London, Sept 10 : Vedanta Resources plans to spend 9.8 billion dollars in the near future to achieve its goal of becoming the world’s leading aluminium producer.

According to the Londoan-based Financial Times, the biggest element in the expansion project is a 1.25m tone a year capacity smelter to be built at on a brownfield site at Jharsuguda in Orissa, the state where most of India’s bauxite and coal reserves are located.

That plant will cost 5.65 billion dollars.

A new 325,000 ton capacity smelter at Korba in Chattisgarh will cost two billion dollars. Both projects will be phased over four years. Output will be begin in 2010 and 2011.

Each will be supplied by new build power plants.

Vienna - OPEC oil fell bel

Berlin - Germany's economy is set to contract by 0.1 per cent in the current, third quarter, a leading Berlin economic research institute, DIW, said Wednesday.

Brussels - Warning of tough times ahead, the European Commission on Wednesday cut the EU's 2008 growth estimates for a second time in seven months - this time to 1.4 per cent.

The EU's executive arm had previously forecast a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate for the 27-member bloc of 2.0 per cent. The commission's February interim estimate had in turn been revised down by about half a percentage point from its November forecast.

GDP for the 15-member eurozone was similarly revised down, from 1.7 per cent to 1.3 per cent, in line with analysts' expectations.

Bangkok - Thailand's ongoing political crisis has yet to affect its sovereign credit rating but it could do so if there is no end to the turmoil in sight, Fitch Ratings' chief Asia analyst said Wednesday.

"The credit fundamentals of Thailand are still sound, but we are getting concerned about the political risk in political developments because it's just been going on so long," said James McCormack, head of Asia Sovereigns at Fitch Ratings.

Tokyo - Japan's current account surplus shrank 17.3 per cent to 1.53 trillion yen (14.22 billion dollars) in July, compared with the same month a year before, thanks to expanding imports, the government said Wednesday.

The surplus shrank for the fifth-consecutive month as import growth was led by high prices for fuel, the Finance Ministry said.

The goods and services trade surplus plunged 93.5 per cent to 29.2 billion yen.

The goods trade surplus shrank 69.8 per cent to 232.2 billion yen while the services trade marked a deficit of 203 billion yen, down 35.8 per cent from a year before.