Asia's business week

Violence in Indonesia is pushing the rupiah to its lowest level since 1998

By the BBC's Neil Heathcote from Singapore

In these days of economic slowdown, good news on the economy can be hard to come by.

Indonesia certainly got the week off to a bad start - the communal violence in Kalimantan and fears that the country might simply disintegrate helped push the rupiah to its lowest level since1998.

It dropped 2% on Monday alone.

Thailand's new prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra brought out his plans to revitalise the Thai economy.

A debt moratorium for farmers, a "People's Bank" to provide micro-credits, a million baht for every village, cheaper healthcare - all popular stuff, without a doubt.

But the financial community was not entirely convinced.

It wants to see how the national Asset Management Corporation will work - and in particular, how much it'll end up paying to sort out the bad loans that are currently threatening many of the country's banks.

Nor was it an auspicious start to the week in India.

Privatisation plans of Bharat Aluminium are hotly disputed in India

Its privatisation programme ran into further problems over the sale of a 51% stake in Bharat Aluminium, the first major state-owned company to be privatised.

Opposition MPs complained that the company was undervalued, and the deal had to be put off until the government agreed to discuss the issue with MPs.

But that deadlock didn't last long.

On Thursday the government won the vote in the lower house to go ahead with the sale.

And that came after Wednesday's budget - widely hailed by the business community as putting economic policy firmly back on track.

The Bombay Stock Exchange's key index, the Sensex, jumped 4.4% as finance minister Yashwant Sinha announced a string of measures - including cutting corporate and income taxes, trimming interest rates.

Yashwant Sinha, Indian Finance minister: "This is a budget for a new beginning for the people of India."

He also gave tax breaks to knowledge-based industries, reversed last year's unpopular doubling of dividend tax and promised to complete the sale of 27 state industries next year.

Reforms making it easier for companies to shed jobs drew an angry response from the opposition - but many in the industry gave the budget a 'perfect 10'.

Elsewhere in Asia, governments continued to fret about the effects of a slowdown in the US.

In particular Japan.

The Bank of Japan surprised economists by trimming interest rates on Wednesday. But they were already low, and the Bank has precious little wiggle-room in its efforts to kick start the economy.

The Nikkei dropped to a 15 year low, and then fell further when fresh data came out on Friday, showing the economy deteriorating even faster than expected.

Unemployment hit a new record high of 4.9%, consumers showed little sign of spending, prices carried on falling.

Tune in next week for yet another emergency package from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party to boost the economy.

None of them have worked so far - but at least it's an area in which the LDP has had plenty of practice.