Norway’s Central Bank reserves totalled 74.77 billion crowns in March, against 70.56 billion in February and 98.55 billion in March 1986, the Central Bank said in its monthly balance sheet. Foreign exchange reserves totalled 67.05 billion crowns, compared with 67.21 billion in February and 92.08 billion crowns a year ago. Gold reserves totalled 284.7 mln crowns, unchanged from the previous month and last year’s figure. Central Bank special drawing right holdings were 3.

Representatives of the Group of Seven will meet in the Sardinian resort of Porto Cervo from April 30 to May 2 to discuss the agenda for the group’s Venice summit in June, sources close to the Italian Foreign Ministry said. The sources said the meeting would be informal and attended by the personal representatives of G-7 leaders. The sources did not comment on reports from Osaka that deputy finance ministers would attend the Porto Cervo meeting, and said there would be a complete information blackout on the gathering.

Consumer energy costs rose 1.0 pct in March following a moderate rise last month, the Labor Department said. The March increase in the overall energy costs, including petroleum, coal and natural gas, followed a 3.0 pct rise in January and a 1.9 pct rise in February, it said. However, energy prices were 5.6 pct below year-ago levels. The department’s Consumer Price Index showed that the cost of gasoline rose in March by 2.

The Swiss National Bank bought dollars and sold yen in concerted action along with the Bundesbank and the U.S. Federal Reserve Board, a bank spokesman told Reuters. “We intervened in dollar-yen with the Bundesbank and the Fed,” he said. He declined to specify the extent of the intervention, which took place at around 1200 GMT, after reports by Frankfurt dealers the Bundesbank was in the market. The intervention failed to prevent the dollar dipping to 1.

Helga Steeg, executive director of the International Energy Agency, said a U.S. oil import fee would disrupt world markets and could prompt trade retaliation against the United States. She told the U.S. chapter of the World Energy Conference she believed “an oil import fee would be difficult to operate, would generate unacceptable economic costs and that it would gravely hamper and distort international trade in energy.” Steeg also said it would violate the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) by imposing a discriminatory tariff, permitting retaliation by oil exporting countries.

An estimated 500 million people, or about 10 pct of the world’s population, are living in critical condition, starving, Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) director Edouard Saouma said. Saouma, in Brazil for talks with agriculture officials, said he invited President Jose Sarney to make the opening speech at the International Day of Food in Rome October 16. He also said he offered to send a technical mission to Brazil to help the government’s land reform campaign.

The Group of Seven industrialised countries will make use of next week’s International Monetary Fund meetings in Washington to evaluate the Paris accord on currency stabilisation, U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson told reporters. “On Tuesday I shall be going to Washington for meetings of the (IMF) Interim Committee and Development Committee, and we shall of course be having a meeting of the G-7,” Lawson said. “And on the G-7, although there is no formal agenda, I would imagine that the first thing we do would be to review how the Paris accord has gone since it was agreed in February.

President Jaime Lusinchi is preparing an economic package in response to demands from organised labour in Venezuela for a general wage increase and controls on inflation, the state news agency Venpres reported. Venpres said the plan includes pay hikes and a “strategy against indiscriminate increases in prices or speculation.” The Venezuelan Workers Confederation (CTV), the country’s largest labour group, last week proposed a general wage increase of between 10 and 30 pct and a six-month freeze on consumer prices and on layoffs.

There should be at least one merger between major European zinc smelters before the end of the decade, Christian Bue, Executive Vice President (commercial) of SMM Penarroya in France, said. Speaking on the second day of the Metal Bulletin base metals conference, Bue said he expected the current talks between five smelters including Penarroya to result in integration between at least some of the companies before 1990. The five companies, SMM Penarroya, Outokumpu Oy, Preussag Ag, Ste de la Vieille Montagne and Boliden Ore and Metals AB, have 22 pct of the world market, Bue added.

Japanese Finance Minister Kiichi Miyazawa told a parliamentary Upper House budget committee that he does not think the dollar is in a freefall. He said concerted intervention is only a supplementary measure to moderate volatility in exchange rates and repeated that policy coordination among major industrial nations is necessary. “We cannot expect currency stability only through coordinated market intervention,” he said. Miyazawa also told the committee the U.S. Has not called on Japan to cut its 2.