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Pending legislation aimed at curbing Venezuela’s soaring inflation could backfire by boosting consumer prices, spurring corruption, stemming investment and causing more severe shortages of basic goods, analysts warned on Saturday.

Government officials and lawmakers loyal to President Hugo Chavez claim the Law for Fair Costs and Prices would help reduce Latin America’s highest rate of inflation by forcing businesses to set retail prices at rates established by government officials. Among the factors that officials would consider are production costs such as raw materials and labor.

While price controls already exist, the new law would impose such limits on a wider range of goods and give the government more enforcement authority.

“Stringent enforcement of this law will bring consequences including fewer products in markets and less investment,” Luis Vicente Leon, director of the Venezuelan polling firm Datanalisis, said Saturday at a news conference. Datanalisis regularly tracks the availability of basic goods and consumer prices.

With the National Assembly expected to approve the bill within weeks, representatives of Venezuela’s largest business chamber have voiced concerns that the legislation would further cut into the profits of businesses already subject to broad government oversight while new regulations could put them at risk of bankruptcy.

Vice President Elias Jaua recently rejected claims the law would hurt businesses, saying: “Honest businessmen and merchants will continue to exist and continue their activities along with a population with increased purchasing power.”

During a public forum held Saturday at a downtown Caracas plaza to discuss the bill, Adina Bastidas, an economist and member of Chavez’s ruling party, defended it as a powerful tool to crack down on perverse business practices.

“This law is going to attack speculation and hoarding, as well as other factors that are detrimental to the country’s economic development,” Bastidas said easy payday loans.

Annualized inflation reached 27 percent last year, and many economists expect consumer prices to grow by an even higher rate this year. The country’s food prices shot up 33.7 percent during the 12 months ending in March, far above the average increase of 7.7 percent for Latin America, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

While Chavez often blames unscrupulous speculators for the price rises, many economists say his government’s unrestrained spending is fueling inflation. Other critics blame government policies that have reduced domestic production amid increasing government imports of foods and other basic goods.

Venezuelans have struggled with sporadic shortages of foods such as milk, cooking oil, sugar, beef and chicken as well as other products such as tampons and some medicines. When items disappear in stores, street vendors usually ignore existing price controls and sell them at higher prices.

Leon said a survey of dozens of businesses, including street markets, conducted by Datanalisis last week showed that prices for scarce products sold by vendors were 55 percent higher than goods found at supermarkets and other retail stores.

In a report released on Friday, the Caracas-based Ecoanalitica think tank warned that the legislation could foment corruption among authorities responsible for enforcing new rules aimed at preventing businesses from hoarding goods. The legislation could also spur the creation of a black market in which products are sold at inflated prices, the think tank said.

The proposed legislation would create a government institution dubbed the Superintendence of Costs and Prices that would determine prices for certain products.

Ecoanalitica warned that by doing so, the law “grants too much power to inspectors and superintendents with respect to fixing prices.”

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In a recent Cineplex video segment, I talked about the future: smart homes, space tourism and flying cars. Well, it appears flying cars will be taking flight as early as next year.

In the U.S., the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) recently granted special exemptions for the Transition, paving the way for the vehicle to enter production later this year, for a 2012 delivery to customers. The Transition is a “roadable aircraft” that drives on the road like a car, but with a push of a button can extend its wings to fly the friendly skies.

But don’t expect to see these cars over your head while sitting on the 401: the Transition must take off and land at an airport like any other aircraft, but then can be driven home and parked in your garage overnight instead of requiring a hangar.

Manufactured by Massachusetts-based Terrafugia, the NHTSA stipulations relate to polycarbonate windscreen and highway-rated tires that must be used while on the road payday loans for bad credit.

The 19-foot long two-seater has a wingspan of 26 feet (when extended), top speeds of 185 kilometres per hour (and about 145 km/hour on the ground), while the 75-litre tank yields a range of about 800 kilometres.

What happens in the event of an in-air emergency? A full-vehicle parachute could be deployed. And there are airbags in case of a ground-based accident.

The company says the car will sell for about US $250,000. To reserve one, the company is taking a refundable deposit of US $10,000 and has about 100 orders so far.

In the U.S., you’ll need your “sport pilot” license to fly one, which you can get with a minimum of 20 hours of flight time, says the company. No word yet on what the equivalent Canadian license is and if this will even be street legal north of the 49th parallel.

If you had the cash, would you buy a Transition or other flying car?

