Search Results for: Bangladesh

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 KEITH NUTHALL
THE LEATHER industry could shed significant numbers of jobs in poor and rich countries following a successful World Trade Organisation (WTO) Doha Development Round agreement on industrial and textile goods. Its aim is to slash tariffs across the board, and in that instance, said a UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) report, there will be winners and losers.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE GLOBAL Environment Facility (GEF) and the World Bank are planning to bring off-grid renewable electricity, especially via solar power home systems, to an additional 50,000 Bangladesh households by 2008.…

Keith Nuthall
CIVIL unrest could be sparked in smaller developing countries next year by the abolition of World Trade Organisation (WTO) textile trade quotas and resulting loss of export markets to Chinese competition, new European Union

(EU) trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson has claimed.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
GLOBAL corruption watchdog Transparency International has confirmed Britain’s place as one of the world’s cleaner countries, ranking it 11th in its annual league table of government probity. In a report containing few surprises, Finland, New Zealand, Denmark, Iceland and Singapore were lauded has having the most honest governments, while the graft-ridden administrations of Nigeria, Bangladesh and Haiti were bottom of the table.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
REPRESENTATIVES of 40 governments have heard how space technology can be used to boost drinking water quality worldwide. A conference organised by the Vienna-based United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs heard how satellites can aid groundwater monitoring, flood predictions, lake and river water movement assessments, and other key tasks.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
CHINA has resisted calls at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) by its developing country competitors for special efforts to protect them from economic dislocation caused by January’s end of textile import quotas. Mauritius, Bangladesh, the Dominican Republic, Fiji, Madagascar, Sri Lanka and Uganda pushed at a WTO Council on the Trade in Goods for a WTO secretariat study identifying the likely problems and recommending solutions.…

KEITH NUTHALL
OUTGOING European Union (EU) trade commissioner Pascal Lamy has tried to advise textile exporting developing countries on not being steamrollered by China when textile and clothing quotas are scrapped this December. He told the European Parliament’s trade committee that countries such as Bangladesh and Sri Lanka should exploit continuing tariff preferences for their exports to the EU.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
WORLD Trade Organisation (WTO) director-general Dr Supachai Panitchpakdi has launched talks with member countries on maybe staging an emergency meeting of the WTO council for trade in goods on the oncoming abolition of textiles and clothing quotas. He has been consulting on this idea, proposed by Mauritius, Bangladesh and Nepal, which want the council to examine the costs of adjusting to a global quota-free regime from January, under the WTO’s agreement on textiles and clothing.…