There is no such thing as a burglarproof home or apartment.

“An apartment house is a neighborhood,” says Detective Sergeant Gary Hoss  from Houston. “It just happens to be vertical.”

Getting to know your neighbor in an apartment complex is just as crucial to crime prevention as it is in a neighborhood of single-family dwellings.

There is safety in numbers - a well-organized tenant association, for example, is a good first line of defense against crime of any kind.

It is just as important in Apartments in Houston to obey the simple rules of common sense: Don’t assume, for instance, that a main entrance downstairs guarantees protection. Always install a dead-bolt lock on your apartment door and a peephole.

Here are other tips for the apartment dweller from crime prevention program:

Never allow strangers to enter without proper screening. Refer solicitors to the manager.

Do not “buzz” the door open to anyone you do not know, and watch that strangers don’t come into the secured building as you leave.

If you are a woman living alone, use initials instead of your full name on the identification slot in the lobby.

Don’t leave notes for delivery people or others on your door that advertise your absence.

Check the elevator when it arrives, and don’t get in if there is someone there that you are uncertain of or consider “suspicious.”

Women riding in an elevator alone should always stand near the control panel. If accosted, press all buttons.

If a suspicious person enters the elevator while you are on it, exit before the door closes.

Always survey the hallway when you leave the elevator.

Avoid using the apartment building’s laundry room by yourself. Team up with a neighbor.

Make sure the lock or the key cylinder has been changed when you move into a new apartment.

Lock all doors and accessible windows before you leave your apartment.

Use a timer for a lamp or radio to make your apartment appear occupied when you are out late or on vacation.

Notify the building manager if you leave on vacation or other extended stay away from home.

Always report suspicious sounds, strangers or odd behavior.

Q. My wife and I recently sold our business. The sale netted us a good sum for retirement but it put the two of us into taxable estates as we now have more than two times the credit against estate tax. Long ago we set up living trusts, so we have that in place, but we’re hunting for something else to help save on estate taxes. Do you think we should consider a separate trust for my life insurance? The policies are worth about $400,000.

A. You and your wife need to update all of your estate planning. Whenever a major financial change occurs in your life, such as the sale of your business, you need to get your plan out and review it with your estate planning attorney and your accountant. It’s best to do the review before a family business is sold, but better now than never.

I suggest you do at least three things to update your planning:

First, make sure that your current plan operates the way you and your wife want it to work. The plan needs to work from a tax perspective and the personal perspective.

For estate taxes, make sure that your living trust agreements provide the necessary language to make good use of the credit you each have against estate tax, called the “unified credit.” If your trusts are old, they may need to be revised for tax planning as well as changes in the law since the time you created the trusts.

From the personal perspective, you need to be sure the trusts provide for your family’s needs today.

Second, a special type of trust for your life insurance may be a good idea. You would transfer ownership of your policies to the trust, which would be irrevocable.

Then, as long as you live at least three years after the transfer of the policies, the death proceeds of your life insurance can be fully excluded from your taxable estate.

The proceeds can even be excluded from your wife’s taxable estate even though she can be the beneficiary of the trust for as long as she lives, if she survives you. But the trust must be properly prepared and administered, so be sure you work with Palm Desert estate planning company which is familiar with irrevocable insurance trusts.

Third, you and your wife may need to consider other estate taxplanning techniques. There are other methods for reducing estate taxes if your assets, after excluding your life insurance, are greater than the amount of unified credit the two of you have remaining.

One simple technique to consider is outright gifts to children and grandchildren. Or you may want to use trusts for gifts.

More complex planning with trusts or partnerships may help you make gifts at reduced gift tax costs.

Talk with your planners about the basic techniques as well as more sophisticated methods.

Until a few years ago, large institutions had few advantages in lending to small business. Loans were made to small commercial customers in more or less the same fashion as to large corporations: Each loan was considered unique, and there were few economies of scale. Borrowers had to supply detailed information about business plans, balance sheets, cash flow and profits. An underwriter painstakingly reviewed the data using procedures that were time-consuming and costly. And because the prospects of a small enterprise are so difficult to judge, conventional wisdom held that credit decisions couldn’t be made from far away. Only a local banker with knowledge of the area could accurately size up a borrower’s credit-worthiness.

