Senate panel approves long-delayed trade deals
The full Senate and House of Representatives are poised to approve the agreements on Wednesday, just nine days after President Barack Obama sent them to Congress. Obama has said they would help support tens of thousands American jobs.The panel approved the South Korea and Panama agreements on voice votes and the Colombia pact by a 18-6 vote.U.S. farm and manufactured goods exports are expected to rise under all three agreements as tariffs are phased out, with the biggest gains coming from the South Korea agreement. The deals also open new markets for U.S. companies in service sectors such as banking, insurance and express delivery.The deals “will give our ranchers, farmers, workers and businesses a competitive edge in three lucrative fast-growing markets,” Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus said.The speed at which the deals have moved through Congress contrasts with the four to five years they were stuck at the White House because of mostly Democratic Party concerns.Senator Orrin Hatch, the top Republican on the panel, said the long period of inaction had “weakened” U.S. leadership in global trade and “led many to doubt whether the United States remains serious about addressing the world’s and its own economic challenges.”House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer told reporters on Tuesday he expected all three agreements to pass with bipartisan support. Opponents say they expect more than half of House Democrats to go against Obama and oppose the deals.Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell also said he expected approval of all three pacts, which would come just a day before South Korean President Lee Myung-bak speaks to a joint session of the Congress.
Microsoft competitor Box lands $81 million funding
Box, formerly known as Box.net, plans to use the funds for expansion, with a goal of doubling employees to about 600, Chief Executive Aaron Levie told Reuters. In a program dubbed the Box Innovation Network, it also plans to start funding and consulting developers working on applications that work with Box, much as apps from Google Apps, salesforce.com and others do now.Box allows companies to store and access data in the cloud— networks of servers often run and maintained by others, allowing for access from anywhere. Box also runs apps that perform common business tasks such as managing orders and production scheduling.Levie said the company wants to take business from established players that overlap with Box, like Microsoft’s Sharepoint or Oracle. About 77 percent of Fortune 500 companies already use Box, he said.Similar players include San Francisco-based Dropbox, which is geared toward consumers and is raising its own new funding round. Domo, a startup based in Salt Lake City that offers business-intelligence services, raised an initial $33 million round in July.Venture-capital backers are placing increasing chunks of cash in cloud-computing companies as businesses and consumers step up their use of remote storage. Major companies such as Amazon.com Inc, Google Inc, and Apple Inc are also making sizable investments in the area.
UPDATE 2-Russia says close to final stage on China gas deal
BEIJING Oct 11 (Reuters) - Russia said on Tuesday it was
nearing the final stage of a huge gas export deal with China, in
what would be a landmark trade agreement between the long-wary
neighbours.A deal to supply the world’s second biggest economy with up
to 68 billion cubic metres of Russian gas a year over 30 years
has long been delayed over pricing disagreements.”We are nearing the final stage of work on gas supplies,”
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told reporters after talks
with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao.Putin is hoping his two-day visit — his first trip abroad
since revealing last month that he plans to reclaim Russia’s
presidency — will broaden trade with China, which he expects to
grow to $200 billion in 2020 from $59.3 billion last year.”Our goal is to diversify our economic ties,” Putin told
reporters. “I think that everyone will agree that compared with
the known difficulties in the global economy, this aspect of the
Russian-Chinese relationship (the growing trade) has a
stabilising impact.”An agreement on Russia’s gas deliveries to the world’s
second-largest energy consumer, China, would boost Moscow’s
efforts to reduce its export dependency on the European market.
But Moscow and Beijing have haggled for five years over the
commercial settings for the deal.The tortuous negotiations have been a reminder that, despite
frequent professions of brotherly goodwill between Moscow and
Beijing, relations are held back by mutual distrust, especially
on the Russian side, extending back to the Cold War, when border
disputes almost erupted in full-fledged war.^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^For factbox on Putin’s visit to China^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^Russia aims to supply China with 68 billion cubic metres
(bcm) of gas — compared with up to 155 bcm it set to supply
Europe this year — from 2015, but differences over pricing have
been a major stumbling block after an outline agreement was
announced back in 2006.Earlier, his Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin said that
there had been “significant” progress in the gas talks with
Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan.Yet despite the upbeat talk, there are plenty of stumbling
blocks that could hold back a final agreement.”Russia wants to link the gas price to oil prices the way it
does in Europe, but China considers that price too high. So
unless Russia was willing to move away from an index-linked deal
it would be hard for any agreements to be made,” said Gordon
Kwan, Head of Regional Energy Research for Mirae Asset
Securities.The price gap the two sides need to bridge remains around
$100 per thousand cubic metres, which is some 30 percent of
Gazprom’s average gas price to Europe this year, he said.China “has a very strong upper-hand in these negotiations
and there’s no reason why it needs to agree to an oil-linked
price,” added Kwan.Sechin’s comments also hinted that the gas deal must pass
plenty of negotiating hoops before it becomes a reality.”We have agreed that within the next two weeks we will
outline a road map which will include a demand analysis, sources
of supplies, the place of Gazprom in the structure of supplies,”
he told reporters, referring to the Russian company set to suppl
the gas.Sechin said the two sides had nonetheless resolved their
differences over China’s debts for Russian oil exports.In Jan.1 Russia started a 300,000 barrels per day oil supply
to China via first stage of East Siberia-Pacific Ocean pipeline.
But earlier this year Russia has said China underpaid it tens of
million of dollars due to a dispute on tariffs.MORE GIVE AND TAKEPutin earlier appeared to also suggest that more
give-and-take was needed before the gas could begin flowing.”Our talks a taking place in a business-like atmosphere,
with the mutual desire to find compromise on difficult questions
which inevitably arise given the sheer volume of our
relationship,” Putin told Premier Wen Jiabao in the Great Hall
of People, a cavernous official building in central Beijing.”Those who sell always want to sell at a higher price, while
those who buy, want to buy at a lower price. We need to reach a
compromise which will satisfy both sides,” Putin added in
remarks made at the start of his talks with Wen that reporters
were allowed to see.Russian state bank VEB and the China Development Bank (CDB)
signed a deal for the Chinese bank to invest $1.5 billion in
building the first stage of UC RUSAL’s 750,000-tonne
Taishet aluminium smelter.As well, the China Investment Corp agreed to invest
$1 billion in a joint Russia-China Investment Fund set up in
partnership with a Russian state-backed vehicle to promote
direct investment.On Wednesday, Putin will meet Chinese President Hu Jintao.
