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Asian currencies drifting lower as uncertainty looms over Indonesia
Asian currencies drifted lower in slow trade late yesterday as uncertainty over Indonesia and a lack of fresh impetus elsewhere dampened interest. Indonesia released data on Monday showing inflation jumped 12.76% month-on-month in February after a 6.88% rise in January. Food prices rose 16.07% in February.
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Export see-saw on, January figures dip
The slowdown in the country's exports continued in January 1998 with a growth rate which was 7.47% lower than the level in January 1997. The trade deficit for the period April-January 1998 jumped to $5,578.70 million, up from the figure of $4,288.82 million in the corresponding period last year.
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Currency crisis to see Asia mired in inflation
A spike up in inflation was bound to be an inevitable consequence of Asia's currency meltdown, but figures published this week show that in some countries it is kicking in with a vengeance. Inflation levels show a rough correlation with the scale of the falls in local currencies, the bigger the fall the higher the rate of inflation.
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Advance tax, VDIS outflow to harden interest rates, says I-Sec
Interest rates are likely to harden in the second fortnight of March due to a large outflow of money from the banking system on account of advance tax and VDIS payments. The I-Sec debt market update states that , "the entire surplus available and more is likely to be absorbed by the advance tax plus VDIS outflow estimated at Rs 5,000 crore.
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