Many large banks have had a history of on-again, off-again interest in small business. When opportunities in the corporate sector were scarce, managers would order the troops into the small-business market. But no one could figure out how to make a buck by lending small amounts to small business. It was like cars in the days before Henry Ford-no one could afford one because each was hand-made.

But computerized technology permits-in fact demands-mass production. As a result, a growing number of large banks and nonbank financial institutions have tossed out their old rule books and stopped treating small businesses like pint-sized versions of their corporate customers. Fundamentally, the small business customer is a retail customer.

In making credit decisions, major lenders have started to apply to small business the statistics-based methods long used to review consumer applications for credit cards and mortgages. With credit scoring, as the system is known, lenders no longer need to perform a detailed financial review of each borrower. Instead, they pinpoint a few key pieces of information that assess the statistical probability that a borrower will repay, such as a business owner’s record in paying off personal debts.

The applications are processed in loan factories in which assembly-line techniques are used to drive through large volumes. The new processes trim application processing time to as little as 15 minutes and lower the cost of making Nevada payday loans from thousands to hundreds of dollars. That makes it profitable for lenders to offer business credits in amounts as small as $5,000. It gives them the option of offering cut-rate prices to generate business. And it allows them to shrink applications to the size of a credit card form.

Credit-scoring technology has been used on consumer loans since the 1960s, but until this decade no one had collected the large volume of data on small business credit behavior needed to develop statistically reliable predictive models. It wasn’t until the early 1990s that vendors began making small business scoring systems commercially available.

Credit scoring, of course, is available to community banks as well as big regionals. But small institutions don’t have enough loans on their books to manage credits on a statistical, or portfolio, basis. A portfolio lender monitors delinquency rates rather than individual credits.

For this reason, there is a basic difference between the way big and small lenders use credit scoring. Large-scale lenders use it as a decision-making system, and applicants with sufficiently high scores generally get a loan. Community banks still use humans rather than computers to make credit judgments, but may use credit scoring to sort applicants, or as one of several factors taken into account in making decisions.

The European Commission’s Green Paper on auditing represents an important opportunity to enhance the role of the statutory auditor.

Stimulate Telecom Audit Services in Europe towards the highest quality and best standards in the world. European auditors have always pursued this aim of excellence, and will continue to do so in the future. FEE has affirmed this to the Commission on behalf of its 34 member institutes in 22 European countries; it has therefore welcomed the Commission’s initiative and will work with the Commission to help it succeed.

The Commission’s task is to complete the single market. It wants an efficient market, effective allocation of capital and European companies able to compete strongly in world trade. It sees transparent financial reporting and sound control by directors as powerful tools for this purpose. It sees that statutory audit provides pressure to use these tools well, so it wants the conduct and reporting of audits in Europe to converge and auditors to have the freedom to practise within Europe. The focus of the initiative is to remove barriers to the single market, leaving only restrictions that are needed to protect the public interest in audit. But, of course, convergence is not enough. The single market looks for the highest quality at a fair, competitive price. Quality must be maintained and enhanced. The mutuality of interest in quality between government, companies and auditors is clear.

The Commission therefore commissioned a study to identify barriers to auditing services in Europe. By doing so, it attracted submissions from others, including FEE. These inputs enabled the Commission to issue its Green Paper.

FEE has now submitted its response to the Commission. In doing so, it was speaking with the authority of the European accounting profession - it has worked with a core team from major institutes, supported by working parties of over 50 national representatives, for the last 18 months to bring together our profession’s view.

The team concludes that the public interest will be best served if the profession continues to manage its affairs within a general legal framework.

The law should require statutory audits, but leave the detail of how audits should be accomplished to the professionals. A remarkably high convergence of audit methodology, reporting and quality control has already been achieved.

