Seoul  - South Korea's government on Tuesday lowered its forecast for 2009 economic growth from a previous 4 per cent to 3 per cent because of the global financial crisis.

President Lee Myung Bak told his cabinet that the depths of the current downturn was expected in the first half of 2009 as he ordered his government to act quickly to mitigate the impact of the crisis on South Korea and look toward its future recovery.

Paris - As French President Nicolas Sarkozy prepared to meet with representatives from the country's auto industry later on Monday, the head of Renault, Carlos Ghosn, said emergency government loans were necessary for the sector to survive the economic crisis.

"What we are demanding from the state is some reasonable financing, over 2 to 3 years, at interest rates between 4 and 5 per cent," Ghosn said in an interview published Monday in the daily Le Figaro.

The car industry is very "credit-intensive," Ghosn said, with two of every three cars purchased on credit. "If the finance crisis continues, you will see one producer after the other fail," he warned.

Tokyo  - Business confidence among Japan's largest manufacturers fell the most in 34 years, the Bank of Japan's quarterly Tankan survey revealed Monday.

An index that measures confidence among the largest makers of cars and electronics dropped to minus 24 from minus three, according to the survey.

A negative reading indicates a majority of businesses were pessimistic. The fifth quarterly decline in a row in business sentiment followed a record low in consumer confidence last month.

The fall indicated that many companies were likely to slash more jobs and drastically lower spending, which would push the world's second-largest economy into a deeper recession.

Singapore  - Singapore's retail sales in October 2008 fell 6.8 per cent from September, the Statistics Department said Monday.

On a year-on-year basis, retail sales declined by 3.6 per cent over a year ago. The volume of retail sales fell by 8.5 per cent after removing price effect, the department said.

The biggest drop was in October motor vehicles sales which fell 20 per cent compared to September.

Retailers of telecommunications equipment and computers reported month-to-month lower turnover of 17.5 per cent.

Tokyo  - This year's holidays are looking gloomy for Japan's temp workers as the nation's manufacturing sector reduces its output due to the global recession.

Japan's exporters have suffered slowing demand, especially in the United States and Europe, as businesses have revised their earnings forecasts for the full year through March 31.

Behind the corporate pessimism, more than 3.2 million workers who are outsourced via temporary staffing companies have become the first victims of cost cuts.

The nation's leading automaker, Toyota Motor Corp, was slapped with a 50-per-cent reduction in net and operating profits between April and September and ended up lowering its full-year earnings projections.

Amman  - The Islamic finance industry, which refers to the banking activity conducted in accordance with the principles of Sharia (Islamic law), gained the limelight over the past two months during the global financial turmoil as one of the relatively safe havens for investments.

Executives of Islamic banks and financial institutions have been arguing from the very beginning of the crisis that their businesses were relatively immune to the repercussions of the world financial turmoil because Islamic financial products were different from those inherent in the conventional banking system.

Islamic equities also turned out to be the least affected in the meltdown that swept global as well as Arab stock markets.