news.ft.com By James Wilson in Bogotá Published: January 16 2003 1:44 | Last Updated: January 16 2003 1:44

The International Monetary Fund on Wednesday gave its anticipated blessing to Colombia's economic plans by approving a 2-year, $2.1bn stand-by agreement with President Alvaro Uribe's government.

The IMF's backing for Colombia is in contrast to the difficulties of some Latin American neighbours in getting the Fund to approve loan agreements. It caps months of strong lobbying by Mr Uribe in which multilateral lenders such as the World Bank also agreed to increase their exposure to Colombia.

Mr Uribe had argued that Colombia deserved more international financial support to compensate for his government's need to boost military spending in an effort to counter drug trafficking and a widespread guerrilla insurgency. Multilateral lenders are offering Colombia $8bn over the next 3 years, thought to be one of the largest loan programmes ever in Latin America relative to the size of the economy.

Horst Köhler, the IMF's managing director, described Colombia's economic roadmap as a "strong reform programme" echoing the views of Wall Street analysts who have welcomed a slate of tax-raising and cost-cutting measures approved by Colombian lawmakers at the end of last year.

Colombia came under IMF tutelage in 1999 after the worst recession of the century but did not draw on any of the $2.7bn offered by the Fund over the past 3 years. The IMF said Colombia would also treat the new credit as precautionary.

Colombia says it will slash its public sector deficit to 2.5 per cent this year from more than 4 per cent in 2002. It is also pledging to strengthen the financial system and sell off state-owned Bancafé, one of the country's biggest banks, by the end of this year.

Colombia is forecasting economic growth of 2 per cent in 2003, a slight increase on last year. But the government is warning that the political and economic crisis in neighbouring Venezuela, Colombia's second most important export market, could cut cross-border sales by more than half this year.

sg.biz.yahoo.com Thursday January 16, 8:58 AM From The Wall Street Journal Bye-Bye, Steve

When AOL Time Warner Inc. Chairman Steve Case announced his resignation Sunday night, the media seized on the story of his fall from grace. Even America Online, the company that Mr. Case co-founded in 1985, couldn't resist playing it up.

On Monday morning, the news was highlighted on America Online's "Welcome Screen," which is the first page that its 35 million subscribers see they log onto the online service. Top billing went to a story that hit readers in their wallets: "Getting Hosed at the Pump: Venezuela Strike Boosts Price More Than 5 Cents in 3 Weeks."

But the corporate intrigue could not be ignored. Below the oil news was a smaller headline: "Steve Case to Step Down." Clicking on the headline's link produced a Reuters article that didn't pull any punches. An analyst was quoted in the third paragraph saying, "Case was clearly ineffective."

An America Online spokesman says: "We thought it was news our members would want to get."

Pirate's Revenge?

Someone with a nasty sense of humor and a vile disposition apparently doesn't like the Business Software Alliance. The BSA is a Washington trade group of software companies that is best known for its world-wide campaign to combat software piracy. The BSA encourages disgruntled employees to identify companies that use illegally copied software and joins with law-enforcement agencies to raid software duplicators.

Recently a number of unfortunate computer users saw on their screens the following message: "Illegal Microsoft Windows license detected . . . Your unauthorized license has been revoked. For more information [see] . . . our Web site at: www.bsa.org."

The message is the final act of the malignant Opaserv-K virus, which destroys all data on a hard drive, according to Symantec Corp., maker of a virus-busting software.

But it isn't from the BSA, which calls the virus's final message "a malicious act that tricks victims." The BSA, which says its mission is "promoting a safe and legal online world," now has a pop-up message on its Web site denying responsibility.

Laurie Head, director of marketing for the BSA, says it received a number of calls about the virus, but she doesn't know how many computers have been infected. "I don't think anyone really believes we'd sponsor such a virus," she adds.

Download This

The band Wilco, shut out of this month's Grammy awards, this week walked away with one of Wired magazine's Rave awards. But the magazine's judges liked the band's position on intellectual-property rights at least as much as its alt-country sound.