Generally, national requirements reflect those in place elsewhere in Europe and the world. Going forward, adapting to rapidly changing business conditions and meeting the reasonable expectations of knowledgeable people requires flexibility exercised by a responsible profession accountable for its actions.

Two examples show how this has worked up until now. Twenty years ago, Europe’s auditors recognized that auditing and ethical standards agreed internationally were needed. Their representatives therefore took a large part in developing International Standards on Auditing. Since they helped to draft them, it was easy for FEE members to agree to apply these standards nationally. One of the Commission’s important concerns is for audit reports in each country to say and mean the same thing. This is covered by ISA 700 and progress in implementing it in Europe has gone a long way to meeting the concern. FEE believes that the course charted two decades ago continues to be the best route to today’s single market objectives.

Having standards is one thing. Enforcing them and demonstrating to the public that they are enforced is another. Corporate financial failures have focused the mind. Even if the causes of failure have nothing to do with the audit, the public is justified in wishing to know that audit safeguards are properly in place. Most European countries have therefore established quality control structures in recent years. The inter-relationship of the profession and public authority varies according to each country and its juridical background, but it remains the profession’s task to make the structures work and be seen to work. Giving confidence in quality control requires unceasing vigilance, and FEE’s members are considering how this might be raised to the Europe-wide level, with due regard to ’subsidiarity’.

These comments imply that the work of the Commission and of FEE and others so far has revealed few barriers and few impediments to the quality of audit likely to require legislation at the European level. FEE thinks this is so. European intervention may be needed to give group auditors access to information held abroad by affiliated entities, but this was the only clear example. Obviously, there is work to be done by both the legislator and the profession to achieve proper convergence at the national level. But this may best be achieved by encouragement. ‘Stimulate’ is the right word. By examining the auditor’s role and suggesting that legislative pressure could possibly follow, the Commission has succeeded in provoking reflection and action. We may hope that the action will be common action.

At the national level there is much to be done. The legislator has to define what each person engaged in business is required to do, and the reporting or other conditions under which he or she should do it. Legislation is needed mainly to clarify responsibilities and to undo inappropriate legislation in the past. From the auditors’ viewpoint, this relates mainly to putting them into a position where they can meet the public’s proper expectations, either by setting out the area of expectation - for example reporting on fraud or going concern - or by making progress on auditors’ exposure to liability.

This becomes more and more important as auditors’ new responsibilities move further from historic fact towards judgmental or future-based information.

Once the question of ‘what to do’ has been clarified by the legislator, the task of the profession - not the public authority - should be to decide ‘how to’ accomplish the task and demonstrate that it has been completed.

FEE sees the Commission’s audit initiative as an important opportunity to clarify and enhance the statutory auditor’s role. The public interest - that is to say the whole array of mutual interests involved in developing a single market in which everybody is an economic winner - makes the task immensely worthwhile. FEE and its members have every intention of working together to make the initiative a success. The shoulder is already to the wheel.

Despite numerous tools available to investors to assess company performance, few can tell them what they really want to know - whether their investment will grow in value.

And not many ratios reveal how much wealth a company is creating, or destroying.

But a model designed by New York.-based financial consulting firm Stern Stewart & Co. not only shows how much wealth a company has created for its shareholders, but gives management the tools they need to increase it.

And in this era of executive pay disclosure, it offers a benchmark for executive performance.

While increasing shareholder wealth is one of the first tenets of management, it all too often put on the back burner. And even when it is a company’s top priority, it can be difficult to measure.

“For years now, there has been a question of how to motivate management to make decisions that are truly effective, in that they use resources efficiently so that they satisfy customers, and in the end, enhance the wealth formula of shareholders,” says Bennett Stewart senior partner at Stern Stewart.

Market Value Added (MVA) measures the most basic principle of business management that any investment of a company’s capital in a new project, equipment, or employee should give investors a value that is at least equal to the cost of the investment. MVA measures that value and is explained by present value of a firm’s economic value added, or EVA.

