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The minimum wage in South China's industrial heartland Guangdong Province, is to be raised by 21 per cent on average to a range from RMB 660 renminbi to 1,030 ($96 to $ 150) a month from May 1st in a bid to attract migrant workers, local authorities said Thursday.

Guangdong, north of Hong Kong, in the Pearl River delta region, which is responsible for a third of China's exports and would rank as one of the world's 10 largest exporters if it were a country, is finding it harder to attract migrant labour as other regions develop. So on Thursday, it was announced by the Guangdong Provincial Human Resources and Social Security Department that the minimum wage of both full-time and part-time workers will be raised.

The adjusted minimum wage is divided into five categories ranging from RMB660 to 1,030 yuan/renminbi ($96 to $ 150) a month, depending on the financial situation in different cities in the province. The move came a month after the country's second biggest exporter, Jiangsu Province, raised its minimum wage by about 12 per cent to 960 yuan ($140.64) from the current 850 yuan ($124). East China's Fujian Province increased its minimum wage by 24.5 per cent from March 1st.

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The government targets to create 4,000 women entrepreneurs among the hardcore poor, who are those with a household monthly income of less than RM440, by 2012.

Women, Family and Community Development Minister Datuk Seri Shahrizat Abdul Jalil said this was one of the measures taken to move 44,643 people out of hardcore poverty.

She said to date, 1,400 names had been identified for the entrepreneurial programme carried out with the cooperation of 18 ministries and government agencies, including Tekun Nasional, Amanah Ikhtiar Malaysia (AIM) and Small and Medium Enterprise Corporation Malaysia (SME Corp. Malaysia).

"They will be given assistance in the form of capital and training, and the fields they will venture into include catering and cottage industries like making handicraft," she said after the Avon Awards function, here, on Wednesday.

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Rural banks do the nation a great service that people in the cities seldom give a thought to. They serve a market segment big banks don't want to be bothered with. The money of the farmers, rural businesses and agricultural and fishery entrepreneurs that make up that market segment is too small-and therefore too expensive-for the large commercial banks to attend to.

Individually, rural businesses, farmers, piggery and poultry owners, and retail and service establishments in the countryside make smaller deposits and borrow smaller amounts than the commercial and universal banks' urban-based clients. The paper work, contact hours and account supervision that the farmer client and his transactions worth only a few thousand pesos require are about the same as those required for an urban client's multimillion-peso transactions.

Also, commercial banks are turned off by the risks they see in micro, small and medium enterprises' (MSMEs) so the loan applications by owners and managers of these businesses are most often turned down-especially if they have no collateral to back up the loan they seek.

A commercial bank branch in a really rural area often ends up catering only to the largest businesses and the wealthiest people. It is the rural bankers who serve-see, visit, talk to and deal with-the normal and ordinary rural residents and the micro, small and medium enterprises of the community to which they all belong.

Doing what they do, the rural banks have helped much to reduce poverty in the countryside. And they have made it possible for farmers and agri-entrepreneurs to enjoy the use of modern things-like ATM cards.

There are more than 2,000 rural banks in the countryside. They service clients with loans as small as P2,000-which an entrepreneur needs to start up his micro-enterprise. Most rural bank clients are people who would otherwise have borrowed the funds they need from the usurious 5/6 lender.

Rural banks have served millions of small entrepreneurs all over the country-even in conflict-ridden areas.
With the rural bankers' help hundreds of thousands of micro-enterprise businessmen have been able to enlarge their businesses, employing more than their original crew of relatives.

Rural banks account for only about 3 percent of total Philippine bank deposits. Outside Metro Manila, however, rural banks account for 8 percent of the total deposits. In some provinces and regions, rural banks' share of deposits sometimes exceeds 20 percent.

Rural banks in 2008 had a loan portfolio of P8 billion for the micro-enterprise sector. In 2009, they released some P2.7 billion every month to micro entrepreneurs for their use as working capital. This represents more than 30 percent of the total number of micro entrepreneurs served nationwide and also accounts for 50 percent of the value of total loans to this micro-entrepreneurial sector.

Rural banks can do a lot more good if more capital were invested in them. But few of the banking industry's giants are putting some of their money in rural banking because of the low yields and what they see as the big risks.

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The village of Tmatboey in the northern plains of Cambodia seemed to have little going for it. It lacked clean water; there were no real roads. The people toiled mostly at subsistence farming, barely scraping by.

