A senior international economic official estimated the Thai share of the consumer market at 80 to 90 percent.

He won the attention of international economic officials for his work in starting the current global trade talks shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Senior economic officials have been told to be on hand for consultations at any moment.

How can the administration's economic officials, all presumably on the same team, meet for hours to talk about the budget without getting one step forward?

The Administration's top economic officials believe they have a strong case to make that the current job growth will not result in inflationary labor shortages.

Still, even Israeli economic officials talk about potential peace dividends.

"That would be a good piece of news," said a Canadian economic official.

But business confidence has increased and European economic officials said today that they expected modest growth in the first quarter of this year.

The meeting was the first among the economic officials of the seven nations since the Clinton Administration took office.

This is a currency whose chief economic official says has just over a week to avoid total implosion.