Wilco made waves in 2001 when the band streamed its latest album from its Web site, giving fans free access after its old record label refused to release the CD. Thousands of listeners captured the downloads and the songs were widely available on Internet file-sharing services such as Kazaa.com. Record companies have argued that such services are killing sales, but the album, "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot," made its debut at No. 13 on the Billboard chart when it was finally released under a new label last year.

At the Wired party, Wilco played to a packed house. The downloading strategy has given the band an anticorporate image -- one of the best kinds these days -- and band leader Jeff Tweedy says the episode shows that free music can be a marketing boon.

"They defied the conventional business wisdom," says Blaise Zerega, Wired's managing editor. "It's less about sticking a thumb in the eye of the record industry than about trying to coax the industry to embrace the potential that Internet technologies offer."

Dead Letter

On Dec. 12, an Intel Corp. manager wrote to the Federal Communications Commission to propose changes in the review process for some wireless-networking technology. The letter ostensibly was on behalf of a group called the Industry Consortium for Module Approval, listing 11 members that include Hewlett-Packard Co., International Business Machines Corp., Nokia Corp. and Agere Systems Inc. One week later, a different Intel executive wrote back to withdraw the letter.

The problem? Some of the companies listed weren't on board -- or, as the second letter put it, there was "confusion" as to which members of the consortium wished to join the letter.

At issue is how the FCC, which must certify specialized communication chips and cards, will handle a trend to integrate wireless functions into other chips on a computer's main circuit board. An Agere executive said it disagreed with the consortium on one issue -- requiring consensus among component suppliers before elements of a system can be recertified by the FCC -- which could restrict the company's ability to reuse existing chips and reduce the cost of them. A Nokia spokesman says it "simply did not have the opportunity to review the proposal. . . . Therefore, we felt that it was premature to include our name on a list of companies involved."

An Intel spokesman acknowledges that, because of the rush to get business done before the Christmas holiday, not all companies that were part of the group got a chance to see the latest version of the letter. He says the group plans to get the necessary approvals and resubmit the letter this month.

Digits was compiled by Ann Grimes with contributions from Julia Angwin, David Bank, William M. Bulkeley and Don Clark.

www.thescotsman.co.uk

VIC ROBERTSON AND FORDYCE MAXWELL THE economic woes of arable farming have forced the industry’s marketing, research and development body, the Home Grown Cereals Authority, to ditch plans for increased spending - and plans for a levy increase.

At its board meeting yesterday, the authority accepted the need to cap spending at its current level and scrap a proposed 3p per tonne increase in growers’ levy which would have taken cereals to 43p and oilseeds to 68p.

The decision came after extensive consultation throughout the industry and outright rejection of any funding increase by farmers’ unions on both sides of the Border.

It is expected that research and development projects will be the major casualty with an anticipated budget cut of about £1 million, 16 per cent, in the coming year. Total projected spend for 2003-04 was £11.2 million.

The HGCA said that recommendations for a levy increase - the first since 1996 - stem from the disastrous harvest of 2001 which had resulted in a 25 per cent cut in levy income and a serious dip into reserves.

The board will now have to draw up new budget proposals for the coming financial year, which starts at the beginning of July.

"The expected cut backs will mean no new research and development projects in cereals for the next 12 months," said HGCA chairman Tony Pike. "This is regrettable, but was explained to all stake holders during the consultation period.

"If we are to satisfying consistently the industry’s needs, then a regular income stream is required because substantial variations in income would make it very difficult for us to support long-term research and development projects."

A spokesman for NFU Scotland, confirming the union’s "No" to an increase announced earlier this week said that a reduction in HGCA activity was an unfortunate legacy of depressed combineable crop incomes for the past five years.

A cargo of 6,000 tonnes of groats - oats with the husks removed - will leave Dundee this week for Venezuela where the product will be rolled into porridge oats or manufactured into cereal bars.

The final shipment in a 20,000 tonne contract signals, according to Ian Harper, logistics manager with Quaker Oats in Cupar, a major opportunity for Scottish cereal growers.

