Search Results for: India

Keith Nuthall
THE INDIAN government is considering allowing foreign accounting firms to conduct audits in India, a privilege that has so far been reserved for accountants or partnerships registered with the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India. It is consulting Indian business on the idea, which could be written into a formal offer to liberalise the country’s services sectors through the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) Doha Development Round.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AS the May 31 deadline looms for World Trade Organisation (WTO) member countries to make formal offers to liberalise their service industries, the Comité Européen des Assurances (CEA) has called on Brazil, India and China to be as generous as they can.…

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 KEITH NUTHALL
ANDRIS Piebalgs, the European Union (EU) Commissioner for energy, has announced that clean coal technologies and CO2 capture will be his top priorities for energy research during his five-year term. Speaking as the European Commission attempts to persuade EU ministers to support expanding Brussels’ budget for research for 2007-13, Piebalgs said: “Such technologies are not just important in order to enable Europe to meet its Kyoto obligations and the challenges of the (EU’s) Lisbon agenda” on economic competitiveness.…

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 MARK ROWE
IN the days of the Soviet Union, Russians would make jokes about the shades of “concrete” grey available for any internal redecorating you planned to do. No longer. Disposable incomes are higher, so Russians are discovering DIY, while a vast face-lift has been given to many of the country’s cities and towns.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INTERNATIONAL Finance Corporation (IFC), of the World Bank, has pumped more money into Turkey vehicle fleet management company Intercity. It will lend Intercity US$42.75 million, which follows the IFC’s purchase of 20% equity earlier this year. The latest loan, said the IFC, would “strengthen Intercity’s long-term leasing of its vehicle fleet to a variety of private sector enterprises”.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission will spend the majority of a new Euro 5 million budget over the next three years promoting French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German and Austrian wines in key foreign markets. Brussels noted that the main targets would be north America, China, Russia, India, Japan and non-European Union countries in central and eastern Europe.…

BY MATTHEW BRACE
TASMANIA’S non-ferrous metals industry is enjoying a welcome resurgence with strong production targets for the next five to ten years.

Miners in Australia’s island state are reluctant to call it a “metals rush” but it is the most significant set of resource finds for more than 100 years.…

BY MATTHEW BRACE
SINGAPORE’S economy is rejuvenating after the horrors of early 2004 when the threat of terrorism (both internationally and closer to home in South East Asia), and then the SARS virus hit the city state hard, shrinking demand for construction and hence the amount of money to be made by the coatings sector.…