Singapore airlines experiencing issues with the global recession hitting hard. They have decided to delay delivery of their 12th aircraft.
“The revised schedule will see the 12th aircraft delivered in October 2010 rather than April 2010, while the 19th aircraft will be delivered in January 2012 rather than January 2011,” the airline said in a statement.
In July, Singapore’s national carrier had posted its first quarterly loss since the 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS.
Net loss in the quarter ended June reached 307.1 million Singapore dollars (212.7 million US dollars), compared with a profit of 358.6 million Singapore dollars a year ago.
SIA attributed the loss to adverse business conditions, adding that it expected to make a full-year loss should these conditions continue.

Trade ministers began talks in New Delhi on Thursday which World Trade Organization (WTO) chief Pascal Lamy said could prepare the ground for reaching a world free-trade agreement by 2010. The WTO director general was concerned about the “chilling effect” of trade barriers and underlined that it was only through the Doha round that issues like generating market access, reduction of obstacles to trade and leveling the playing field in trade-distorting subsidies could be addressed.
Reaching an agreement by 2010 was “doable,” Australia’s Trade Minister Simon Crean said before the talks which were attended by key WTO members including United States, European Union and China.
Trade ministers are making a renewed effort to conclude the Doha pact after talks collapsed in July 2008 owing to differences over a special safeguard mechanism - a provision to permit developing countries to guard against sudden surges in imports or when commodity prices decline.
India’s Commerce Ministry said it was hosting the conclave aiming at the “resumption and intensification” of the Doha round which if completed, could open a 32-trillion-dollar global market.
As the meeting started, 10,000 activists from farmers groups and left-wing parties held protest demonstrations at various places in Delhi against the free trade conclave.
“It (the Doha deal) will severely increase the vulnerability of our agricultural sector to the vagaries of global trade, impacting our food security and over two-thirds of our population dependent on it,” a letter written by 174 farmers’ bodies and voluntary groups to Indian premier Manmohan Singh said.
The primary purpose for the talks is to build a consensus among a large number of countries on moving forward with the Doha round,” India’s Commerce Secretary Rahul Khullar said.

Sweden’s Central Bank said Thursday it will keep its interest rate at a record-low 0.25 per cent, despite signs that the economy is picking up. The Central Bank also said it would offer loans worth 100 billion kronor (13.9 billion dollars) to the commercial banks at a fixed interest rate in order to help secure favourable loans to commercial business and households.
The Riksbank projected that GDP would decline by 4.9 per cent this year, but grow 1.9 per cent in 2010 and 3.2 per cent in 2011.
Deputy governor Lars Svensson wanted to cut the repo rate to zero per cent while deputy governors Lars Nyberg and Barbro Wickman-Parak supported keeping the rate at 0.25 per cent but made a reservation over the growth forecasts, the Riksbank added.
The latest rate cut was announced in July - the latest in a row reducing the interest rate from 4.75 per cent in September 2008.

UNEMPLOYMENT RATE SOARING IN FRANCE.
The French unemployment rate soared to 9.1 per cent in the second quarter of this year, the highest level in more than three years, the government’s statistics office INSEE announced Thursday. In the first quarter of 2009, the jobless rate had stood at 8.5 per cent.

The European Central Bank (ECB) is expected Thursday to leave interest rates on hold at their historic low of 1 per cent, but to raise its economic growth forecasts amid signs that the recession could be starting to draw to an end. In particular, this follows the release of figures Wednesday by the European Union’s statistics office Eurostat confirming that the eurozone’s two biggest economies - Germany and France - climbed out of recession in the second quarter.
The eurozone contracted by 0.1 per cent in the second quarter.
Up until now, the ECB has been projecting negative growth in the currency bloc through to the middle of 2010.
Economic growth would then return to a positive track in 2010, analysts predict the ECB staff projections to show.
The ECB’s latest growth forecasts, outlined in June, were much gloomier that decline of between 3.2-2.2 per cent, the bank predicted in March.

The European Central Bank (ECB) made 17 billion euros (24.26 billion dollars) thanks to the financial crisis, Dutch daily newspaper Volkskrant reported on Tuesday. Volkskrant calculated the ECB received 19.2 billion euros in interest originating from the nearly 14,000 billion euros in loans it provided since September 2008. Most banks subsequently deposited their loans with the ECB, which paid them 2 billion euros in interest.
One 442-billion-euros loan provided to the bigger European banks in June turned out to be particularly profitable for the ECB, Volkskrant wrote.
The ECB provided the loan with the intention that the banks would lend the money to corporations and consumers, to stimulate the European economy.
The banks however deposited three quarters of the funding with the ECB, which paid them 0.25 per cent interest. The remaining 0.75 per cent can be considered the ECB’s profit.
But banking industry sources said that while the ECB has clearly profited from its recent operations, there are a whole series of factors that eventually impact on the bank’s bottom line.
Volkskrant emphasized it only concerns a “paper profit” because the central bank has no plans to invest or spend the money.

INDIA’S EXPORTS IN DECLINE MODE.
India’s exports declined for the 10th straight month in July, according to government data released Tuesday. India recently announced a new foreign trade policy which envisaged tax refunds and incentive measures to arrest the decline in exports and check job cuts.
India’s export industry has been badly hit by the economic slowdown in its traditional markets of Europe and United States, which account for 40 per cent of exports.
While announcing the new five-year policy, federal Trade Minister Anand Sharma said India would explore new markets in Africa and Latin America to boost the sector.
According to the trade data released Tuesday, India’s imports also dropped by 37.1 per cent in July from a year earlier to 19.62 billion dollars, indicating a slowing of the economy.
Government data released Monday said the country’s economy expanded by an annual rate of 6.1 per cent in the April to June quarter, up from 5.8 per cent growth during January-March, raising hopes that the worst of the slowdown was over.
But a poor monsoon threatened to erode growth later in the year even as it drove prices higher, Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia said Monday.
The policymaking body, which is headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, held a meeting in Delhi Tuesday to assess the economic situation and review India’s energy policy.
India’s gross domestic product growth slowed to 6.7 per cent in fiscal 2008-09 after posting three years of over 9-per-cent growth.
India’s financial year runs from April to March.