Bangkok / AFP Communist-ruled Laos must deepen reforms to maintain its rapid expansion, the IMF chief, Christine Lagarde said on Tuesday at the end of a rare visit to one of the world’s fastest growing economies. Resource-rich Laos has an annual growth rate of around 7.4 percent, but gains have not been evenly distributed and poverty remains widespread among its ...

New Delhi / Bloomberg India may shut two of its oldest reactors almost five decades after they went into operation as power tariffs aren’t keeping pace with maintenance costs, according to Sekhar Basu, secretary at the Department of Atomic Energy. The first two reactors at Tarapur, about 100 kilometers from Mumbai at India’s western coast, suffer frequent maintenance shutdowns that ...

Beijing / Bloomberg China plans to set up a commercial rocket-launch company in view of the market’s potential, the official Xinhua news agency reported. China Sanjiang Space Group Co. is preparing to enter the commercial-rocket business with a launch slated for 2017, Xinhua reported Tuesday, citing the company’s chief engineer Hu Shengyun. Some Internet companies have expressed interest in collaborating ...