At a time when growth does not necessarily mean more jobs, governments must take a proactive stance to keep people in work.

Andrew Smithers argues that the US current account deficit is too small and its financial markets need to fall.

Top US banks, led by Citigroup, again produced strong profits growth in the fourth quarter and for all of 2003, reflecting imp-roved credit quality and strength in retail financial services.

Pakistan has decided to sell 51% of the shares of Habib Bank to the Geneva-based Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development (AKFED) for about $400m in one of the country’s biggest privatisation deals ever, writes Farhan Bokhari.

Alfonso Prat-Gay, Argentina’s central bank governor, talks to Karina Robinson about his plans for recapitalising the ailing financial system.
In the run up to my meeting with 38-year-old Alfonso Prat-Gay, governor of the Central Bank of Argentina, I had met 16 top businessmen, bankers and economists who were uniformly charming and informative. So I feared for the famed trait of Argentine arrogance (the classic joke told to me by a host of locals is: How can you make a lot of money? Buy an Argentine for what you know he is worth and sell him for what he thinks he is worth). It was with a sigh of relief, then, that I encountered Mr Prat-Gay, who has that famed trait in spades.

Karina Robinson interviews Singapore Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong on developments in the region and in his homeland.

Erol Sabanci, chairman of Akbank, tells Stephen Timewell of his optimism on recent sector reforms and the political and economic outlook for Turkey.

The Czech Republic’s distressed debt market is burgeoning. If insolvency law and other legal obstacles are addressed, banks could begin to extend new loans with confidence, says Robert Anderson.

Heavy losses in Poland and a fraud in Hungary have tarnished KBC’s central European crown but it plans to persevere in the region. Nicholas Spiro reports from Warsaw.

Indonesia is looking forward to growth this year, but this depends on whether the government can reduce corruption and achieve political and economic stability, writes Peter Janssen in Jakarta.