EVA is after-tax operating profit minus the cost of capital.

Since EVA is a measure of ongoing and current value in a business, it is the measure that can be used to bring about change in the way an organization is run.

Based on figures from the Financial Post DataGroup, the accompanying tables rate 300 Canadian-based companies by the MVA and EVA yardstick. The figures are based on fiscal year-end 2005, with subsidiaries listed separately to avoid their being counted twice (once with the parent company and once alone). Financial institutions, utilities, rael estate companies, and financial management companies are excluded from the ranking because of the difficulty of comparing their operating income with that of non-financial companies.

Investors can use MVA to learn surprising, and sometimes disquieting, information about companies.

Transportation and environmental services, communications and media and consumer products all created more wealth than the overall MVA average, while oil and gas, industrial products, merchandising and paper and forest companies, although generating wealth and shareholder value, created less than average.

It should be noted that the paper and forest products industry is the only one of the 10 subindexes to show a positive average EVA.

The relationship between EVA and MVA is significant, since it can highlight discord between actual (shown in the EVA) and expected (shown in the MVA) performance.

Arriving at the total Market Value Added (MVA) figure for a company involves adding all of the capital the company has amassed over its life span, through equity and debt issues, bank loans, and retained earnings.

Further adjustments are made, specific to each company, that account for such things as capitalized research and development costs as an investment in future earnings that is then amortized over an appropriate period.

Subtract the current value of equity and debt from that adjusted capital figure. That is MVA.

The difference between total market value, or the amount readily available to investors (for instance, by selling their shares), and the amount they have invested over the years, is MVA.

A positive MVA number means wealth has been created, while a negative number means capital has been lost.

Economic Value Added (EVA) is after-tax net operating profit, minus the cost of capital for that period.

Not just the cost of debt, but the cost of equity capital as well.

Investors should know that, contrary to commonly held belief, equity capital can cost a great deal more than debt.

The accompanying tables do not capture all of those extraordinary items and may deviate from actual EVA values by 5%-30%.

In an effort to capitalize on the growing number of businesses launching web sites, America Online Inc. launched a best hosting service last week called PrimeHost.

The Dulles, Va., company claims the service will make it easier for small- and medium-sized businesses to start marketing through the web without spending thousands of dollars for a roomful of technicians, a web server to hold the site’s pages and a dedicated access line.

Although AOL is the first commercial online service provider to offer a cheap web hosting service - Microsoft Network, Prodigy and CompuServe do not have a similar web-based service - industry analysts and Internet service providers say AOL is getting into the business somewhat late, especially considering it acquired several web software firms a year ago.

“I would say AOL is catching the middle of the wave,” said Ly Finney, the director of web sales at UUNet Technologies Inc., an Internet service provider in Fairfax, Va., with $43 million in first- quarter revenues. Although UUNet offers a blog host service, Finney said a majority of the company’s revenues come from selling access to the Internet.

Despite the late entry into the web site hosting business, AOL is revered for making the online experience user-friendly to consumers. The company boasts more subscribers than any other commercial online service or access provider with 5 million U.S. subscribers and another million subscribers to its other services, which include Europe Online and Global Network Navigator.

If AOL can make designing a web site easy for a wide group of non-technical businesspeople, it would have a winning product.

“PrimeHost is for people who want a risk-free way to get on the Internet,” said Carly Ross, general manager of the PrimeHost service.

PrimeHost may provide a cheaper alternative to a heavy investment in web server technology. A recent study from Forrester Research, a market research company in Cambridge, Mass., showed that the price of a web hosting service goes up from there for security features, software and a fast Internet connection.

Ross said another advantage of AOL’s new service is its plan to rotate ad banners of its hosted sites in the PrimeHost section of the online service. That feature would give businesses which use the service exposure to the AOL audience.

“The beauty of the service is that we have an audience of 6 million people [worldwide],” Ross said.

