Principal news stories from the Irish Independent, Irish Times, Irish Examiner, Financial Times and New York Times.

Asia is leading the global recovery and the region’s contribution to global growth will continue to exceed that of other regions in the next two years, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said Thursday in its latest Regional Economic Outlook (REO) for Asia and the Pacific. The IMF revised upward its growth forecast for Asia to 7.1 per cent for 2010, 1¼ percentage points higher than projected in October 2009, and expects that growth to maintain the same pace in 2011.

Reducing high public debt will restrain growth for years in the advanced economies and on Wednesday this week, Jürgen Stark, member of the Executive Board of the ECB, said the current trend in fiscal policies is simply not sustainable. He says with an annual structural deficit reduction of only 0.5% of GDP (gross domestic product), it will take the Eurozone 20 years or more to return to the pre-crisis level of debt-to-GDP.

The Bank of Japan today said the economy is on a recovery trend but it will examine “ways to support private financial institutions in terms of fund provisioning with a view to strengthening the foundations for economic growth.” The bank kept the benchmark interest rate at at 0.1%. Deflation persists but other data was positive including strong growth in in manufacturing.

The Greek government has agreed the draft outline of a €24bn three-year fiscal rescue plan, which includes cuts in public sector pay and welfare benefits; tax hikes and disposal of state assets.

I’m back in sunny Expo Shanghai for a second extended visit after a year to look at foreign R&D investment. Those who are familiar with the sector will know that the atmosphere for inward FDI (foreign direct investment) investment in China has changed a little of late, but one can never be sure about what really is going on, and that is particularly true for somebody like myself with a significant language, if not a wider cultural barrier.

The West Village’s main commercial thoroughfare is about to get drenched by another wave of retail gentrification.

The National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) today announced details of the Irish National Solidarity Bond. The bond, designed with individual savers in mind, will pay a 50% gross return over 10 years and will be available for purchase in all Post Offices from Tuesday next, 4th May.

The European Commissioner for Economic and Monetary affairs, Olli Rehn, said today that as the European Commission is responsible for the EU to negotiate the joint EU-IMF programme with Greece, he has been in a daily contact with and just spoke again with the mission in Athens, whose team has been working day and night to complete their job. The talks will be concluded in coming days. The European Union described as “speculation” a German newspaper report that the EU aid package for Greece could total as much as €90bn over 3 years.

The Central Statistics Office said today that the amount of money spent by Irish people on foreign travel dropped by almost 20% in 2009. Irish people made just under 7.3 million trips abroad last year, down 9.3% from 2008. The amount of money spent on these trips was down 19.5% to just under €5.8bn.