Search Results for: Bhutan

GOVERNMENT agencies in the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan are taking steps to develop products and fabrics made from yak hair, eyeing potentially lucrative sales of a rare fabric, whose profile could be boosted by the country’s growing tourism industry.

The Bhutanese government is proactively developing handcraft traditions of spinning hair from yaks, of which more than 30,000 are herded in Bhutan’s generally mountainous terrain.…

THE FIRST civilian airport to operate in the Himalayan Indian state of Sikkim has started operations. Building Pakyong Airport, near the state capital Gangtok, has been an engineering challenge for Indian contractor the Punj Lloyd group, which needed to build an 80.3 metres-high reinforcement wall to stabilise the surrounding mountainous terrain.…

THE HIMALAYAN kingdom of Bhutan may have a ban on smoking in public spaces under the Tobacco Control Act of 2010, but it is not hard to find smokers flouting this law. The legislation specified sporting centres as public spaces under the act, but when Tobacco Journal International visited the national stadium in the capital Thimphu to watch the opening game of this season’s Bhutan Pepsi Football League on April 21, it followed young fans walk to washroom at half-time to light up smuggled cigarettes.…

High on the agenda of Dr Oetker India managing director and chief executive officer Oliver Mirza is making India a major production hub, not just for manufacturing packaged foods scoring sales in India’s growing markets, but also for exports.

In a wide-ranging interview with just-food on the sidelines of the India Food Forum, staged in Mumbai last month (January 17-19), Mirza said that by 2020, Dr Oetker India was targeting sales of Indian Rupees INR10 billion (USD155 million) of which its sub-brand FunFoods will account for INR5 billion (USD 77.50 million).…

THE PAINT and coatings industry in south Asia maybe thriving, but regional trade between countries is not – being restricted to exports of pigments, resins, solvents and additives from India to its neighbouring countries. Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Maldives, Bhutan and Afghanistan, as well as regional giant India, are all members of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), but they import most of their paint and coating raw materials.…

Turkish textile entrepreneurs have been signalling a willingness to relocate their units to Bangladesh, tapping into the south Asian nation’s geo-economic significance, officials and diplomats say.
Interest was notably shown by Turkish investors in week-long seminars on Trade & Investment Opportunities in Bangladesh’, organised by  the Bangladesh embassy in Ankara, in April and this month (May), in five Turkish cities, including the capital Ankara, key textile production centre Istanbul, Kayseri, Bursa and Kocaeli province.…

The phenomenal rise of India’s Patanjali Ayurveda Ltd, that has upset the strategies of many established cosmetic companies in the country, is credited to its lower price, good quality and increasing demand for herbal products. Credit is also given to unorthodox marketing techniques backed by the popularity of yoga guru Baba Ramdev, who despite having no formal relationship with the company is closely linked to the brand.…

THE PARIS conference of the parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) last December, of COP21, made a commitment to create a carbon-neutral world between 2050 and 2100. This means that governments and international organisations must devise policies to ensure the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by human activity equals the amount that that trees, soil and oceans can absorb naturally preventing the build-up of CO2 in the atmosphere.…

BANGLADESH meat traders have warned that cattle prices are spiralling in the country after the Indian government cracked down on cross-border smuggling, increasing scarcity. The Bangladesh Meat Traders Association secretary general Robiul Alam told GlobalMeatNews: “It’s a calamitous time…We’re ruined. Every day, prices of cows are rising as supply is short.…

The government of India is modernising and expanding airports located in the remote north eastern part of the country. They generally generate low levels of civilian passenger traffic, but the region considered extremely sensitive politically and strategically due to several armed insurgencies and its proximity to international borders with China, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Bhutan and Nepal.…

The government of India is modernising and expanding airports located in the remote north eastern part of the country. They generally generate low levels of civilian passenger traffic, but the region considered extremely sensitive politically and strategically due to several armed insurgencies and its proximity to international borders with China, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Bhutan and Nepal.…

The government of India is modernising and expanding airports located in the remote north eastern part of the country. They generally generate low levels of civilian passenger traffic, but the region considered extremely sensitive politically and strategically due to several armed insurgencies and its proximity to international borders with China, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Bhutan and Nepal.…

WHEN Finland’s Tobacco Act came into force on October 1, 2010, it made news around the world. For the first time a country had stated explicitly it wanted to end smoking on its territory and gave a date: Finland would be non-smoking by 2040.…

After five years of trying to maintain a comprehensive and groundbreaking tobacco ban, Bhutan politicians appear to have decided the idea is utopian and unworkable, with the upper house of Bhutan’s parliament agreeing unanimously that the country’s controversial tobacco ban should end – and for good.…

INDIAN publishers are adopting a smarter more holistic approach to fight book piracy and are focusing on awareness campaigns to tackle the problem.

