CLP Holdings announced a 2.6 per cent rise in electricity charges next year, after cutting its tariff 3 per cent this year.

For a change, Hong Kong Island residents are happier, because Hongkong Electric will freeze its tariff next year, after a 5.9 per cent cut this year.

Electricity prices are a good indicator of how the economy is doing. While gross domestic product is tipped to shrink 3 per cent this year, the rebound trend in the fourth quarter is extrapolated by Hang Seng Bank to GDP growth of 3.5 per cent next year.

Things are definitely looking up. Let's hope it will be reflected in everyone's pay slip.

By the numbers

Deciphering financial figures from Chinese to English can be a tricky business.

Take the case of Hidili Industry International, which announced last week it was buying some mining rights in Yunnan for 350 million yuan (HK$397.29 million).

All well and good, but further down in the statement to the stock exchange, the firm said it intended to expand a coal washing plant 'with an expected capital contribution of one billion yuan'.

Yesterday Hidili put out another statement to say that the contribution was actually 100 million yuan. A comma in the wrong place could have cost the company 10 times more.

Talk about lost in translation.

Bernanke still smiling

The worst economic crisis since the Depression may have happened on his watch, but Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke (below) seems to be coping extremely well with the pressure, even managing a couple of jokey asides after his latest testimony to the United States Senate's banking committee.

Asked to name the biggest advantage of being head of the world's most influential central bank, he replied: 'I get to go through the security lines at the airport much more quickly ... and I can take along more than three ounces of fluid.'

Bernanke was criticised in the Senate committee last week for the Fed's 'abysmal failure' in the crisis, with one member saying the AIG bailout was 'reason enough to send you back to Princeton'.

Asked if he regretted leaving his position as an economics professor at the Ivy League institution, he referred to British economist John Maynard Keynes.

'Keynes once said that economics should aspire to be as useful as dentistry,' Bernanke said. 'It has been a very interesting experience.'

Beauty appointment

They call football the beautiful game.

Maybe that would explain why former Hong Kong Football Association chairman Martin Hong Po-kui is so interested in the beauty business.

Hong has been appointed an independent non-executive director of Modern Beauty Holdings, following the resignations of two other board members last week.

It is the second beauty business he has become involved in after being appointed a director of Sau San Tong Holdings in 2002. The lawyer also served on the board of Tse Sui Luen Jewellery International from 1991 to 2005.

Like father, like son

Li Ka-shing raised his stake in Hutchison Telecom Hong Kong for the fifth time this year last Wednesday when he picked up four million shares for HK$5.12 million or HK$1.28 each.

On the same day, his younger son, Richard Li Tzar-kai, spent HK$20.23 million buying 10.61 million shares of his own telecommunications company, PCCW, at HK$1.907 each. It was his 12th purchase since the summer.

Dealing for charity

Entrepreneur Sir David Tang Wing-cheung will try his hand at being a broker today.

The founder of Shanghai Tang and the China Club will be working for ICAP, a global interdealer broker as part of its 17th annual charity day, when all the revenue and commissions it earns will be donated to 120 worthy causes around the world.

One of the beneficiaries is Christian New Being Fellowship, where Tang is a board member.