The villagers didn't realize they had a valuable asset -- hiding in plain sight, so to speak: a tourist attraction that a niche group of international travelers would happily pay to see, even if it meant a stay in basic accommodations.

And now they're making money for Tmatboey. In 2004, the Wildlife Conservation Society, which credits itself with having saved the American bison a century ago, set up the Tmatboey Ibis Ecotourism Project to lure bird-watchers. During the most recent peak season, November 2008 to May 2009, providing services to bird-watching visitors brought in more than $12,000 all told, a fortune by local standards. About 30% went into a community fund for improving basics like education and plumbing; today, life in Tmatboey has been significantly improved by new wells, water pumps, roads and a new school.It's a bird. Actually, two: the long-legged giant ibis and the white-shouldered ibis, both among the rarest in the world. In the eyes of hard-core bird-watchers, they carry near-mythical status.

In villages in many parts of Asia, nonprofit groups from around the world are putting into practice that time-worn proverb: Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, but teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Rather than donating clothes or books, handing out mosquito nets or building schools, they're bringing money-making enterprises to rural Asian communities. Some involve training in activities such as sewing and bamboo craft; many are tourist-related.

Among environmental groups, there has been a shift in the past decade or so toward "a more integrated view of conservation and development," says Graham Bullock, a former ecotourism coordinator for the Nature Conservancy's China program. For instance, says Tom Clements, a technical adviser to the Wildlife Conservation Society's Cambodia program, the Tmatboey project works "by empowering local people to manage their own tourism enterprise, in a way that explicitly links revenue received to conservation outcomes."

The goals of each organization vary, of course, as do the circumstances of each village. "One size definitely does not fit all," says Mr. Bullock. But more organizations now seek "the participation and empowerment of local communities," he adds.

Below, a pair of projects aimed at helping villages help themselves

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SINGAPORE (AP) - Christopher Ng has a dream: Help alleviate a major global health problem by bringing toilets to the world's poor — at a tidy profit.

Ng, managing director at Singapore-based Rigel Technology, hopes to sell his state-of-the-art portable, fertilizer-making, toilets for as low as $30 beginning next year, tapping into a multibillion dollar market for proper sanitation in developing countries.

It is among the exhibits at the annual World Toilet Summit in Singapore, which brings together industry players to generate awareness of the world's sanitation problems.

Experts estimate about 2.5 billion people lack functioning, hygienic toilets and instead excrete in the open, a habit that can contaminate water supplies and spread diseases such as E. coli bacteria and other viruses.

Ng said his company's toilets separate liquid and solid waste, a feature that should reduce unpleasant smells and create fertilizer.

"A farmer could sell this recycled fertilizer," Ng said while pulling out a compartment on the bottom of a prototype. "It's good to sell something that's useful and make a minimum profit."

Jack Sim, who founded in 2001 the nonprofit World Toilet Organization, one of the organizers of the three-day conference, estimated the market for sanitation in developing countries is worth $1 trillion.

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In the countryside of Shanxi Province in north-central China, farmer Xie Xin has struggled for years with water shortages. The 47-year-old, who grows tomatoes and cucumbers, had to pay dearly to use the local well, since the region receives an average of only 16.5 inches of rainfall annually. But this year, Xie started participating in an experiment in which farmers use new irrigation equipment to conserve water. The equipment, similar to a garden hose with small holes every foot or so, is expected to cut his water use by more than half. Through a translator, Xie says he'll save money and boost production by reducing water-related diseases.

The gear Xie uses comes from a startup in Palo Alto, Calif., called Driptech. Although similar kinds of irrigation systems have been used for decades, Driptech is winning business in places such as rural China because its technology is designed specifically for small farms and costs much less than traditional systems. The company's equipment runs $300 for a one-acre farm, instead of the usual thousands, and as little as $5 for smaller family plots. "There are literally hundreds of millions of small-plot farmers suffering from seasonal water scarcity," says Peter Frykman, Driptech's 26-year-old founder. "We're focused on reaching our first million farms as fast as possible."

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The Vietnam Challenge Fund (VCF), a new financial instrument to support new business projects that directly benefit the poor was launched Tuesday in Hanoi.

With an initial budget of US$3 million for 2009-2011, the fund is a major component of the "Making Markets Work Better for the Poor Phase 2" initiative.

It is backed by the Ministry of Planning and Investment, the U.K.'s Department for International Development (DFID) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB), The Saigon Times Daily reported.

VCF is designed to challenge the private sector in Vietnam to propose innovative new business models that benefit the poor, according to ADB.

