“Exaggerating individual cases and doubting the quality of all made-in-China products has hurt our reputation and caused economic losses to our exporters,” Qi Xiuqin, director of international cooperation department of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (GAQSIQ), said.

She quoted a GAQSIQ report saying more than 30 percent of a sample of 2,500 Chinese exporters suffered economic losses from the imposition of technical trade barriers last year.

The companies lost US$35.9 billion last year, up from US$28.8 billion in 2005, according to a report published yesterday.

Industries particularly affected were the mechanical and electrical sectors, agriculture and food, chemical and mining, plastic and leather.

Guangdong was said to be the most affected province, followed by Zhejiang, Shanghai, Beijing and Fujian, the report said.

Among China’s major trade partners, technical trade barriers set up by the European Union, the United States, Japan, Russia and the Association of Southeast Asia Nations have had the biggest influence, it said.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) and the Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS) allow members to set regulations and standards for the specific characteristics of a product, such as its size, shape, design, function and performance.

Export products that fail to meet standards in the markets they are destined for will be denied entry to those markets.

In recent years, WTO members have raised technical standards more frequently, which has made it difficult for developing countries to adjust.

China received 875 TBT notifications from WTO members last year, up 13 percent from 2005.

The number of SPS notifications was 1,156, up 36 percent from 2005.

“Not all technical barriers are inappropriate and negative but some are used for trade protection and have had a bad influence on Chinese exporters,” GAQSIQ’s Yang Song said.

To reduce the impact of technical barriers China will flag inappropriate notifications to WTO members, before adopting other measures such as bilateral negotiations and dispute-resolution mechanisms, Yang said.

The pact is aimed to make communication easier between auto safety regulators of the two countries so that potential problems can be resolved more quickly, Nason said.

The federal government already has such agreements with most other nations that export passenger vehicles and auto parts to the US, she said.

Under the new agreement, a NHTSA representative will be able to get the necessary response by simply placing a telephone call, instead of writing a letter, having it translated into Chinese and faxing it to China, she said.

“The Chinese have a strong interest in motor vehicle equipment and motor vehicle sales in the US,” Nason said.

Several American companies, including Chrysler, have expressed interest in importing Chinese-made passenger vehicles. Improving communication is particularly important as Chinese manufacturers begin designing and engineering vehicles for sale here, Nason said.

Statistics from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers shows that, in the first seven months of this year, China exported a total of 294,100 vehicles, up 70.38 percent year on year. The export value of vehicles during the period reached US$3.34 billion, an increase of 110 percent year on year.

Sizing is applied to glass filaments and can protect glass fibers from breaking or abrasion, ensure its compatibility with the resin matrix as well as promote desired properties such as strength, processing, color etc. Glass fiber reinforced parts are used to replace metal in automotive and electronics industries due to their advantages in weight and strength.

China glass fiber industry has been growing rapidly since 2000 and is expected to grow at 20% annually in the coming years.

According to Jiang Weiming, president of DSM China, the opening of the new plant is a testament to DSM抯 ambitious plans in the fasting growing Chinese market and can reinforce DSM抯 leading position in global market.

DSM’s business covers pharmaceuticals, industrial chemicals, nutritional products and performance material, of which sizing is a part. It established its first representative office in Beijing in 1993. Sales revenue in China reached US$775 million last year. So far, it has 9 joint ventures, 12 wholly-owned foreign enterprises and 6 wholly-owned sales offices in China.

The first batch special T-bonds worth of RMB 100 billion will be issued before the end of this month, according the MOF. And the remaining RMB 100 billion bonds will be sold later in this year.

The bonds are the second part of the total planned RMB 1.55 trillion for the new foreign exchange investment companies in China.

The sales of the bonds will be used to buy US$200 billion foreign exchange reserves from the People’s Bank of China for building new state investment firm.

The MOF will sell 15-year special T-bonds worth of RMB 30 billion next Monday, and other 10-year bonds will be issued on Sep. 21 as well as 15-year bonds issuing on Sep. 28. The bonds issued on Monday will have semi-annual interest payments and could be traded in inter bank market on Sep. 27.

