Rwanda's GDP to grow by 7 pct in 2007 - finmin

(Reuters) - Rwanda's economy is expected to grow by 7.0 percent in 2007 compared with 6 percent last year due to improved agricultural production, the country's finance minister said on Friday.

"The second quarter has seen impressive results in agriculture. All these point to a GDP growth of about 7 percent for this year," Finance and Economic Planning Minister James Musoni told Reuters in an interview, adding that the service and industry sectors had also improved.


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UPDATE 1-China silences green GDP study, report says

(Reuters) - BEIJING, July 23 - China has stopped the public
release of an official study putting a cost to the nation's
environmental damage, a government researcher told a Chinese
newspaper, blaming official reluctance to confront pollution.




The Beijing News reported on Monday that the release of a
"green GDP" report computing the cost of pollution and ecological
degradation in 2005 had been "indefinitely postponed".


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Fed banks wanted flat discount rate in April, May

(Reuters) - The board approved their requests to keep the discount rate steady at 6.25 percent on April 23 and on May 7. The Fed's policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee maintained the federal funds rate on May 9 at 5.25 percent.




"Although directors noted rather weak GDP growth in the first quarter, most expected the overall economy to resume moderate expansion over the balance of the year as the contraction of the housing activity abated," minutes of the May 7 meeting said.


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CEOs more cautious in economic view

(Reuters) - Their forecast of U.S. gross domestic product growth this year also declined. The CEOs now expect 2.6 percent GDP growth, compared with a forecast of 2.9 percent in March.




The majority of CEOs polled -- 66 percent -- expected their companies' sales to rise over the next six months. Forty-two percent said they expected to increase their U.S. staffing over the next six months, and 34 percent said they expected to raise their capital spending over that period.


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Housing to weigh more than expected on growth-forecast

(Reuters) - Real gross domestic product, the government's broadest measure of economic output, is expected to advance 2.3 percent in 2007. That is down from an earlier estimate in February for 2.8 percent growth, a survey conducted by the National Association for Business Economics found.




The lower forecast came after the government reported anemic 1.3 percent GDP growth during the first three months of this year.


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