Search Results for: Brazil

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE WTO has established a disputes settlement panel to examine Brazil’s complaint about Florida’s “equalizing tax” on imported processed orange and grapefruit products.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INTERNATIONAL Finance Corporation (IFC) of the World Bank is lending US$30 million to Brazilian footwear producer Sao Paulo Alpargatas S.A. (SPASA), to finance its on-going investment programme, modernising production facilities and increasing capacity. The company has been identified by the IFC as a company that would effectively use such finance; since 1997, it has improved performance and market position by upgrading product quality and lowering costs, notably through new manufacturing technologies and relocating production facilities to the impoverished north-east of Brazil, an area which the World Bank wants to help develop.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) is facing a mass attack on its sugar export subsidies at the World Trade Organisation (WTO). They have been formally challenged by both Australia and Brazil, with the Ivory Coast, Congo, Madagascar, Columbia, Canada, Kenya, Barbados, India, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Jamaica, Swaziland, Fiji, Guyana and Mauritius expected to line up behind them in support.…

BY PHILIP FINE

COCA-COLA is trying out a popular Brazilian drink on US consumers. Earlier this month, Coke began selling Kuat, (pronounced "kwatch"), a guarana-flavoured drink, as a test marketing exercise in Texas, Florida and in parts of the US eastern seaboard’s mid-Atlantic region.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union’s EU Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health has recommended that systematic testing for antibiotic residues should be introduced for all imports of Brazilian poultry meat, products and preparations, after checks revealed that cargoes have been contaminated with restricted nitrofurans.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EU ministers are expected next month (October) to approve a textiles trade deal struck between Brazil and the European Commission. It removes quota restrictions on the amount of clothing that Brazil can export to the EU. Brazil will freeze its tariff levels on EU clothing exports and not introduce new non-tariff trade barriers for the sector.…

Keith Nuthall
BRAZIL and the European Commission have agreed a Memorandum of

Understanding paving the way for a formal textile trading agreement which, says Brussels, “significantly improves access for textile products on each other’s markets.” The deal removes the quotas on Brazil’s textiles and clothing exports to the EU.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
SWITZERLAND has complained to a key World Trade Organisation committee that its beef imports are being unfairly restricted by the USA because of concerns that they are contaminated with BSE. It has claimed at the WTO Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures Committee that the US should not, for example, be insisting on the onsite inspection of Swiss meat plants, because the Office International des Épizooties has classified Switzerland as having a low incidence the disease.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE ISRAELI Foreign Trade Risks Insurance Corporation has reinsured US$53 million of US$83.5 million in guarantees posted by the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) of the World Bank. The security covers Israeli telecommunications company ECI Telecom’s investment in Brazilian company Global Village Telecom Ltda, which wants to construct and operate wireless telephone networks in Brazil.…

BTY MARK ROWE
THE TOBACCO industry has not been exempt from the problem of young children working in developing countries. But in the past 12 months BAT has taken significant steps to address the question of child labour. Earlier this year it helped launch the Elimination of Child Labour in Tobacco Growing Foundation, which supports community-based initiatives to address the issue.…