Earthquake in Japan: Fear of British casualties to rise

 

Concerns are being raised by number of Britishers for their fellows who might have been caught in the recent earthquake and Tsunami in Japan. The Foreign office had received around 800 calls from the worried people which take the total to around four thousand of missing people. Jeremy Browne stated that he is not sure whether UK victims are involved in this catastrophe, but there is certainty that there are number of foreign victims.

The rescue team from UK has also been sent and has started their operations in Ofunato in the eastern coast. Ofunato is located about 100 miles from the northern Sendai, one of the worst hit areas from Tsunami.

Although up till now there are no confirmed deaths of the British Nationals in Japan, but the number of people concerned about their loved ones raised the bar on Sunday to 4000 people. Many of the worried people contacted the Foreign office in Japan for enquiring about their fellows; however the death toll is still not confirmed by the officials.

Mr Browne the Foreign Office minister spoke to Sky news saying that he is not in a position to confirm the definite umber of British Nationals dead in this catastrophe. However he still claimed that since this disaster is a huge one there will be number of foreign nationals as victims. David Warren British ambassador to Japan also stated that there are number of British nationals unaccounted.

However when Mr Warren travelled to Sendai visited six hospitals and reported that there were no casualties of British nationals being reported up till now. He further added that situation might be going to evolve as this a report only two days after the Tsunami.

Majority of the British nationals living in Japan are in Tokyo or Osaka and according to officials there are about 17000 Britons in Japan. An additional staff of 45 British consulars is now on duty in Japan and there are teams working at Tokyo’s Haneda and Narita airports to help British nationals in Japan

 

BDO UK predicts that the rise in interest rate would affect UK exporters

The BDO of UK predicts that the rise in UK interest rates in the coming months would derail the economic recovery and the growth would remain sluggish during the next quarter throughout. The Bank of England has announced an inflation of 2% that will most likely affect in the interest rate and the rise in the rate would strengthen the pound and would reduce export competitiveness significantly.

The manufacturing sector of UK, had risen during February with the index reaching 95.5, but experts predict that the rise will mostly hit large UK manufacturers.

Peter Hemington, who is one of the of the representative at BDO predicts that the growth will remain fragile for the next two quarters and this attempt to raise the interest rate would push up sterling but will badly affect the manufacturing sector. He further emphasized that manufacturing sector should hold nerves and risk scuppering recovery prospects.