Search Results for: India

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.…

BY SWINEETHA DIAS WICKRAMANAYAKE
WHITE burley tobacco cultivation by tribal farmers in the Visakhapatnam and East Godavari districts of Andhra Pradesh, India, is rebounding after years of decline because of DDT usage harming crop quality. With the insecticide being abandoned, Someswara Rao, of the Maddi Lakshmaiah tobacco exporter group, is predicting the districts’ plantations of the variety would now grow from 18,000 to 20,000 acres.…

BY MARK ROWE
THE 19th century saw imperial rivalry create the “Great Game”, when Russia and the British Empire tweaked one another’s tails in the region that following Russia’s Bolshevik revolution became known as Soviet Central Asia. The old Great Game was tied to control of India, and to gems and gold.…

BY DEIRDRE MASON
WHAT price safety? Ports and shippers racing to comply with an extremely tight deadline to meet the new International Marine Organisation security requirements are still not sure what the final bill will be. However, with the newly added SOLAS (safety of life at sea convention) special measures and the also new International Ship and Port Facility Security (ISPS) code due to come into effect on 1 July 2004, those who are not already well down the line to meeting the requirements will find the costs rising sharply as demand for security services steps up.…

BY MARK ROWE
THE MALAYSIAN Textile Manufacturers Association has warned that the country’s branded clothing industry could become extinct within 10 years because of the oncoming removal of the export quota system under the WTO’s Agreement on Textiles and Clothing. It particularly fears that this liberalisation will allow China, with its low labour costs, to dominate global export markets.…

SWINEETHA DIAS WICKRAMANAYAKE
A SHOE making cooperative in India has shown how a niche brand can seize up-market export sales by exploiting elaborate and imaginative designs. The Toe Hold Artisans Collaborative, Karnataka, exported US$60,000 of its lines to Italy, Australia, Japan and Sweden in 2002-3, and is targeting US$100,000 sales this financial year.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission’s (EC) proposals for the EU tobacco regime, published in detail last month (September), essentially recognise that subsidised tobacco growing in Europe on any significant scale is now coming to an end. If these plans are put in place it seems likely that in little more than three years’ time the only tobacco grown in the EU will be to serve small niche markets.…

Keith Nuthall
INDIAN shoe exporters are struggling to fight off competition from China, with statistics from the Council for Leather Exports (CLE) saying that in 2002-03 (April-February) India’s leather exports earned US$1.67 billion, a 6.56 per cent decline compared with the corresponding period of 2001-2.…

BY MARK ROWE
PEPSICO, which is marking 50 years of operations in the Middle East, finds itself at something of a crossroads. An all-American company, in a region where anti-Americanism has rarely been so widespread, it faces several challenges to ensure that it will continue to operate successfully in the Middle East for a further half a century.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
SURPRISINGLY wide support for the west African plan to rid the world of cotton subsidies has been voiced at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) summit, in Cancun, Mexico. The Canadian and Australian governments yesterday (10 Sept) threw their developed country weight behind the plan, as did WTO Director-General Supachai Panitchpakdi.…