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BY PHILIP FINE

The United States has offered several trading partners an immediate

elimination of the tariffs it currently places on steel, provided the other

country does the same. U.S. Trade Representative Robert B. Zoellick

announced the reciprocal agreement in several key sectors as part of its

first offer for the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas, a trading

bloc of 34 countries.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A GLOBAL code of practice for the harvesting and manufacturing of fish and fishery products is being drawn up by the world food trade standards body, Codex Alimentarius. Its committee on food hygiene recently endorsed a draft set of worldwide list of rules on handling fish, which are being developed to promote trade by creating uniform, albeit voluntary, standards.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
BRAZILIAN steel producer V&M do Brazil has struck the largest deal to date under the Kyoto Protocol Clean Development Mechanism. It will see the steel maker selling five million tonnes of greenhouse gas reductions for Euro 15 million to an International Finance Corporation/Dutch government fund, the IFC-Netherlands Carbon Facility.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE MULTILATERAL Investment Guarantee Agency, of the World Bank, is providing investment guarantees worth US$72 million to South Africa’s Sasol for developing natural gas fields in Mozambique, including building a central processing facility and an 865 km cross-border gas pipeline.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INTERNATIONAL Finance Corporation (IFC) of the World Bank is leading an aid deal to encourage local companies to maintain and manage pipelines sending natural gas and oil from central Asia to the European Union. The IFC, (which is initially injecting US$250,000), BP, Norway’s Statoil, GTZ, (the German aid agency), and the Baku Enterprise Centre, Azerbaijan, will launch a programme to help local businesses benefit from petro- projects, notably the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline to Turkey.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission and Vietnam have struck a new textile and clothing trade deal which would give the south east Asian country increases in European Union (EU) textile and clothing quotas worth Euro 200 million a year. In return, the Vietnam government has pledged significant tariff reductions in the sectors, along with other liberalisation commitments.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
COMMENTS are being sought on proposed reforms to global guidelines on the operation of Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) systems. They have been drawn up by the world food standards body Codex Alimentarius, with particular focus being thrown on adapting the advice to the needs of small and new businesses.…

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 MARK ROWE
RUSSIA has been warned that it faces retaliatory trade measures if it does not remove import barriers on meat from the USA. Robert Zoellick, the United States Trade Representative, told the US Senate Finance Committee that he would not shrink from taking such steps in order to put pressure on Russia to drop the restrictions.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission will stage a conference in May to discuss the consequences of the abolition of quotas under the WTO’s agreement on textile and clothing. This symposium – The Future of Textiles and Clothing Trade after 2005 – will be held in Brussels on May 5-6.…