“Educational authorities like the ministry of human resource development and other stakeholders should join hands with publishers to make people understand that there is some sanctity to copyrighted knowledge, which should be respected,” said Mr Sesh Seshadri, secretary of The Association of Publishers in India (API).…

BANGLADESH’S fast growing economy is developing a robust and booming personal care product market. Mosaddeq Hossain, owner of a general store at the Shagoria Bazaar in Hatiya sub-district, neat Chittagong, recalls 10 years ago, there was almost no demand for his stocks of Sunsilk shampoo.…

WHEN the authors of the US declaration of independence said that “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” were goals of their nascent state, they knew what they were talking about. For what is the point of life and the freedom to direct it, if it does not generate happiness?…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE INDIAN government agency charged with the development of the national poultry sector has been hit by an outbreak of bird flu on one of its turkey farms, the Office International des Épizooties (OIE), the world animal health organisation has said.…

BY TENZING LAMSANG in BHUTAN

HELP WANTED IN ‘THE GARDEN OF EDEN’

The tiny Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan has undergone tremendous changes in the last decade, from opening up to television and the internet in 1999, to the introduction of parliamentary democracy in 2008 by an enlightened monarchy.…

BY TENZING LAMSANG in BHUTAN

JIGMI RINZIN: CV

? Currently: Secretary General, ARAPAC (from Dec 2010); MP (from Apr 2008), National Council of Bhutan NCB); Public Accounts Committee, Parliament of Bhutan – member (from Apr 2009) and chairman (Jul 2010 – Jun 2011); Member of Economics Affairs Committee and Chairman, Parliamentary Entitlements Committee, NCB (from Jul 2008).…

BY TENZING LAMSANG IN THIMPHU

BHUTAN is a small Himalayan nation striving to strengthen its financial infrastructure and transparency while pursuing happiness as an economic policy goal for some 710,000 inhabitants living in a parliamentary constitutional monarchy.

For a perspective on progress, Accountancy Futures talked to Jigmi Rinzin, a hugely influential Bhutanese and Asia accountancy voice as: a member of the Bhutanese parliament serving on several economic committees including the Public Accounts Committee (PAC); former chief auditor at Bhutan’s Royal Audit Authority (RAA); and secretary general of the Asia Regional Association of Public Accounts Committees (ARAPAC).…

BY TENZING LAMSANG in BHUTAN

Tenzing Lamsang reports from Bhutan on an ACCA Fellow’s roles in fostering good audit and accounting practice there and throughout Asia.

HE displays a tough streak in combatting fraud, corruption and governmental waste, but also a mellower side in his public service ethic and support for his country’s pursuit of happiness.…

BY TENZING LAMSANG in BHUTAN

JIGMI’S TIPS: WORKING IN BHUTAN

? ACCA, CA and CPA from different bodies globally have equal status in law.

? If an employee, pick an industry you are comfortable with: there is plenty of choice.

?…

BY TENZING LAMSANG, IN THIMPHU

THE OPENING up of the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan to the world through globalisation, and its newly democratic government’s domestic political and economic liberalisation reforms in recent years, has made the tiny state – with a population of fewer than 700,000 – increasingly vulnerable to international money laundering and cross border financial crime.…

BY WANG FANGQING, IN SHANGHAI; AND TENZING LAMSANG, IN THIMPHU, BHUTAN

THE CHINESE government is fighting to contain a fresh outbreak of avian flu virus H5N1 in central China farms, according to the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE). Cases have been increasing since January, and Beijing has been reassuring meat consumers there is no risk to their health: "The H5N1 virus is only contagious among animals.…

BY KENCHO WANGDI

HYDRO-ELECTRIC power is of critical importance to the tiny landlocked nation Bhutan, hidden deep in the folds of the Himalayas, with economic and military giants China to the north and India to the south. Indeed, its government regards hydropower energy as being instrumental in shifting the country from being recognised by the United Nations as a least developed into an emerging developing country in the south-east Asia.…

