Search Results for: Brazil

STORIES BY KEITH NUTHALL

AUSTRALIA, Thailand and Brazil have claimed at the World Trade Organisation that the European Union has missed a May 22 deadline to reduce sugar subsidies to WTO norms, despite the EU agreeing recent reforms to its sugar regime.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

BRAZIL’S damaging foot and mouth disease outbreak is continuing, despite desperate efforts to stamp it out, the Office International des Épizooties (OIE) is reporting. It says in April, 137 cattle have caught the disease on a ranch in Japorã, in the key beef producing state of Mato Grosso do Sul.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commission has proposed reforms to the scientific basis and transparency of decisions on approving or banning genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in foodstuffs. This follows concerns from member states that too many GM products are being approved for sale in the European Union (EU).…

BY DAVID HAWORTH, in Brussels

IT is not often that Jan Figel, the European Union (EU) Commissioner for education, training and multilingualism makes headlines. Not only is the Slovak modest to a fault, but as under EU treaties, education policy is controlled by national governments, his responsibilities rarely get the headlines which other policy areas attract.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
INTRODUCTION

THE WORLD’S multilateral food trading system today stands at a crossroads: faced with the suspension of the World Trade Organisation’s Doha Development Round, it can either retreat to protectionism, leavened by a series of competitive bilateral trade deals, or it can grasp the nettle of liberal free trade, slash subsidies and tariffs, and then watch the economic rewards roll in.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE MULTILATERAL Investment Guarantee Agency, or MIGA, is the international organisation companies turn to when they want to invest in a jurisdiction where their assets might not be that safe. Oil and gas companies have long used MIGA to cover risks that are too tasty for the private insurance industry, and at December 2005, MIGA had supported 13 oil and gas projects, with guarantees totalling US$707 million, with a standard leverage of five-to-one, so investments covered are actually five times larger.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

INTRODUCTION

THE WORLD’S multilateral food trading system today stands at a crossroads: faced with the suspension of the World Trade Organisation’s Doha Development Round, it can either retreat to protectionism, leavened by a series of competitive bilateral trade deals, or it can grasp the nettle of liberal free trade, slash subsidies and tariffs, and then watch the economic rewards roll in.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EU has until June 27 to reclassify its customs designation of frozen boneless chicken cut imports, a WTO arbitrator has ruled. Brussels must admit into the EU cuts of 1.2%-3% salt content as ‘salted’ rather than ‘frozen’ cuts, meaning lower duties will apply.…

BY STEVEN SWINDELLS, in Johannesburg

AFRICA’S tobacco leaf producers are facing troubled times.

Instead of capitalising on crop and currency woes in rival Brazil, too many producers across the world’s poorest continent are battling drought and low selling prices.

Brazil’s problems should have opened a door of opportunity for leading African producers to claim back at least part of the world leaf market lost to south American and other producers when Zimbabwe’s crop collapsed amid the violent seizure of white-owned farm land.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE WEST African countries that have spearheaded the call for reductions in cotton subsidies at the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) Doha Development Round have released a proposed formula guaranteeing these cuts are significant. If proposals tabled by the so-called Cotton-Four states Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali are accepted, cotton reductions would be deeper than cuts to agricultural subsidies in general.…