The MOF has issued RMB 600 billion of such bonds with an annual interest rate of 4.3% through the Agricultural Bank of China. About RMB 10 billion bonds were used by the central bank as collateral in a repurchase transaction last Tuesday. It is expected that the government will continue to issue such bonds as an important part of its tightening monetary policy.

According to the report of the official China Securities Journal on Monday, the state forex investment company, namely the China Investment Company, will be set up next week.

The sources close to the situation said that the price paid for the deal was less than A$50 million. But the two sides did not disclose information on specific terms of the deal.

UTC is a real estate investment trust company. NAB said the acquisition would help the bank to make a good use of UTC’s expertise in both real estate financing and fund distribution.

Before the deal, NAB has a representative office in Beijing, but it did not hold any shares in Asian banks.

The surplus ballooned to US$24.97 billion in August, up from the US$24.36 billion a month earlier. August’s figure was just shy of a record US$26.9 billion surplus in June.

Exports rose 22.7 percent to US$111.36 billion in August from a year earlier following a 34.2-percent gain in July. Imports climbed 20.1 percent to US$86.38 billion, after rising 26.9 percent in the previous month, the customs bureau said. For the first eight months combined, the trade surplus came to US$161.76 billion, up 71 percent from a year earlier.

“A wider trade surplus is fueling the excess liquidity in the country,” said Feng Yuming, an analyst at Orient Securities Co.

Feng expected September’s surplus to climb to US$25.6 billion on stronger global demand as Christmas approaches.

The swelling trade surplus has flooded the economy with cash and triggered pressure from the United States and European countries for the yuan to appreciate further. The yuan has gained nine percent since the US dollar link was scrapped in July 2005.

The country’s foreign-exchange reserves swelled to a record US$1.33 trillion by the end of June, remaining as the world’s largest.

The government has eased controls this year to allow more capital to flow overseas. The central bank has raised borrowing costs four times so far this year and asked lenders to set aside more reserves to mop up the excess liquidity.

Meanwhile, the country’s industrial output climbed a combined 18.5 percent in the first seven months of this year as domestic and overseas demand stayed strong.

The nation’s top planning body has forecast that the trade surplus may settle between US$250 billion and US$300 billion this year, up from the US$177.5 billion in 2006 as overseas sales continue to track the fast lane.

The Chinese government has cut export subsidies and encouraged domestic consumption to boost demand for imported goods.

Oil prices above US$77 a barrel are a burden to consuming nations, prompting some Persian Gulf producers to discuss a proposal to raise OPEC quotas by 500,000 barrels a day at the meeting at OPEC’s Vienna headquarters. The group’s biggest producer, Saudi Arabia, proposed an increase, Iraq’s oil minister said before the meeting started.

“We don’t support an increase as far as Algeria is concerned,” Algerian Oil Minister Chakib Khelil said yesterday. “Right now we don’t see sufficient evidence” to justify adding more supply to the market, he said.

Oil prices have risen 27 percent this year after members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries curbed exports to drain inventories. The world’s biggest oil companies, Exxon Mobil Corp and Royal Dutch Shell Plc, are profiting from high prices and bumper revenue are encouraging producing nations such as Russia, Kazakhstan and Venezuela to take greater control of their energy resources.

Crude oil for October delivery was eight cents down at US$77.41 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange at 12:55pm Vienna time. Oil ministers from OPEC’s 12 member nations are gathered at the group’s Vienna headquarters for closed-door talks.

Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi has declined to comment to reporters in Vienna on production targets. OPEC President Mohamed al-Hamli, who is also oil minister for the United Arab Emirates, also declined to comment. Iraqi Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani said Saudi Arabia wants more oil in the market, though he added that a final decision would need to be made by consensus.

“There will be a need to increase supply sometime in the fourth quarter,” Roger Diwan, director of oil market research at Washington-based consultancy PFC Energy said in an interview in Vienna yesterday. “I think they will decide today (yesterday) to have a small increase and then signal that they would do more if needed later on.”

