Washington  - The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Friday approved a one-year loan of 47 billion dollars for Mexico to help the country weather the global economic crisis.

Mexico is the first country to agree to a loan under the IMF's so- called flexible credit line, a new programme that was backed by leaders of the world's 20 leading economies during a summit in London earlier this month.

Sydney  - Food has become dearer for New Zealanders even as the annual inflation rate declined to 3 per cent in the quarter ending March, official figures released Friday said.

Falling petrol prices in the fourth quarter had helped bring New Zealand's inflation rate down from an 18-year high of 5.1 per cent to an annual rate of 3.4 per cent last year.

The consumers price index (CPI) increased 0.3 per cent in the first quarter of 2009. Higher prices for food and cigarettes were largely offset by lower prices for transport, Statistics New Zealand said.

Beijing, Apr. 16 : Though China''s economy has expanded by 6.1 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2009, the quarterly growth is the slowest in the past 10 years as the global financial crisis continues to affect the world''s fastest-growing economy.

It was 4.5 percentage points lower than the first quarter of 2008 and down 0.7 percentage points from the previous quarter, reports Xinhua.

Beijing  - The expansion of the Chinese economy slowed to a record low in the first three months of 2009, adding 6.1 per cent year-on-year, however, performance was "better than expected" an official said Thursday.

However, China's gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate was 4.5 percentage points lower than in the same period last year and the lowest since the start of quarterly records in 1992. GDP growth was also down 0.7 percentage points from 6.8 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Singapore - Singapore on Tuesday revised its total trade projection for this year to a drop of 22 to 25 per cent, from previous expectations of a decline of 17 to 19 per cent, citing weak export markets. Non-oil domestic exports for 2009 are expected to contract by 10 to 13 per cent, from an earlier projection of a 9 to 11-per-cent decline, International Enterprise (IE) Singapore, a government trade agency, said.

Singapore - Singapore Tuesday revised down its forecast of economic activity for this year, expecting gross domestic product (GDP) to contract by 6 to 9 per cent, lower than the contraction of 2 to 5 per cent that it had forecast on January 21. Advance estimates for the Singapore economy indicate that economic activity slowed sharply in the first quarter of 2009, the Trade and Industry Ministry said in a statement.

The decline in the first quarter affected every sector except construction, the ministry pointed out.