Monday, February 28, 2005

India ups spending on health, education, and arms

by Brian Turner

Indian Finance Minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, has launched a budget that aims to attack poverty across all regions of the vast country.
Despite legislation that requires India to reduce its national debt, this budget sees fiscal spending increased in core areas of health and education, as well as defence, which alone is up 7.8%.
However, he reiterated his [...]

Wednesday, February 23, 2005

Asia calms dollar fears

by Brian Turner

Comments by South Korea’s central bank that it will diversify it reserves across other currencies, such as the Canadian dollar and Australian dollar, resulted in the US dollar’s largest single fall in value for 4 months.
However, assurances by Japan and Sourth Korea that they would maintain strong US dollar holdings was enough to allow the [...]