AOL also provides web authoring tools to help people design a site. The tools were designed by Navisoft Inc., a software developer AOL acquired last year in its push toward web-based offerings. Although AOL will register a company’s site with Network Solutions Inc., the company in Herndon, Va., which handles web site registration, the company also promises to offer businesses a temporary site until a domain name is registered.

There’s no room in Ken and Marlene Banwart’s garage for a vehicle. It simply won’t fit among the preparation tables, cases of baking ingredients, walk in freezer and crew of busy workers.

The Banwarts’ garage has become the manufacturing facility for Country Maid Frozen Butter Braid bread.

The rural West Bend couple has been producing the bread, which can be purchased plain or with fruit fillings, on a full-scale basis for less than a year. But Country Maid is already a familiar name in north central Iowa.

The frozen bread dough, which is available locally at B & F, Fareway and Randall Foods, is a regular item at 35 area grocery stores. It has also been used as a fund raising item by Eagle Grove and Humboldt high schools, two church organizations, a 4-H group and a drill team.

In fact, fund-raisers proved the most successful way to introduce the bread to a new area, Ken said.

“If we do a fund-raiser in an area, then put it in a store, it really takes off,” he said.

The Banwarts are less surprised with the success of the product than with the speed with which it has caught on. They already knew people liked their bread when they decided to go into production.

The family used to take produce to farmers’ markets and when vegetable sales slowed down, Marlene would supplement by baking cookies or pies.

A friend who made butter braid dough showed Marlene how to make it.

“So I took it the whole next year to the farmers market…and it was just the thing that sold the best,” she said.

Ken, who worked as a commissioned salesman for Dick’s Office Equipment in West Bend, also tested the market.

“When I was selling for Dick’s, I would take some of this bread, the baked bread, to the secretaries (at client companies), and I got such a good response. I sold quite a bit that way,” he said.

“I kept thinking that we should maybe be doing something with this just because of the response we had,” Marlene said.

In May 1991, the Banwarts decided to seriously pursue the doughmaking business.

“We didn’t think it would take off this fast,” Marlene said.

What’s the secret to successfully selling a rich, buttery- tasting bread in today’s health-conscious climate?

“There’s no butter in it, we put that in our advertising and on our label. It’s margarine,” Marlene said. “I think it’s just something so different. It has a different texture.”

“People like things fresh,” Ken said. “You can buy it frozen, bake it and have it fresh. And it’s countrymade, home-made. I think people like that.”

The bread’s popularity enabled the Banwarts to purchase a walk in freezer recently, which in turn, allowed them to move production out of their basement and into the garage.

It also allowed Ken to quit his job at Dick’s in January and begin working full-time marketing and delivering the bread and doing Country Maid bookwork.

“In deciding how to market it, I had no idea of going into the stores,” he said. “I thought that would be the last place to market it. I thought maybe the specialty shops or something like those. Then we tried a store, and it just took off.”

In fact, Fareway carries the bread in 10 of its stores.

Ken’s territory currently ranges from Spirit Lake and Storm Lake to Fort Dodge and Webster City.

“I’m going to start going to Algona shortly. My wife told me about a month ago or so, Don’t put it in any more stores. We can’t keep up,’” he said.

“Well, we couldn’t,” Marlene said. “We have a nice, big freezer now, and that makes a difference.”

“Before we had the big freezer, it took so long for it to freeze that we had to do all our bagging at night,” Ken said.

That meant shifts of workers were sometimes at the Banwarts’ home from 7:30 a.m. until 10:30 p.m. Bagging is now completed during the day.

The Banwarts have been increasing production since they added the walk-in freezer March 9. They are currently making 1,600 loaves a week, up from the 1,400 loaves that were possible in the basement.

“Hopefully, we can do at least 2,500 a week out there,” Ken said.

“We’re just taking it a step at a time, ironing out all the kinks,” Marlene said.

The Banwarts employ 14 workers, all of whom work part time.

“They work whenever they want to, about five people a day, five days a week,” Ken said.

