Unemployment rate

    CHINA’S urban registered unemployment rate stood at 4.04 percent at the end of the second quarter, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security said in a statement Friday.

    While China’s economy has lost steam this year, putting pressure on manufacturing employment in particular, official unemployment figures have remained low.

    Huawei project

    SHENZHEN-BASED technology firm Huawei will roll out 4,000 km of fiber optic cable in Guinea over the next two years to offer high-speed Internet access to most of the West African nation’s people, the Guinean presidency said in a statement Friday.

    Work on the US$238 million project began over the weekend and is due to be concluded by 2017, the statement said, adding that Guinea would become the first country in West Africa to benefit from such extensive coverage.

    VW profit

    VOLKSWAGEN’S China manager Jochem Heizmann is readying a cost saving program because the carmaker’s full-year group profit could fall by more than 1 billion euros (US$1.1 billion) due to weak demand in the country, Manager Magazin said.

    Year-to-date, profit margins at the firm’s Chinese joint ventures are around 25 percent below last year’s level, the German magazine said, without citing sources

    Duties on MMA imports

    THE Ministry of Commerce said Friday that it will impose provisional anti-dumping measures on methyl methacrylate (MMA) imported from Singapore, Thailand and Japan.

    The preliminary ruling requires importers of the product to place deposits with Chinese customs ranging from 6.8 percent to 34.6 percent of the imports starting from Aug. 1, 2015, depending on the dumping margin, according to a statement on the ministry’s website.

    MMA is an organic compound that can be used to produce organic glass, plastic, paint and adhesives.