Search Results for: World Trade Organisation⊂mit=Search

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD Bank is developing a Regional Integration Assistance Strategy to remove obstacles to trade within six central African countries that would particularly promote commerce in the area’s rich metal reserves. Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Republic of Congo (Brazzaville), Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon would benefit from five years of support, leading to road construction and improvement, the modernisation and integration of the financial sector, and by speeding ports and customs transactions.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INTERNATIONAL Finance Corporation of the World Bank is lending US$10 million to Ruscam, a Russia-based glass bottle supplier. The seven-year loan will finance the installation of a second furnace for the company, providing Ruscam with an additional 315 tons of glass making capacity per day at its Vladimir region base, 335 miles east of Moscow.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Court of Justice has thrown doubt on the legality of national food quality marks within the European Union (EU), through a judgement ruling that a ‘Markenqualität aus deutschen Landen’ (quality label for produce made in Germany) scheme breaks EU freedom of trade rules by excluding products made out of its home country.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
IF accountants want to give really useful advice to their clients that applies almost anywhere in the developed world, they should tell them to get married and have kids.

That would be the most logical conclusion that could be drawn from the latest Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) publication on tax, “Taxing Wages.”…

BY PHILIP FINE

THE UNITED States says it is offering duty reductions for all agricultural imports from Americas trading partners to create a proposed 34-nation New Word trading bloc. While meat products were not mentioned specifically in its initial Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) offer, the US says it would be prepared to admit at least 56 per cent of agricultural imports from all these countries duty-free by 2005.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED States and Mexico have headed off a poultry trade row. Under NAFTA, standard Mexican tariffs on US poultry exports were scrapped on January 1. However, Mexico feared an export boom and threatened to invoke its right to impose safeguard tariffs on all US chicken.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has proposed wide-ranging reforms to the European Union’s (EU) anti-counterfeiting and piracy legislation, which would toughen national laws against this problem across the continent.

If it is accepted by the EU Council of Ministers, this proposed directive on intellectual property rights would require all Member States to allow injunctions halting the sale of counterfeit goods, precautionary seizures of suspected offenders’ bank accounts, give evidence-gathering powers to judicial authorities and force offenders to pay damages to right holders to compensate for lost income.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INSURANCE sector may be so vulnerable to money laundering that the subject is probably worth in depth additional inquiries, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has said. It has released a report on Money Laundering Typologies that concludes the sector may be as vulnerable to organised criminals seeking to conceal illegal funds, as the financial securities sector.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Commission and the Algerian government are to cooperate to ensure that sub-standard shipping does not ply the seaways of the Mediterranean, notably through the phasing out of old single hull tankers.

European Union (EU) transport Commissioner Loyola de Palacio and Algeria’s transport minister Abdelmalek Sellal agreed at a meeting in Algiers that a joint group of experts should draw up a cooperation programme on improving maritime safety.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Court of Justice has ordered Spain and Italy to cease banning the marketing of British, Danish and Irish chocolate containing vegetable fat as ‘chocolate,’ ruling that by insisting they are sold as ‘chocolate substitutes’ the two countries are illegally restricting EU trade.…