He said: "This is business we have been trying to get for years. There is a potential market for Scottish oats in Latin America of at least 40,000 tonnes each year. Currently most of the oats for this market are from the US and Canada, but we can compete on both cost and quality."

The Quaker plant in Cupar handles 80,000 tonnes of oats each year and throughput has been growing recently at 20 per cent year on year. The Scottish harvest usually yields about 100,000 tonnes of oats but Harper is keen to see an increase to end "imports" from England to meet orders.

www.thescotsman.co.uk

VIC ROBERTSON AND FORDYCE MAXWELL THE economic woes of arable farming have forced the industry’s marketing, research and development body, the Home Grown Cereals Authority, to ditch plans for increased spending - and plans for a levy increase.

At its board meeting yesterday, the authority accepted the need to cap spending at its current level and scrap a proposed 3p per tonne increase in growers’ levy which would have taken cereals to 43p and oilseeds to 68p.

The decision came after extensive consultation throughout the industry and outright rejection of any funding increase by farmers’ unions on both sides of the Border.

It is expected that research and development projects will be the major casualty with an anticipated budget cut of about £1 million, 16 per cent, in the coming year. Total projected spend for 2003-04 was £11.2 million.

The HGCA said that recommendations for a levy increase - the first since 1996 - stem from the disastrous harvest of 2001 which had resulted in a 25 per cent cut in levy income and a serious dip into reserves.

The board will now have to draw up new budget proposals for the coming financial year, which starts at the beginning of July.

"The expected cut backs will mean no new research and development projects in cereals for the next 12 months," said HGCA chairman Tony Pike. "This is regrettable, but was explained to all stake holders during the consultation period.

"If we are to satisfying consistently the industry’s needs, then a regular income stream is required because substantial variations in income would make it very difficult for us to support long-term research and development projects."

A spokesman for NFU Scotland, confirming the union’s "No" to an increase announced earlier this week said that a reduction in HGCA activity was an unfortunate legacy of depressed combineable crop incomes for the past five years.

A cargo of 6,000 tonnes of groats - oats with the husks removed - will leave Dundee this week for Venezuela where the product will be rolled into porridge oats or manufactured into cereal bars.

The final shipment in a 20,000 tonne contract signals, according to Ian Harper, logistics manager with Quaker Oats in Cupar, a major opportunity for Scottish cereal growers.

He said: "This is business we have been trying to get for years. There is a potential market for Scottish oats in Latin America of at least 40,000 tonnes each year. Currently most of the oats for this market are from the US and Canada, but we can compete on both cost and quality."

The Quaker plant in Cupar handles 80,000 tonnes of oats each year and throughput has been growing recently at 20 per cent year on year. The Scottish harvest usually yields about 100,000 tonnes of oats but Harper is keen to see an increase to end "imports" from England to meet orders.

www.stuff.co.nz 16 January 2003

NEW YORK: Oil prices jumped toward two-year highs on Wednesday as US crude stocks sank to nearly their lowest level in more than two decades.

A 45-day oil workers' strike in oil exporter Venezuela has drained world oil stocks.

Fresh signs of a looming US-led war on Iraq further fired supply concerns that have pushed prices up more than 30 per cent in two months and reinforced fears that rising energy costs could stunt economic recovery in the US.

New York light crude closed 83 cents higher at US$33.25 a barrel, within 40 cents of two-year highs struck in late December.

Brent crude futures in London rose 61 cents to US$31.22 a barrel, just three cents below a new two-year-high of US$31.25.

US government data showed crude oil stockpiles fell more than 2 per cent to 272.3 million barrels last week, just 2 million barrels above the lowest level since the government started keeping records in 1979.

The report strengthened fears of an oil supply crunch as the US, the world's biggest consumer of oil, enters peak winter heating demand. Frigid temperatures are forecast in the US's northeast - a heavy consumer of heating oil - in the next 10 days.

The Energy Information Administration warned that "localised disruptions" would occur at US refineries if US crude oil inventories fell below 270 million barrels.