OPEC ministers were said to agree yesterday to increase oil production by 500,000 barrels a day and later further increase supplies depending on the winter demand, Diwan said. All 23 oil traders and analysts in a Bloomberg News survey last week said they expect OPEC to leave its collective target unchanged.

OPEC members already pump more than their quotas allow. The 10 members with quotas produced 26.71 million barrels a day last month, or about 900,000 barrels a day more than targeted, according to Bloomberg estimates. The 10 members agreed at two meetings late last year to cut a total of 1.7 million barrels a day.

Venezuelan Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez told reporters that OPEC has no need to change production quotas, while his Qatari counterpart Abdulla bin Hamad al-Attiyah said OPEC has “a lot of options” at its meeting.

Shokri Ghanem, chairman of Libya’s state-run National Oil Corp, said his nation will support a supply increase later in the year.

State-run Gazprom is offering 6.5 rubles (25 US cents) a share for the 50.1 percent of Mosenergo it says it doesn’t already own, according to a regulatory filing yesterday. Mosenergo shares jumped as much as six percent, the most in more than seven months, and traded at 6.28 rubles at 11:24am in Moscow.

Russia’s government plans to dismantle national utility OAO Unified Energy System and spend US$120 billion through 2011 on the biggest electrification drive since the Stalin era, Bloomberg News said.

The sale of 20 thermal generators has lured Europe’s largest utilities, including Germany’s E.ON AG, Finland’s Fortum Oyj, and Italy’s Enel SpA, which acquired 30 percent of OAO OGK-5 last month for US$1.8 billion.

“In reality, this isn’t more than a US$2.5 billion offer at best, which suits Gazprom,” said Dmitry Tsaregorodtsev, an analyst at Moscow-based KIT Finance investment bank, by phone.

Unified Energy controls 36.2 percent of Mosenergo, the main supplier of heat and power to the Russian capital, and the city government owns about five percent.

“Judging by Gazprom’s actions in other power companies, they would be satisfied with 51 percent,” Tsaregorodtsev said. “They just want management control and to have the asset listed on their books. It makes little sense for them to over-feed the minorities.”

Arrangements for the imports have been settled, including the time and place of delivery, the Sinopec official in charge of sales said, adding that the imported gasoline would arrive at the end of this month.

The demand for gasoline has surged due to increasing fuel consumption propelled by the end of an annual fishing ban, intensified farming in the autumn and persistent hot weather.

Meanwhile, the refiner wanted to keep some gasoline in store ahead of the National Day holiday to help ease the shortage in the domestic market, he said.

The market price of gasoline in China was 6,300 yuan (US$829) per ton while the CIF (cost, insurance and freight) of imported gasoline was about 6,800 yuan per ton, said the official.

This means Sinopec would be almost 30 million yuan in the red by selling the imported fuel.

In China, oil prices are controlled by the government, which has subsidized oil companies since 2005. Last year Sinopec received five billion yuan from the government. Since July, oil product supplies have fallen short of demand.

The situation could add pressure to the tight supply in the domestic refined oil product market, analysts said.

China imported 14.04 million tons of crude in August, equivalent to 3.3 million barrels a day, according to the General Administration of Customs. This compared with the July purchase of 14.83 million tons.

Still, the August imports represented a 19-percent rise on a yearly basis, but it’s short of the 39-percent jump for July.

Sinopec Corp and PetroChina Co, the nation’s two dominant oil refiners, cut their throughput because high crude costs would erode their refining margins with prices of refined fuel products being capped by the government.

In August, the government ordered the two companies to ensure fuel supply amid peak summer consumption.

Benchmark New York crude contracts reached a record high of US$78.77 per barrel on August 1. They were trading near the all-time high yesterday.

The nation’s crude exports jumped to 300,000 tons in August from 70,000 tons in July on high global crude prices.

For the January-August period, China’s crude imports totaled 110.4 million tons, up 15.3 percent year on year. Crude exports totaled 2.18 million tons in the first eight months, down 47.3 percent.

Meanwhile, China imported 24.28 million tons of refined oil products in the first eight months, down 5.7 percent over a year earlier. Refined products exports rose 25.3 percent to 10.28 million tons in the same period.