Japan announces Asia aid package

Japan's PM Taro Aso has announced a 1.5 trillion yen ($17bn;£11.6bn) aid package to help Asian countries weather the economic downturn.

The money will be spent over three years on infrastructure projects and promoting trade.

It is hoped the proposed funding, which will be finalised at a summit later this year, will boost regional growth.

Mr Aso called on wealthy nations to help smaller countries and warned against protectionism.

Asia's banks have weathered the financial crisis better than their European and US counterparts.

But the region's export-dependent economies have been hit as the global downturn saps demand for consumer goods.

"Japan is ready to provide ODA (overseas development assistance) of not less than 1.5 trillion yen or about $17bn in total," Mr Aso told the World Economic Forum in Davos.

"It will be necessary to strengthen regional cooperation towards strengthening Asia's growth potential and expanding domestic demand," Mr Aso said.

Mr Aso also said that Japan's development assistance would be on the precondition "that the flow of trade and investment not be prohibited".

"We will resolutely fight all protectionism," he said.

Glaxo 'to cut thousands of jobs'

Drugs giant GlaxoSmithKline is set to announce thousands of job cuts as it faces increasing competition from generic drug makers, reports suggest.

More than 6,000 jobs are set to go according to reports in the Observer, The Sunday Times and The Telegraph.

A spokesman for the company could not confirm or deny the reports, saying simply that Glaxo "was in the middle of a restructuring programme".

Some of the cuts will be made from the UK workforce, the reports say.

The company employs around 100,000 people across the world, including 18,000 in the UK.

The company is suffering from increased competition from cheaper, generic drugs as patent protection runs out on a number of its household drugs.

'Restructuring'

The "restructuring programme", designed to cut costs and boost profits, was announced in October 2007.

At the end of 2008, Glaxo announced around 800 job cuts in the UK.

This included 200 at its factory in County Durham, and more than 600 as a result of the closure of its factory in Kent in 2013.

The company has manufacturing operations across the UK, including sites at Ware, Maidenhead and Worthing.

Last week, rival AstraZeneca said it would cut an additional 6,000 jobs on top of thousands of cuts already announced.

Glaxo reports its annual results on Thursday of next week.

Job cuts

These job cuts would be the latest in a long line of recently announced lay-offs as UK companies struggle in the recession.

On Saturday, a CBI survey showed that small and medium-sized manufacturers in the UK are laying off workers at a faster rate than at any time since the early 1990s.

In total, 38% of UK firms surveyed cut jobs during the final quarter of 2008.

The latest unemployment figures show that there were 1.92 million people unemployed in the UK between September and November last year, the highest level since September 1997.

Chinese migrant job losses mount

In China, an estimated 20 million workers from rural areas who had been working in cities have lost their jobs, according to a senior official.

A survey carried out in 15 provinces suggests about 15% of the total migrant labour pool is now unemployed.

There are fears that if large numbers of workers cannot find jobs, that could lead to social unrest.

The Chinese government researchers visited 165 villages across the country to try to build an accurate picture.

They were looking at how the economic malaise here is spreading.

The data they collected suggests the number of migrant workers now unemployed is 20 million - far higher than had been announced previously.

With last week's Spring Festival now over, millions of workers who had spent the week at home with their families were due to return to the cities.

But many have no jobs to come back to.

Unhappy unemployed

The government has said the economic downturn in China first started to be felt in the provinces where many exporters were based in the east and south of the country.

But now the effects are being felt further west as migrant workers see their wages cut or lose their jobs and are forced to return home.

A new document setting out rural policy for the year ahead warns that "shocks to agricultural and rural development are constantly emerging".

This year it will be hard to improve the incomes and the lives of farmers it says.

The fear of course is that large numbers of unhappy unemployed workers in rural areas could cause trouble.

The government says maintaining stable and fast economic development is the main task for the year ahead, according to reports.

Officials have been told to do what they can to "nip problems in the bud" - to try to resolve them before they can provoke protests.

Davos finds no answers to crisis

The World Economic Forum has ended with a call to rebuild the global economic system.

Founder Klaus Schwab announced a "global redesign initiative" to reform banking, regulation and corporate governance.

For five days, more than 2,000 business and political leaders discussed what some here called the "crisis of capitalism".

However, most discussions described the problems, not solutions.

The forum's official theme this year had been "shaping the post-crisis world", but that turned out to be premature.

Rather, the debates proved the widespread uncertainty amongst both politicians and corporate bosses, as they tried to gauge the depth of the economic crisis and explore ways how to get out of it.

Nobody in Davos tried to refute the prediction that the global economy is heading into a deep and long recession.

One top money market manager said: "If you believe that the world economy will turn the corner at the end of this year, or in [the first quarter] of 2010, I tell you we have not turned the corner, we can't see the corner, we don't even know where the corner is."

Another participant summed up the state of the discussion as "we don't know what to do, only that we need to do something and we need to do it fast".

With the old certainties of the free market gone, even free marketeers accepted the need for more regulation, quick.

Professor Schwab said the current situation was a perfect example of where banks could take the lead and devise a system of self-regulation, and not wait for governments to regulate it.

It may be too late for that, though, with politicians from Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel to UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown calling for a global regulator to ensure a smoother running of the international financial system.