There are also six other members of the Banwart family who pitch in: Rick, 16, Kendra, 14, LaRae, 12, Twila, 10, Wes, 8 and Trent, 5.

Their parents expect that the kids will make summer jobs out of working for them, and in addition, expect to hire some other high school and college students.

Country Maid may grow larger, but it will probably continue to remain located at the Banwart home.

“We had looked in town, and there really didn’t seem to be a spot,” Marlene said.

Plus, she said, she enjoys being home when the children are home.

“I do feel that I’m here if they need me. I might be out there, but they can find me,” Marlene said.

“And the overhead is so much less out here,” Ken said. “Who knows? I envision our next step would be to add on here. But maybe some building will open up that will look better.”

Marlene said another advantage to keeping their business at home is that Ken spends more time at home.

“We work well together,” he said.

So far, all the Banwarts’ efforts have been self-financed.

“For our next step, there might be some financing available,” Ken said. “But what we’ve made, we’ve put back in the business, and we haven’t had to borrow yet.”

They have, however, received free advice from Director Clark Marshall and the Small Business Development Center in Spencer.

“They really helped us get going on this,” Ken said.

In an era of high medical costs, it pays to watch how you spend your healthcare dollars. The average family spends $2,321 annually for medical care, either for insurance premiums or out-of-pocket expenses.

According to Families USA Foundation, a nonprofit Washington consumer group, healthcare experts say most families can shave their annual expenses if they are smart medical consumers.

“Don’t wait for anyone else to help you cut your healthcare costs - not doctors, not hospitals, not the government,” said Matthew Lesko, author of “What To Do When You Can’t Afford Health Care,” a book that lists national and state resources providing free treatment and research on illnesses. “The typical experts can’t keep up with what’s out there. So, the individual has to take responsibility for their own health and medical costs.”

For most families, a good starting point is to study the health insurance they plan to buy or have bought. For example, when patients consider participating in a managed care plan - such as a Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) - they should call local hospitals’ billing divisions to find out how quickly the insurer settles claims. Why? If an HMO tends to drag its feet, the patient may end up paying bills out-of-pocket. The information also gives the patient an idea of whether the company consistently contests claims.

If you have joined an insurance plan, learn what procedures you must go through to guarantee coverage. And then, play by the rules. If you don’t, your claim may get lost in red tape and bureaucracy. For example, many managed care plans require patients to get prior approval from their doctor before going to the emergency room unless it’s a life-threatening situation. Not getting that approval may leave you stuck with the bill.

If you plan to pay cash, ask for a discount. If possible, make the medical professionals tell you up front what the cost will be. “Ask for the price ahead of time,” said Lesko. “It’s important because it allows you to plan and budget, especially if you carry a high deductible on your insurance.”

Don’t pay for your medical services too quickly. Wait until all insurance claims have been filed and resolved before putting any money toward a bill. Often, statements - not bills - go out to consumers to notify them of the progress.

If an insurer refuses to pay a claim, appeal the decision. In about half of contested cases, insurers will rescind their original rulings. That means consumers end up paying less. Patients should also ask for an itemized bill for services if they suspect the cost is too high. The bill will be very difficult to read because of the medical coding and lingo, but patients can review the bill with hospital administrators.

For people without health insurance or those paying high out-of-pocket expenses, take advantage of the numerous programs and efforts sponsored by medical societies, charitable groups and local hospitals. If you’re uninsured, many hospitals offer free mammograms and prostate cancer screenings. Nationally, public health departments offer free or reduced childhood immunizations.

Do your homework. If you’re sick, you need to study your illness, including medication and treatment options. The best way to reduce medical costs is to take care of yourself, avoiding health risks such as smoking, obesity, poor diet and stress. If you take responsibility for your lifestyle, you’ll cut your costs in the long run.

Companies no longer should consider hiring it management consultants an option - consultants have now become a necessity. To reflect that every other major corporation in North America and Europe is currently using consultants at the corporate level implies something akin to a necessary condition, that the advice and counsel from consultants have become essentials, not luxuries.

