaving them exposed to bacteria, viruses and parasites found in human waste. As a result they are more vulnerable to a range of health risks. …” [The Associated Press/Factiva]

AFP adds that “…About two in every five people have no access to a proper toilet, said the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), warning that the lack of sanitation is putting 2.6 billion people at risk of disease. …  

‘People don't like to talk about sanitation,’ said Jon Lane, Executive Director of the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council, a UN-mandated organization that works for better sanitation in poor communities. …Lane said that some governments approach the issue in the wrong way. …   Too much time was also being wasted on trying to get the private sector involved in sanitation facilities. …Between 1990 and 2004, sanitation access improved for 1.2 billion people. But if current trends continue, there will still be 2.4 billion people without toilets in 2015. …” [Agence France Presse/Factiva]

Country Launches Nook On Development Book

  “The importance of creating a knowledge-based economy, retaining skilled professionals and using technology as an education tool, has been highlighted by the launch of the Knowledge for Africa's Development Book.  

‘Knowledge has become perhaps the most important factor in determining the standard of living - more than land, tools, and labor,’ said Science and Technology Minister Mosibudi Mangena at the launch of the book on Monday.

He explained that in 2006, the first Knowledge for Africa's Development Conference was held in South Africa, encompassing the Department of Science and Technology, the World Bank, and the Finnish government. The goal of the conference was to initiate dialogue aimed at empowering African policy and decision makers in the formulation of strategies to promote knowledge-based economic growth on the continent. …” [BuaNews (South Africa)/All Africa/Factiva]

Pretoria News adds that “… The book summarizes 10 priorities for Africa and follows the Knowledge for Africa’s Development conference which was held in Johannesburg two years ago. The book tackles, among other issues, education reform to respond to the demands of the knowledge-based economy, building integrated policies and the establishment of science parks.

‘It is now common knowledge that global knowledge flows are becoming a key driver of economic development. These flows encourage the surge of new ideas and enable domestic innovation to be better exploited globally,’ Mangena said. …” [Pretoria News (South Africa)/Factiva]

Dengue Outbreak Kills At Least 47 In Rio De Janeiro State

“An outburst of dengue has killed at least 47 people - and perhaps twice that - in Rio de Janeiro state this year, officials said Thursday, announcing a hot spot in a hemispheric outbreak that sickened nearly 1 million people in 2007.

State officials said 51 cases are being reported every hour as the outbreak strains public hospitals' capacity.

‘What we see today in Rio de Janeiro is a catastrophe,’ said Edmilson Migovski, a professor of infectious diseases at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.’The death toll is rising because the virus is becoming more virulent, and at the same time people who were infected once are getting infected again.’” [Dow Jones]

The Miami Herald adds that “Brazil had more than half of the 900,782 cases of dengue in the Americas last year, according to the Pan American Health Organization. Of the hemisphere's 317 deaths, 158 came in Brazil, including 31 in Rio state.

But while federal officials say overall numbers were down in early 2008, they have jumped in Rio state. State officials say dengue has already killed 47 people, and is suspected of killing another 49 whose deaths are under investigation. The state, which has 16 million inhabitants, has seen more than 32,000 dengue cases this year, officials said.

‘I am treating it as an epidemic because the number of cases is extremely high,’ state Health Secretary Sergio Cortes said.

Migovski told The Associated Press that the problem may actually be worse: ‘An emergency room doctor who has to attend 40 or 50 patients in a morning is not going to be able to inform officials about all the cases.’”

Also in this Edition: Briefly Noted...

Briefly Noted… The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo on Thursday published plans for the review of its mining contracts, in a move critics see as an attempt to strong-arm international companies into giving state mining companies greater ownership of their assets. [The Financial Times (UK)]

South Africa’s government on Thursday agreed to plans to raise energy prices by 60 percent in the hope that a reduction in consumer demand will solve a dire power shortage in the country. The decision is radical for South Africa, because government policy has long held that cheap electricity helps the poor and is an instrument for economic development. South Africans still enjoy some of the cheapest electricity prices in the world. [The Financial Times (UK)]

The World Bank has appointed Onno Ruhl as the new Country Director for Nigeria. He takes over from Hafez Ghanem who joined the Food and Agricultural Organization in November 2007. [The Nigerian Tribune]

 The Brazilian government has launched an aggressive crackdown on logging in the Amazon. After three years of declining rates of deforestation, satellite images released in January showed that as much as 2,700 square miles of land in the Brazilian Amazon had been cleared in the final five months of 2007 - a rate that would represent more than a 60 percent increase over the five-month average of the previous year. [The Washington Post]

Argentina's public and private foreign debt increased 13.3 percent in 2007 to $123.197 billion, the National Institute of Statistics and Census (INDEC) reported on Thursday. [Xinhua/Factiva]

Cambodia will hold its first ever agriculture census in 2009, and a business establishment census in 2011, Mekong Times reported Friday, citing officials from the Planning Ministry's National Institute of Statistics (NIS). [Xinhua/Factiva]

Nearly one in five school children in India use some form of tobacco, according to a survey conducted by the World Health Organisation. A national smoking ban has meanwhile cut passive smoking by almost 10 percent. The figures are part of the second-ever Global Youth Tobacco Survey, carried out in 140 countries. [BBC News (UK)]

The International Finance Corporation and DataCheck Pvt Ltd, Pakistan's leading private credit bureau, Thursday launched the first credit bureau scoring system in the country, which will enhance the credit environment and increase access to finance. [Business Recorder (Pakistan)/Factiva]

Turkey's Economy Minister Mehmet Simsek met with International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn on Thursday and agreed to further talks on the current IMF loan program, which expires in May. [Reuters/Factiva]

The International Monetary Fund has advised the Kyrgyz government to curb a sharp rise in prices and issue more National Bank bonds to avoid an inflation spike. [The Times of Central India/Factiva] 

A combination of market and financial barriers are preventing energy efficiency measures in buildings from being implemented, the International Energy Agency said in a report released Thursday. Energy efficiency is fast moving up international agendas where it is viewed as a vital cornerstone of climate change and energy security policy. [Dow Jones/Factiva]

The strength of commodities prices, such as crude oil, this year is explained in a large part by speculative factors such as investors piling into the new asset class and the weakness of the US dollar, the International Monetary Fund said on Thursday. [The Financial Times (UK)]

Advanced economies are not sheltered from financial turmoil and economic prospects have deteriorated faster than was expected as recently as December, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said on Thursday. It added that the effects of financial turmoil, the turning of the global housing cycle and squeezed incomes from soaring energy and food prices were unlikely to fade soon. [The Financial Times (UK)]