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International Business News
Tibet tourism suffers from
March unrest
AFP, Beijing
The number of tourists visiting Tibet in the first half of the year fell 70 percent from the previous year, state media reported Saturday, following unrest in the Himalayan region in March.
More than 340,000 travellers went to Tibet between January and June this year, the official Tibet Daily newspaper said, a dramatic drop from the same period in 2007 when over I. I million people visited, according to official statistics.
Beijing barred all tourists from going to Tibet after a massive crackdown on violence that erupted in Lhasa on March 14 against Chinese rule, and then spread to other areas of western China with Tibetan populations.
Chinese tour groups were allowed back in at the end of /\pril, and visitors from Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan were subsequently given the green light to go early May.
Foreign visitors, however, were only allowed back in at the end of lune.
The head of the regional tourism administration, Wang Songping, had predicted confidently early this year that visitors toTibet would hit live million in 2008.
Former Siemens management lax on anti-corruption
AFP, Berlin
German engineering giant Siemens ignored its own anticorruption procedures in a slush fund scandal that has brought down a number of former group executives, Spiegel magazine said.
"Netzwerk-compliance," a network comprising more than 400 businesses created to secure good company governance, identified "considerable structural shortcomings" in Siemens' anti-corruption rules, accordingto a "strictly confidential" document by Hengcler Mueller lawyers' office for Siemens.
Hengeler Mueller pinpointed a conflict of interest in die company's auditing office tasked with preventing corruption and protecting the group if corruption cases were revealed, the magazine said in its edition to be published Monday.
Steps to improve the way the auditing office works also met with "considerable opposition by management," it added.
HK air passenger growth drops
AFP, Hong Kong
Growth in Hong Kong air passenger traffic slowed last month to the lowest rate this year as soaring crude oil prices dampened demand for air travel, the airport authority said Sunday.
The Hong Kong International Airport reported a passenger volume of 4.5 million in July, a year-on-year increase of only 1.3 percent, compared to 8.3 percent in May and 5 percent in June this year.
"Airports and airlines worldwide are feeling the effects of surging fuel prices and economic uncertainties, conditions we expect will likely continue," said the authority's chief executive officer Stanley Hui.
"Airlines have started to reduce flight frequencies to contain losses. As a result, we anticipate a more difficult operating environment and slower growth for all categories of air traffic for the remainer of the year."
The authority also reported a slowdown in the growth of air cargo traffic. The cargo volume rose a mere 0.7 percent to 317,000 tonnes in July from a year earlier, compared to rates of 6.7 percent in May and 2.4 percent in June.
India may allow duty free steel export under Adv Licence Scheme
PIT, New Delhi
In a respite to steel industry which is holding the price line for over three months now, the government may exempt value-added steel from the purview of export duty if products are made out of imported raw material.
At present, a duty of up to 15 percent is levied on export of most of the long steel products even if these are manufactured from raw materials imported under the Advance Licence Scheme (ALS.).
The ALS envisages certain export commitment from steel producers in lieu of availing duty-free import of inputs for steelmaking.
According to sources, the revenue department has approved the Steel Ministry's proposal of introducing a scheme of duty free export of steel products made from raw materials imported under ALS.