Singapore  - The Singapore government on Friday announced an 11-billion-Singapore-dollar (7.3-billion-US-dollar) plan of financial schemes aimed at stimulating lending to a broader range of enterprises during the current economic downturn.

About 142,000 companies, or 99.7 per cent of all enterprises based in Singapore, would be eligible for the schemes, which would be effective for one year from February
1, the Trade and Industry Ministry said.

Taipei  - A Taiwan research institute on Friday revised downward its forecast for the island's 2009 economic growth to 0.89 per cent because of the global economic downturn.

The Taiwan Institute for Economic Research lowered its forecast from 4.11 per cent, which it had made in November.

"Taiwan's economy will contract in the first and second quarter but will grow in the third and fourth quarter," institute researcher Chen Miao said.

London - The head of Britain's financial watchdog, the Financial Services Authority (FSA), Thursday demanded profound changes to the "seriously deficient" regulatory system if a repeat of the current crisis in the banking sector is to be avoided.

Adair turner, FSA chairman, recommended that banks should be forced to build up capital during good economic periods to enable them to deal more easily with an economic downturn.

His remarks, in a BBC interview, came just days after the government approved a massive scheme to insure banks against so- called toxic debt, which according to estimates could total 200 billion pounds (274 billion dollars).

Beijing  - China's economic growth fell to 6.8 per cent in the final quarter of 2008, its slowest expansion since 2001, as the global economic downturn hit China's exports, the national statistics bureau said Thursday.

The year-on-year growth rate compared to 9-per-cent growth in the third quarter, the bureau said.

For all of 2008, China's economy expanded at a 9-per-cent pace, reaching 30.07 trillion yuan (4.42 trillion dollars), the first time since 2003 that it had not hit double-digit growth.

Tokyo  - Japan's trade surplus narrowed 80 per cent to 2.16 trillion yen (24.1 billion dollars) in 2008 from a year earlier as imports increased on surging oil prices and exports shrank amid the global economic slowdown, the Finance Ministry said Thursday.

Exports fell 3.4 per cent to 81.05 trillion yen in 2008 for the first fall in seven years because of automotive and semiconductor export declines.

Imports grew 7.9 per cent to a record 78.9 trillion yen on price hikes of natural resources.