Search Results for: World Trade Organisation

BY ALAN OSBORN
AN INCREASE in the amount of fraud and irregularities reported to European Union anti-fraud unit OLAF will be noted in the organisation’s next annual report, which is about to be published, an OLAF official has told Accountancy Age.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A WORLD Bank report has lauded the growth of the so-called ‘sustainable coffee’ market as a means to raise the low prices commanded by the commodity. “The State of Sustainable Coffee: A Study of Twelve Major Markets” calls for the acceptance of price premiums for ‘fair trade’ and organic smallholder produced coffee.…

Keith Nuthall
TAX collectors are raiding the developed world’s economies for a diminishing slice of national incomes according to a Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) study. It says rich country public revenues commanded a smaller proportion of GDP on average last year, compared with 2001 (40.5 and 41 per cent respectively).…

Keith Nuthall
WITH the May 2004 implementation date for introducing reforms based on the International Maritime Organisation maritime security code rapidly approaching, the European Union is still debating the shape of EU regulations putting it into force. Indeed the EU Council of Ministers has only just struck an agreed “general approach” on implementation, pending a formal first reading of relevant legislation by the European Parliament.…

Keith Nuthall
A TRAINING centre for tax officials in Serbia has been opened, part of a Euro 13.4 million European Union-funded overhaul of the Serb inland revenue system. The centre – in Novi Sad – will train 1,000 officials over the next 15 months and will be the first of four such centres to be opened, (also in Niš, Kragujevac and Belgrade).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE OFFICE International des Épizooties, the world animal health organisation, has warned of an outbreak of bluetongue disease in sheep in Sardinia. Authorities on the Italian island have slapped a movement ban on farms in Cagliari province to prevent it spreading.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A SUPERMARKET boom in sub-Saharan Africa is raising standards in food production and distribution, which many small producers struggle to meet, said the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). It says the growth of mass retail in South Africa, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Namibia, Botswana and Swaziland is having “a direct impact on the lives of millions of small farmers.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
CHINA has played tit-for-tat in unusually public diplomatic spat over temporary’ safeguard duties that were imposed by Beijing last May on US exports of nine steel products. The United States had published a pointed set of questions about whether the duties had actually lapsed as planned by November and over exemptions from such tariffs for South Korea and Slovakia on the apparently dubious grounds that they were “developing countries”.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INSTITUTIONAL structure of European Union statistical agency Eurostat is being reformed, to try and prevent a repeat of the accounting scandals that have rocked the organisation. A new ‘contracts cell’ is being set up, to hasten and better control the issuing of contracts, while remaining separate from the officers ordering work projects in the first place.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
SHIPBREAKING, a ready source of scrap steel, is one of the most dangerous occupations in the world. What is more, agreed a recent meeting of experts from the International Metalworkers Federation, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and others, it need not be so deadly.…