November 9: Gold purchases in Southeast Asia have dropped more than 20 per cent in some countries due to the currency crisis afflicting the region, reports here said. Gold appears more expensive because local currencies have depreciated against the US dollar, the Business Times newspaper quoted Kitaru Inagaki, area manager of the World Gold Council, as saying.He said Malaysia had already seen a 20 per cent drop in gold sales in the July to September period. Inagaki said that since the Malaysian ringgit had depreciated by almost 30 per cent, gold prices appeared to have increased by 22 per cent. "Psychologically, consumers will find it more expensive to purchase gold and thus will wait until the ringgit stabilises," he said.Inagaki said Indonesia and Thailand also faced a similar situation, adding that gold prices in Jakarta and Bangkok had risen by 33 per cent and 28 per cent respectively since July."Since the baht has devalued by almost 50 per cent, gold sales were negative as the majority of customers sold gold rather than bought it," he said. "People sold more than they bought . resales amounted to 30 tonnes in the third quarter," Inagaki said.Toyota to launch luxury car for EuropeJapanese auto giant Toyota Motor Corp. aims to launch a luxury car for European markets within two to three years, reports here said. The car, with an engine displacement of up to 2,500 cc, is designed to compete With models of Bayerische Motoren Werke AG (BMW) and Daimler-Benz AG of Germany, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun said. Toyota plans to develop and produce the new model in Japan and take the tastes of European consumers into account, the major business daily said in its evening edition.The company hopes the new car will boost its annual luxury car sales in Europe from around 4,000 units last year to tens of thousands in the future, it said.US jobless rate plungesThe US jobless rate plunged to its lowest level since 1973 last month but analysts say Asia's wobbly financial markets should induce the Federal Reserve to leave monetary policy alone. The Labor Department reported Friday that a surging US economy pushed the jobless rate down to 4.7 percent, from 4.9 percent in September, by creating 284,000 jobs.The October figure was far stronger than had been expected on Wall Street, where analysts were predicting job growth of 215,000 and an unemployment rate of 4.8 per cent. On the New York Stock Exchange, where the job report sparked initial fears of a Fed move next week to raise interest rates, stock prices opened sharply lower before recovering somewhat.Investor fears focused on average hourly earnings, closely watched as an indicator of wage-driven inflation. Hourly wages in October rose an average of 0.5 percent and were up 4.2 percent year-on-year, the largest yearly gain since July 1989. The spurt in wages would ordinarily prompt the inflation-conscious Federal Reserve to raise short-term interest rates in order to head off an increase in consumer prices.
