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After the Thai military staged a coup and overthrew the country’s interim government in May 2014, many in the country’s tobacco industry wondered what policies the new regime would bring to one of the Asia’s more tightly regulated tobacco marketplaces.
One year later, the ruling junta sent a powerful signal that they would be carrying forward the tough anti-smoking measures of previous regimes.…

The global steel industry may be entering a long-term period of sluggish growth, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation & Development’s (OECD) steel committee has concluded at a meeting which wrapped up today (May 12).
The two-day committee meeting (May 11-12), staged at the OECD’s Paris headquarters, heard the sector’s near-term outlook will be dampened by reduced world gross domestic product (GDP) growth.…

The scale of Zimbabwe’s reforestation programmes needs to vastly increase if they are going to counter the decimation of the country’s forests by the tobacco industry, a leading agricultural expert has warned.
Harare-based agriculture consultant Charles Taffs believes that if the current rate of deforestation continues without significant intervention, in less than seven years the 80,000 small-scale tobacco producers who supply the industry will have no wood left to burn for the leaf curing process.…

In Uganda, recent graduates are learning a tough lesson: a university education is no guarantee of a job. More than half of people under 30 are without full-time employment, and the problem is particularly acute among degree holders. The country’s developing economy, still based largely on agriculture, is generating few highly skilled positions to offer the 40,000 university graduates each year.…

State -owned universities in Zimbabwe have started gearing for full commercialisation of their activities after the cash-strapped government warned it could cut its salary obligations to state higher education institutions by 50% in the near future.
Although there has been no official policy pronouncement from the Zanu-PF government, University World News has been told that its higher and tertiary education minister Oppah Muchinguri has advised vice chancellors from all state universities to start focusing on commercial projects.…

A USD13 billion deal agreed by China to build two reactors for Argentina hinges entirely on the Chinese side putting up the financing, with a final arrangement on the cash deal to be inked in 2017. That’s according to sources in the Chinese nuclear industry.…

The Pakistan government has reversed a decision to increase a health certification fee charged for assessing meat and meat products, three weeks after it was issued, after meat exporters opposed the move. The federal ministry of national food security and research reversed on April the average 150% increase made on March 31.…

The meat industry in Pakistan is hoping an upcoming government budget will promote investment enabling the sector to hit a government target of doubling the country’s export earnings from the global halal food market by 2018. This would net Pakistan meat exporters USD600 million in annual export proceeds, compared to USD300 million now, according to Pakistan ministry of national food security and research figures.…

The Norwegian government’s Healthier Food Choices campaign has shifted focus to reducing the saturated fat content in meat and dairy products. The new drive is connected to an anti-obesity project run by the ministry of health (MoH), and will involve round-table talks in the third quarter of 2015 with core industry players operating in the production, processing and product sale segments of the food market in Norway.…

The Danish Agriculture & Food Council (DAFC/ Landbrug & Fødevarer) has invited the country’s leading meat industry players to round-table talks to deepen collaboration between producers, brokers and marketers regarding halal meat exports.
This DAFC initiative would help create a range of common industry guidelines that take into account country-by-country differences in halal slaughtering conventions.…