It will initially focus on agro-processing linkages with the poor, but will expand to other areas such as infrastructure services, if the initial implementation experience is positive.

The fund will consider projects within a funding range of $30,000 to $250,000 and the grant can account for 49 percent of total investment capital.

"Challenge fund first originated in the U.K. but has since been implemented by DFID and others across a number of regions worldwide and has proven to be an efficient development tool," DFID head Fiona Lappin said.

"In Vietnam, VCF will help absorb some of the business risks associated with innovative projects that aim to increase employment and income for the poor," she said.

"In emerging countries, such as Vietnam, markets particularly in rural areas often do not function efficiently or fairly, limiting the opportunities for the poor to participate in and benefit from the growth process," Ayumi Konishi, ADB country director for Vietnam, said.

The new approach will help the poor access the market and benefit from it, rather than provide them with direct public support, he added.

Nguyen The Phuong, deputy minister of Planning and Investment, said the ministry was working with ADB and DFID to fulfill its goals of private sector development and poverty alleviation.

It is estimated about 12 million out of the country's total population of 86 million are living in poverty. About 90 percent of them are residents in rural areas.

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Not long ago, Tsoi Chun Bun made potato chips. Now he designs and sells millions of mobile phones a year.

He is one of hundreds of young entrepreneurs seeking overnight fortunes in Shenzhen Inc. — the Wild West of the mobile-phone industry. Phones made and designed by these Chinese vendors will account for about a third of the 1.1 billion cell phones that will be sold around the world this year....

...For now, they are happy to focus on the next billion mobile phone consumers — the world's urban poor and rural residents who often are out of the reach of giant international brands. Those lowly markets, though, are expected to represent 60 percent of global mobile-phone sales by 2013, according to researcher Informa Telecoms & Media...

These vendors are more narrowly focused on individual markets — selling a line in China and, say, Indonesia — and are able to create and implement new features, such as twin SIM card slots so a phone can have two numbers or mobile TV, much faster than companies whose sales span the globe.

These guerrilla mobile-device makers typically churn out a new mobile phone with new features designed with local markets in mind in less than four months, versus nine months for the large global players, said Mingto Yu, chief financial officer of MediaTek. "It's impossible for a global company based in the United States or Europe to do this," he said. "You need that local touch."

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Bill Radke: The Internet address goes global. The company that acts as the world's clearinghouse for Internet domains is a California-based non-profit called ICANN. Reporter Kurt Achin says ICANN is about to help the Web speak the local language around the world.

Kurt Achin: Up until now, Internet users have had to type out web page URLs using the Roman alphabet.

But on Friday, ICANN's board -- meeting here in Seoul -- is expected to change all that, when it votes to introduce what's called "Internationalized Domain Names." Within a year or two, Web users will be able to type out their favorite Web addresses using Chinese characters, Korean hangeul, Arabic script, and so on.

Rebecca MACKINNON: The Internet is no longer dominated by English speakers anymore.

Rebecca Mackinnon is a Hong Kong University professor specializing in Internet governance. She says about one and a half billion people now use the Internet. Most are university graduates who are comfortable with the Roman alphabet. But the world's next online generation looks a little different.

MACKINNON: Really the next billion Internet users are increasingly going to be peasant farmers in far western China, who maybe didn't graduate from grade school.

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An important segment that marketers cannot ignore in Asia is the bottom of the pyramid and those Asian consumers living in rural areas. The challenges, marketers face in trying to address these consumers are high and risky due to the fragmented nature of the rural market and the low margins of this trade. There is no denying though that rural consumers want to access brands, if only because they are a promise of quality. For Asian marketers interested in tapping the huge rural markets in Asia, there are important issues to consider.

First, rural consumers have less purchasing power. In China, the income gap between urban and rural residents, which is around five to one, greatly restricts rural people’s consumption of products. There is also a significant difference in the way wages are earned, with a majority of the working population in rural markets being paid daily instead of weekly or monthly wages. This means that consumers in rural markets will generally spend their daily wage on necessities such as food, and have little left to spend on items for personal care and other relatively luxurious items.

This has driven companies like Unilever to sell sachets in rural China and India, instead of the normal sizes of detergent and shampoo. One-third of India’s shampoo sales come from sachets in rural districts, with Unilever, the British-Dutch company accounting for 70% of those sales of sachets. The company is increasingly relying on Asian rural markets to drive its sustained growth. Hindustan Lever, Unilever’s Indian subsidiary, is now a major force in the Unilever network of subsidiaries with many strategies emerging from India.

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