Search Results for: World Trade Organisation

BY SWINEETHA DIAS WICKRAMANAYAKE
SRI Lankan aluminium extrusions manufacturer Lanka Aluminium Industries Ltd has announced that it has experienced its first year of sales decline, after six years of a consistent profit hikes.

Its annual report said that the last financial year saw sales volumes decline 10 per cent over the previous year, although turnover was up due to price increases.…

BY ALAN OSBORN AND KEITH NUTHALL
A NUMBER of tax regimes run by European Union countries are being investigated by the European Commission, which is following up suspicions that they are so loose, they amount to a breach of the EU’s competition laws.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE THREE important central European tobacco-growing countries of Bulgaria, Poland and Hungary will be able to claim production subsidies from Brussels when they join the European Union on the same basis as existing EU producers, European Commission officials have confirmed.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Space Agency is to launch the world’s first giant space telescope in 2007. Its Herschel Space Observatory will command a primary mirror 3.5 metres in diameter, allowing, said the European Commission, the faintest objects to be observed.…

KEITH NUTHALL
IMPORT tariffs payable on fish products exported to China are to be cut, following the striking of an international deal allowing Beijing to join the World Trade Organisation. Officials at the European Commission’s directorate general for trade say that all fish exports to China will benefit from lower tariffs, though the reduction is not as great as for industrial goods.…

Keith Nuthall
A GERMAN fraudster has fled the European Union after investigators unmasked his certificate of origin scam involving Malaysian textile products, mostly denim jeans. Acting as an importer, he fraudulently exploited preferential trade regimes for Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam and Lesotho, by claiming that its Malaysian products were from these countries, losing EU coffers at least Euro 4.5 million in duty.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has struck a trade deal with Pakistan that will reward its support for the west in the war in Afghanistan by scrapping EU import tariffs on Pakistani clothing exports and increasing import quotas by 15 per cent.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
NEW international fishing deals are being developed by the European Union, which should allow fishing businesses to exploit grounds overseas while efforts are made to conserve stocking levels in Europe’s own territorial waters.

EU ministers have been asked to approve a deal negotiated by the European Commission with west Africa’s Guinea-Bissau, which will last until 2006.…

BY MONICA DOBIE, in Montreal
THE INTERNATIONAL Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) is planning to strengthen current aviation security standards in place, in response to terrorist attacks, which occurred in the United States. A high level meeting will take place before the New Year to discuss setting global rules on security issues such as cockpit door locking and making domestic regulations as tight as international flights.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
The USA’s ConAgra Foods Inc. will launch squeezable Parkay margarine in November, in ‘Electric Blue’ and ‘Shocking Pink’ colours, in child friendly, 10-ounce bottles that are easy to grip. This is the latest product aimed at pleasing children via their visual fun factor competing with the likes of H.J.…