Kencho Wangdi

The Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan is renowned for its untouched mountainous beauty. It is also known for its political innovation: it tobacco sales ban and use of ‘gross national happiness country’ as a yardstick for development. But it may soon become known as a higher education hub of Asia, if current plans go well.…

BY KENCHO WANGDI

THE HIMALAYAN Kingdom of Bhutan recently passed its most rigorous Tobacco Control Bill yet in what some commentators say is a desperate attempt to salvage the country’s image as a tobacco-free nation. The first bill, endorsed in 2004, failed.…

BY PAUL COCHRANE, AHMAD PATHONI, GAVIN BLAIR, RAGHAVENDRA VERMA, WANG FANGQING, HELEN FLUSFELDER, KARRYN MILLER, KEITH NUTHALL and ALAN OSBORN

THE BRITISH writer Oscar Wilde wrote: "A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied.…

BY KENCHO WANGDI

NESTLED against the Himalayas, Bhutan was one of the last oases of isolation, untouched by commercialism and capitalism. But in the last decade, things have changed, and Bhutan has embraced all the joys of the modern world – and the crime.…

By Raghavendra Verma, in New Delhi

India is the latest example of a country struggling against a Maoist insurgency fuelled by rural inequality, showing how emerging market governments worldwide risk harbouring violent rebel groups while promoting economic development.

In Peru, the notorious Maoist guerrilla group ‘The Shining Path’ continue operations, funded by the illicit drug trade, after a major insurgency in the 1980s and 1990s failed to achieve its political ends. In Nepal, an armed insurgency was successful, ending with a peace accord in 2006, its Communist Party of Nepal (Unified-Maoist) (CPN-UM) joining the country’s parliament and briefly leading its government.

Other Maoist groups continue to operate in pockets worldwide, for instance in The Philippines, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Sri Lanka. But it is maybe in India where the phenomena has most prominence today. The Indian government, for its part, has identified the Maoist insurgency as a leading domestic security concern and it is unclear how this insurgency will end.…

By Raghavendra Verma, in New Delhi

India is the latest example of a country struggling against a Maoist insurgency fuelled by rural inequality, showing how emerging market governments worldwide risk harbouring violent rebel groups while promoting economic development.

In Peru, the notorious Maoist guerrilla group ‘The Shining Path’ continue operations, funded by the illicit drug trade, after a major insurgency in the 1980s and 1990s failed to achieve its political ends. In Nepal, an armed insurgency was successful, ending with a peace accord in 2006, its Communist Party of Nepal (Unified-Maoist) (CPN-UM) joining the country’s parliament and briefly leading its government.…

BY KENCHO WANGDI

THE IMPLEMENTATION of the much vaunted sales and public place smoking ban in Bhutan, the tiny Himalayan kingdom, has not been easy. And now the country’s newly minted parliament is considering lifting the sales ban, while providing for tougher enforcement of the public place ban and fighting tobacco smuggling.…

BY RAGHAVENDRA VERMA

THE INDIAN paint and coating industry is currently passing through a significant transitional phase – being forced to shift its production from solvent-based to water-based products. The high crude oil prices in 2008 so increased the cost of raw materials that despite the fall in prices from last summer, many paint manufacturers have had little option but to move away from oil-based coatings.…

BY KENCHO WANGDI

LIKE other nurses in the remote Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, religion played a part in convincing Dechen Om that she should become a nurse.

A Buddhist, like most of her co-patriots, she believed that by becoming a nurse she would get the chance to serve ill people and earn good karma so in the next life she would be born into a good family.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A UN Development Programme study comparing Bhutanese with Laotian textile production has highlighted shortcomings in the Bhutan sector, showing how focused international development assistance can make permanent improvements. Bhutan textiles could potentially be of high quality and command international sales, said the report, but their production is hamstrung by potentially resolvable shortcomings: inflating Bhutanese scarves prices 40% above those in Laos.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A UN Development Programme study comparing Bhutanese with Laotian textile production has highlighted shortcomings in the Bhutan sector, showing how focused international development assistance can make permanent improvements. Bhutan textiles could potentially be of high quality and command international sales, said the report, but their production is hamstrung by potentially resolvable shortcomings: inflating Bhutanese scarves prices 40% above those in Laos.…

BY KENCHO WANGDI, in Thimphu, Bhutan; JUHEL BROWNE, in Port of Spain, Trinidad; BILL CORCORAN, in Johannesburg; and KEITH NUTHALL

THE RISING price in oil has hit the prosperity of many companies, communities and countries, but it is the world’s poorest people, living in what the United Nations calls least developed countries that are suffering the most.…

BY KENCHO WANGDI, in Thimphu, Bhutan

WHAT is happiness, really? In many developed nations such as in the US and Europe it is equated with money and prosperity.

