The U.S. Agriculture Department has narrowed by three cents the price differential between the Louisiana Gulf price of corn and posted country prices pegged to the gulf price, USDA officials said. The change, effective April 27, means posted county prices will be three cents higher in the region, Robert Sindt, assistant deputy administrator of USDA’s Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service, said. Trade sources said USDA adjusted the differentials because gulf prices had shown some weakness in recent days compared with the rest of the country.

Treasury Secretary James Baker is urging Congress to pass legislation promptly to raise the ceiling on U.S. debt the United States can borrow, Senate majority leader Robert Byrd said. Byrd told reporters Baker visited him late Friday to urge Congress not to add time-delaying amendments to the debt ceiling bill that Congress must pass before May 15. Byrd, a Democrat, said he agrees but said others may want amendments. The current ceiling of 2.

U.S. housing starts fell 2.7 pct in May to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,620,000 units, the Commerce Department said. In April, housing starts fell a revised 3.8 pct to 1,665,000 units. The department previously said they fell 2.9 pct. The rate at which permits were issued for future construction fell in May by 7.6 pct to a seasonally adjusted 1,477,000 units after falling 7.0 pct to 1,598,000 units in April.

The U.S. Agriculture Department is seeking comments on common provisions of the 1988 wheat, feedgrains, cotton and rice programs. It said many program provisions are common to all the commodity programs and decisions made in regard to one will likely apply to other program crops. It asked for specific comments on the percentage reduction for acreage limitation requirements under the wheat program, the loan and purchase level, and whether a marketing loan, the inventory reduction program and related provisions should be implemented.

The Swiss National Bank sold yen against dollars, joining in concerted intervention by central banks, a spokesman for the National Bank said. He declined to say which central banks had been active in the market, but earlier today Tokyo dealers said the Bank of Japan had intervened at 142.10 yen to the dollar, and market sources here said they believed the Bundesbank was in the market as well. The National Bank spokesman declined to specify the volume of its dollar purchases or the rate paid.

Civil strife in Sri Lanka will make the economy’s growth rate in 1987 its slowest in a decade, Sri Lankan finance minister Ronnie de Mel said here. He told Reuters in an interview that he expected gross domestic product to expand by only four pct in 1987. He said it averaged five pct over the past three years. For the first two years after the present troubles began in 1983, production of key commodities like tea, rubber, coconuts and rice kept up, he said.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) will not change its decision to admit China as a member despite protests from founder member Taiwan, bank president Masao Fujioka said. China’s admission in March 1986 and the decision of the bank to change Taiwan’s name to ‘Taipei, China’ caused a Taiwanese boycott of the ADB’s last annual meeting in Manila. Fujioka told Reuters in an interview that Taiwan had been invited to the bank’s 20th annual meeting starting April 27 in Osaka, “but the situation remains the same.

Organisation of African Unity Chairman Denis Sassou-Nguesso said Africa was unable to pay its debts due to falling export prices. “Even if African countries want to pay their debts they will not be able to,” Congolese president Sassou-Nguesso told a news conference at a meeting between foreign and African experts on the continent’s economic prospects. “You cannot be expected to do the impossible. All our commodity exports, without exception and even oil, have fallen in value on international markets,” he added.

South Africa’s trade surplus fell sharply to 940.8 mln rand in March after rising to 1.62 billion in February, Customs and Excise figures show. In February last year the surplus stood at 752.8 mln rand. Exports fell to 3.24 mln rand in March from 3.36 billion in February while imports rose to 2.30 billion rand from 1.74 billion. This brought total exports for the first quarter of this year to 9.

The Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, ruled that an Indiana law aimed at protecting companies from hostile takeovers by out-of-state businesses is constitutional. The high court justices reversed a ruling by a U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago that struck down the 1986 control-share acquisition law. The case involved a hostile takeover bid by Dynamics Corp of America against CTS Corp, based in Elkhart, Ind. Dynamics made a tender offer in 1985 for one million shares to bring its holdings of CTS stock to 27.