UPDATE 1-PRESS DIGEST - China - April 7
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BEIJING/SHANGHAI, April 7 (Reuters) - Chinese newspapers available in Beijing and Shanghai carried the following stories on Monday. Reuters has not checked the stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.
FINANCIAL NEWS
-- China is building up a credit information database for farmers to allow rural residents access to bank credit.
-- China trust investment firms are rushing to set up offices in Beijing to seek cooperation with big banks.
-- China's interbank market requires its members, including 54 brokerage houses, 51 finance companies and three trust investment firms, to publish audited annual reports for 2007 before April 30.
CHINA DAILY (www.chinadaily.com.cn)
-- More than 200 Chinese labourers returned to Shanghai on Sunday after a strike led to a skirmish in Equatorial Guinea.
-- The collapse of a section of the banks along the Yangtze River and an adjacent highway in Hubei province on Saturday have disrupted road traffic in Hubei, Hunan and Chongqing.
CHINA SECURITIES JOURNAL
-- With the announcement of Sinopec's (600028.SS) 2007 earnings, major blue chips have essentially completed the release of annual results. Among the 880 listed companies that have reported so far, combined net profit rose 45 percent as sales gained 25 percent.
-- The China Securities Regulatory Commission has given JPMorgan's (JPM.N) fund management venture permission to launch a new fund that will invest 40-70 percent in stocks and 25-55 percent in fixed income.
SHANGHAI SECURITIES NEWS
-- The National Development and Reform Commission said it would step up efforts to develop high-technology industries in China's western regions.
-- CAMC Enginering (002051.SZ) said it had won a $135 million contract to repair and expand an irrigation system in Venezuela.
-- China's broadcasting authority denied talk in the industry that it had selected the TMMB standard as the technological standard for its development of television and multimedia programming on mobile telephones.
SECURITIES TIMES
-- The "invisible hand" of market forces appears to be restoring balance to the stock market by improving supply/demand conditions; last week saw various positive signals such as the bottoming out of many blue chips. That suggests the market may turn upwards as confidence returns, the newspaper says in a front-page editorial.
PEOPLE'S DAILY
-- China approved a plan to build up an airport at Xiahe, a Tibetan community in Gansu province.
-- China railways transported 14.33 million passengers during the three-day Tomb Sweeping holiday.
-- Guangdong province plans to fill another 146 square kilometres of ocean shoreline with landfill by 2010. ($1 = 7.01 yuan)
