China's economy is growing at maximum capacity and risks overheating if Beijing fails to adopt a series of measures to cool it down, a government economist said in remarks published on Wednesday.

China's economy has registered double-digit growth for four years in a row and expanded by an annual 11.1 percent in the first three months of this year as a result of buoyant investment and exports.

Economists have speculated that the economy may have grown by at least 11 percent between April and June compared with the previous year, despite a median prediction of a 10.8 percent annual rise forecast by economists and analysts who were surveyed recently by Reuters.

China is set to release gross domestic product (GDP) figures for the second quarter on Thursday.

"Historical experience shows that China's current GDP growth rate has hit or slightly surpassed the upper limit of its appropriate growth range," said Liu Shucheng, an economist with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a government think-tank.

"Considering the constraints of energy consumption and environmental protection, potential economic growth could not be any higher," Liu was quoted by the official China Securities Journal as saying.

The government needed to introduce a series of moderate measures to stave off any big shocks to the economy, he said.

To keep the economy in check, Beijing has increased interest rates four times since last April and raised the amount that lenders must park in reserve with the central bank, rather than lend out, on eight occasions in 13 months.

Other government agencies have also taken various administrative measures to curb wasteful investment and increase the cost to business of polluting.

Analysts expect Beijing to take further tightening steps as soon as this week amid talk that inflation may have exceeded four percent in June.

Fuelling those rumours, the China Securities Journal, in a separate report, cited the agriculture ministry as saying that wholesale prices for pork surged an annual 74.6 percent in June.

Hefty price rises for food products, especially pork and grain, drove China's consumer price inflation to a 27-month high of 3.4 percent in May.


Courtesy : Expressindia.com

Yahoo Inc has shuffled chief executives, upgraded its online advertising platform and forged several promising partnerships during the past year, yet the Internet icon still does not seem close to pulling out of a slump that has battered its stock.

Even Yahoo's new CEO, co-founder Jerry Yang, acknowledged on Tuesday there is still plenty of hard work to be done.

"I am very aware of the challenges we face," Yang said in a conference call with analysts after the Sunnyvale, California-based company said second-quarter earnings slipped two per cent.

"There is a significant gap where we are today and where we need to be."

This was the sixth consecutive quarter in which Yahoo's profit has dropped from the previous year.

The company's shareholders have paid a steep price for the company's bumbling. Since the end of 2005, Yahoo's stock price has plunged more than 30 per cent to wipe out about USD 20 billion in shareholder wealth.

The company's shares shed USD 1.13, or 4.1 per cent, after Yahoo lowered its forecast for the remainder of the year to compound the disappointment caused by its second-quarter results.

The stock ended on Tuesday's regular trading session at USD 27.53.

Yang, who replaced Chairman Terry Semel as CEO a month ago and remains one of Yahoo's largest shareholders, assured there will be "no sacred cows" as he spends the next 100 days analysing which parts of the business should be jettisoned so the company can focus its resources on developing products and services that will revive earnings growth.

Courtesy : Expressindia.com