Tokyo - Japan's current account surplus narrowed 67.4 per cent in June to 493.9 billion yen (4.5 billion dollars) from a year before, the Finance Ministry said Wednesday.

The nation's goods and services trade surplus plunged 99.8 per cent to 2 billion yen.

The goods trade surplus shrank 81.3 per cent to 252.1 billion yen.

The income surplus jumped 29.9 per cent to 593.4 billion yen.

The balance of services logged a deficit of 250.1 billion yen, down 23.1 per cent.

Tokyo - Japan's gross domestic product (GDP) in the April-June quarter shrank 0.6 per cent from the previous quarter, marking the first fall in four quarters, the government said Wednesday.

On an annualized basis, the nation's economy fell 2.4 per cent in real terms in the April-June period, compared to an average market expectation of an annualized 2.3-per-cent fall and a 0.6-per-cent quarterly fall.

Consumer spending, which accounts for more than half of Japan's GDP, dropped a real 0.5 per cent in the reporting quarter, compared to the January-March period.

Paris - France's consumer price index stabilized in July with inflation at 3.6 per cent, down 0.2 per cent from the previous month and unchanged year on year, the country's statistics bureau INSEE said Tuesday in Paris.

France's economic growth appeared however to be losing steam with industrial output dropping 0.4 per cent in June to stand 1.4 per cent lower than the same month in
2007.

The automobile industry appeared particularly stymied, with manufacturing in the sector shrinking by 5.8 per cent for the second quarter.

Hanoi  - Vietnam's central bank said the country's currency had stabilized and projected the 2008 trade deficit would be less than 20 billion dollars, state media reported Tuesday.

State Bank Governor Nguyen Van Giau said foreign currency reserves were sufficient to cover the trade deficit and would be bolstered in coming months by rising export revenues and remittances from Vietnamese working abroad.

Beijing - China on Tuesday reported a slight drop in monthly inflation to 6.3 per cent year-on-year in July, but prices of some food items soared.

The rise of 6.3 per cent in July in the consumer price index (CPI) was down from 7.1 per cent in June, and from a 12-year high of 8.7 per cent in February.

It brought average inflation for the first seven months of the year down to 7.7 per cent, the National Bureau of Statistics said.

"The continuous decline of the CPI is a positive sign as it shows the government's measures to ease inflationary pressures were effective," Zhang Xiaojing, an analyst with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the official Xinhua news agency.