Economists use GNP (Gross National Product) as representing the well-being of a nation, on the belief that material development, as measured by GNP growth, is correlated to human happiness.…

BY KENCHO WANGDI, in Thimphu, Bhutan

YETIS are known in the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan as the ‘migoi’ (meaning strong man). The migoi’s body is said to be covered in hairs reddish-brown or black, but its face is hairless. Tales abound of Bhutanese said to have talked to them, or even abducted by lovelorn migois.…

BY KENCHO WANGDI, in Thimphu, Bhutan

WHAT is happiness, really? In conventional development theory, it equals money and prosperity, as measured by GNP (Gross National Product).

But Bhutan, the famously remote and beautiful Buddhist kingdom in the Himalayas, has been trying out a different concept.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

INTRODUCTION

THE WORLD’S multilateral food trading system today stands at a crossroads: faced with the suspension of the World Trade Organisation’s Doha Development Round, it can either retreat to protectionism, leavened by a series of competitive bilateral trade deals, or it can grasp the nettle of liberal free trade, slash subsidies and tariffs, and then watch the economic rewards roll in.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
INTRODUCTION

THE WORLD’S multilateral food trading system today stands at a crossroads: faced with the suspension of the World Trade Organisation’s Doha Development Round, it can either retreat to protectionism, leavened by a series of competitive bilateral trade deals, or it can grasp the nettle of liberal free trade, slash subsidies and tariffs, and then watch the economic rewards roll in.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
Dear Duncan – Bhutan smoking ban follow up feature should be with you tomorrow. Four pix for you to choose from attached. Unlikely, but if you use more than one, please let me know. Pic credit – Kencho Wangdi.…

BY KENCHO WANGDI
THE TINY Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan has never been if great – if any – interest to the tobacco industry, until this January 1, when it became the first country in the world to ban domestic tobacco sales.…

BY KENCHO WANGDI
“NO smoking on the dance floor guys, please,” the DJ screams into the microphone of a nightclub in Thimphu, the capital of the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan.

But the younger members the country’s English speaking elite continue to writhe on the dance floor, fingers gripping half-smoked cigarettes, clouds of smoke wafting through the neon light, even though since March 1 public smoking has been illegal.…

BY KENCHO WANGDI
THE BUDDHIST Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan has imposed a nationwide ban on the sale of tobacco products starting December 17, 2004, making it the first country in the world to do so. Ban violators will be fined US$227 equivalent and shops and hotels engaged in tobacco sales will lose their business licenses.…

BY KENCHO WANGDI
EVEN as the World Health Organisation (WHO) and some 170 countries work towards implementing a tobacco control convention, Bhutan, the remote and tiny Himalayan kingdom, has taken a step further by banning tobacco sale at all its duty-free outlets.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
TRADITIONAL weavers from the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan are being trained in using the Internet to source raw materials from India and advertise their colourful fabrics online. A United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) project is teaching weavers e-business basics as well as subsiding Internet connections in rural areas of this remote country and improved working conditions.…

BY MONICA DOBIE and KEITH NUTHALL
THE HIMALAYAN kingdom of Bhutan has launched a ‘tobacco free’ programme, aimed at persuading its mostly Buddhist citizens from abiding by a often ignored 1729 law banning them from smoking; indeed 18 of the country’s 20 districts have banned the sale of tobacco, leaving only the capital, Thimphu, as a safe haven for selling tobacco products.…

BY SWINEETHA DIAS WICKRAMANAYAKA
A MEMORANDUM of Understanding has been signed by nine south Asian electricity utilities regarding the promotion of regional cooperation in energy development. As a result, utilities from India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Maldives and Nepal will share information on best practice regarding energy generation and management.…

BY SWINEETHA DIAS WICKRAMANAYAKA, in Columbo
CEYLON Carriers Ltd., and the Transport Corporation of India have signed an agreement to launch a cost-effective system of cargo transportation in Sri Lanka. The partners will introduce a new Express Cargo System in the country, extending an air freight and shipping network that already covers India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan.…