Consultants generally eschew loud checked suits and a flamboyant manner for pinstripes. But their qualifications and expertise may be insubstantial and the damage they inflict can exceed a dent in the self-confidence of the gullible.

To help distinguish between hype and competence, the Institute of Certified Management Consultants of Canada has established a stringent code of conduct for its members aimed at protecting the public in general and the clients of management consultancies in particular.

Management consultants are hired for a variety of reasons, but most often it’s to provide an outsider’s objectivity, high-level skills that will allow client organizations to concentrate on day-to-day operations, a breadth of relevant experience, and expertise in a specific area that might be needed for only a short period.

The first step for a company in selecting a management consultant is to identify the problem, issue or opportunity, and decide what needs to be accomplished. An informed client will define the problem clearly, make a commitment for change, establish timing preferences and identify budgetary constraints.

Next, but no less important, is identifying consulting firms or individuals competent to deal with the problems. This can be done through business associates’ recommendations, directories published by boards of trade or chambers of commerce, or the institute’s annual list of recognized consultants.

Skill and competence, relevant industry experience and availability should be major considerations in selecting a consultant. If additional information is required, short-listed candidates should be invited to submit their credentials for review, or provide promotional brochures describing practice areas and professional competence.

In those instances where more than one consulting firm appears suitable, it might be appropriate to ask each to submit managed services best practices. These are generally prepared without cost or obligation to the client, but because of the time and effort involved, clients should be prepared to meet with consultants who comply with such requests.

In evaluating proposals, a number of considerations must be taken into account:

- Approach. Do the approach and methodology demonstrate an understanding of the situation?

- Experience. Does the experience of the individual who will perform the work match the requirements of the task?

- Transfer of skills. Where appropriate, is there an effective plan to transfer special skills to the client’s staff?

- Compatibility. Will the consultant’s style and manner work well within the organization? Will management be comfortable working with the consultant?

- Value/price. Since the consultant is offering both ideas and expertise, the value provided must be weighed, not just the price.

Chinese telecommunications operators are charging more for domestic calls beginning this month, but they cut the rates for international calls.

They hope to improve communications between China and the rest of the world.

In addition to raising domestic phone charges, the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications (MPT) has hiked domestic mail prices about 150%.

The rate hikes apparently aren’t high enough to elicit public complaints.

Li Yahui, a public telephone booth owner in Beijing, said her clients responded “in silent compliance, as if they are used to such changes.” The MPT and State Planning Commission (SPC), announced the increases in a circular. It says citywide calls should increase 20% from the present level. Postage will jump to 0.5 yuan ($0.06) for the domestic mail of letters.

The MPT and SPC say the increases are in line with a series of government measures keeping the country’s inflation at bay.

In April, the year-on-year retail price growth was 4.7%, and consumer prices, which include service rates, registered a 7% growth, according to the State Statistics Bureau.

“Price changes are so important that they are expected to prevent the MPT’s 500,000-member staff and phone companies from continuously losing billions of yuan annually,” MPT officials said.

Additionally, the MPT cut the international phone rates by 30%. Previously, the cost of a call from Beijing to the United States was 26.25 yuan ($3.16) per minute. It’s now 18.37 yuan ($2.21).

International phone rates have been high since the founding of New China, but they jumped 50% in 1994 because of changes in the country’s exchange rates against US dollars and other foreign currency.

In recent years, the high rates resulted in a marked drop in overseas calls from China. In contrast, international calls to China have increased because of comparatively lower costs in foreign countries.

The MPT said the decrease eventually would increase its revenue because more people would be making international calls from China.

Long Distance Phone Rates will not change, while local calls made in rural areas will drop, the MPT said.

Until late May, calls from rural areas were considered longdistance. Person-to-person calls in rural regions had to be linked through urban telephone exchange facilities.

Because China has developed its telephone networks, the MPT said it could recoup those costs from other sectors.

Meanwhile, installation costs for new urban subscribers decreased.