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Canada

BEIJING

Greece is poised to receive the next installment of its bailout facility next month, debt inspectors said Friday after a near month-long inspection of the country’s public finances.

It also looks Greece’s partners in the eurozone could be stumping up additional new money beyond the current euro110 billion package to help the debt-ridden country meet its massive debt obligations.

“I expect the eurogroup to agree on additional financing to be provided to Greece, under of course strict conditionality,” Jean-Claude Juncker, the head of the 17 eurozone finance ministers, said in Luxembourg following a meeting with Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou.

Juncker also hinted that the private sector will be asked to help out.

“This conditionality will include private sector involvement on a voluntary basis and this private sector involvement will have to be negotiated with private creditors,” Juncker said without elaborating.

Eurozone states have been discussing whether to ask private creditors to give Greece more time to repay its bonds or buy new bonds as old ones expire guaranteed fast personal loans.

Juncker was speaking after the European Union, European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, collectively known as the troika, gave Greece more breathing room as it tries to service its debts. Without the euro12 billion due from the bailout facility due this summer, Greece was facing default.

The next installment of the loans it first began receiving in May last year is expected to be made available in early July, the troika said. It later slightly amended the wording to underline the funds would be most likely available in early July following approval from the IMF’s board and the eurogroup.

The three also said they expected the Greek economy to stabilize at the turn of the year. That’s important because the debt burden as a proportion of the country’s debt continues to rise if the economy is shrinking as it has been for much of the last three years.

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China’s industrial companies’ profit- growth slowed after the government raised interest rates and curbed lending to rein in inflation and limit asset bubble risks.

Profit rose 29.7 percent in the first four months to 1.49 trillion yuan ($230 billion) from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said on its website today. That compared with a 32 percent gain in the first quarter of this year.

Premier Wen Jiabao is seeking to sustain growth in the world’s second-biggest economy to create jobs and maintain social stability while curbing inflation that has exceeded his target every month this year. The central bank has raised interest rates twice this year and the government has intensified its crack-down on speculation in the property market by introducing purchase limits in some cities.

“Profit growth is expected to slow because their revenue will not grow as fast as before as the economy cools down due to the tightening,” Dariusz Kowalczyk, senior economist at Credit Agricole CIB in Hong Kong, said before today’s release. “Manufactures will be facing higher costs of power as they have to generate electricity themselves due to the power shortage.”

The Shanghai Composite Index, which tracks the bigger of China’s stock exchanges, dropped for a seventh day, falling 0.1 percent by the break at 11:30 a.m. local time. It has slid 4.4 percent this week.

Industrial companies’ sales increased 29.5 percent in the first four months of the year to 24 trillion yuan, according to the statistics bureau’s statement.

Profits rose 34 percent in the first two months of this year.

Consumer Prices

Consumer prices rose 5 high risk personal loans.3 percent in April, staying above 5 percent for the second straight month and exceeding the government’s target of 4 percent for 2011.

Industrial companies’ profit growth may decline even as profitability may improve because of the recent decline in commodity prices, Ping’an Securities Co. analyst, He Qingming, wrote in a May 23 report.

Aluminum Corp. of China Ltd., the nation’s largest producer of the metal, on April 21 reported a 47 percent drop in first- quarter profit on higher raw-material and fuel costs.

China’s Sinovel Wind Group Co., the largest wind-turbine maker in the world’s biggest wind energy market, on April 26 said profit growth slowed to 1 percent in the first quarter, compared with a 51 percent annual gain in 2010.

With inventory levels rebounding and input prices rising, industrial firms’ profit growth will be under pressure and is expected to grow about 23 percent for the whole year, CITIC Securities Co. said in an April 28 note to clients.

The monthly profit survey covers enterprises in all 31 provinces and municipalities, replacing the quarterly announcements made previously.

The statistics bureau this year changed the annual sales threshold for companies eligible for inclusion in the survey to 20 million yuan from 5 million yuan.

–Zheng Lifei. Editors: Ken McCallum, Lily Nonomiya

To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Zheng Lifei in Beijing at +86-10-6649-7560 or lzheng32@bloomberg.net

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Hackers have breached a database at Sony Ericsson

Expenses associated with winter storm activity contributed to a 30 percent decline in Ameren’s first quarter profit.

The St. Louis-based utility company reported a profit of $71 million in the first quarter that ended March 31, or 29 cents per share, down from a profit of $102 million, or 43 cents per share, in the first quarter of 2010.

Power outages and repairs related to storm activity in Missouri and Illinois contributed to the decline in profit, Ameren said in a statement Thursday, in addition to reduced margins in its merchant generation segment. Mild temperatures in the quarter also contributed to lower profits fast cash.

Ameren’s operating revenue for the first quarter, $1.9 billion, was down from $1.944 billion a year ago.

“Our first quarter 2011 core earnings were on track with our expectations despite being lower than those of last year’s first quarter,” Ameren’s Chairman, President and Chief Executive Thomas Voss said in a statement. Ameren reaffirmed its guidance of $2.20 to $2.60 per share for the year.

Ameren has 2.4 million electric customers and nearly a million natural gas customers.

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Fears of radiation spread to rice as the planting season began in Japan, prompting the government to ban its cultivation in contaminated soil as fallout leaking from a tsunami-damaged nuclear plant dealt another blow to the national diet.

Vegetables and milk were the first foods that sparked concerns about the safety of Japanese agriculture after the March 11 tsunami flooded the nuclear plant and its reactors began to overheat and spew radiation. But those worries intensified when highly radioactive water was spotted gushing from the complex into the Pacific and contaminated fish showed up in catches.

Those concerns have abated somewhat after the leak was plugged and bans on produce from some areas were lifted.

But rice has now come under the microscope as the planting season begins in April and May.

“We had to come up with a policy quickly because we are in planting season,” said Agriculture Minister Michihiko Kano, who announced the ban Friday.

The ban will apply to any soil found to contain high levels of radioactive cesium, and farmers who cannot grow rice will be compensated. Rice grown in uncontaminated soil will be screened.

Yoshiyuki Ueda, a 47-year-old rice farmer from the town of Futaba, where the damaged nuclear plant is located, said he had already given up on trying to plant this year’s crop because of radiation fears.

“The ground is ruined,” Ueda said. “I think it will be a long time until things return to normal.”

Rice is revered in Japanese culture, and the word for cooked rice, “gohan,” also means meal. It’s the key ingredient in sake, and citizens proudly buy locally grown varieties.

Plant workers have spent the past month frantically trying to stop radiation from spewing by restoring cooling systems, but they still have a long way to go. Radiation in water pooling around the plant has slowed the efforts to stabilize the reactors, but workers made progress Saturday toward cleaning up that contamination.

In an unusual _ and controversial _ plan, engineers decided earlier this month to deliberately pump less contaminated water into the ocean from a storage facility they thought might make a good receptacle for the more highly radioactive water.

That dump is expected to finish Sunday, and technicians already are beginning to ensure that the building is watertight, according to nuclear safety agency spokesman Hidehiko Nishiyama.

“We cannot afford a lot of time” in completing this process, Nishiyama said, but he did not say how long it would take.

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency approved those moves as “an unavoidable emergency step,” Nishiyama said.

Several areas of the plant are difficult to reach because of radiation. On Saturday, two 190,000-pound (86,000-kilogram) concrete pumps that have been retrofitted to spray water and can be operated by remote control were on their way to the plant from Atlanta and Los Angeles.

The plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., is also hoping to use T-Hawk drone aircraft made by Honeywell to inspect areas of the plant it cannot access. The drone can be operated from six miles (10 kilometers) away and transmit video and still images.

Until reactors are stabilized, radiation will continue to be released. Earlier, high levels of seawater contamination around the plant prompted the nation that gave the world sushi to set limits for the first time on the amount of radiation permitted in fish. Concerns about food have led several countries, most recently China, to ban imports of some items from Japan.

Rice may be particularly vulnerable to absorbing radiation because it has a long growing season.

So far, soil containing cesium that exceeds the new limit has been found in only two places in Iitate, a village about 25 miles (40 kilometers) from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex.

Japan produced 8.5 million tons of rice in 2010, almost all for domestic consumption. It exported just 1,900 tons for sale last year, with Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan the top recipients. It imported about 664,000 tons last year.

Fukushima, home to the radiation-leaking plant, was the nation’s fourth-largest rice producing prefecture (state) last year.

Experts say people would have to eat enormous quantities of produce or dairy products before receiving even the amount of radiation contained in a CT scan, but cesium is a concern because it can build up in the body and high levels are thought to be a risk for various cancers.

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Dressed in her chic, floor-length Canada Goose coat, Colleen Imrie is in the new Dollarama store on Spadina Ave. shopping for brand name items at rock bottom prices.