Search Results for: South Africa

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A MEMORANDUM of understanding has been signed by the USA and the Philippines on ‘stopping illegal transhipments of textile and apparel’ through the south east Asian country to America. The agreement commits both parties to customs cooperation, actively identifying the true manufacturers of shipments, and joint verification visits.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

YEMEN’S oil and gas sector could be boosted by an International Finance Corporation (IFC) agreement to help its ministry of oil and minerals strengthen local mining policies, taxations and regulation. Yemen does not have a comprehensive mining policy, said the IFC’s Middle East and north Africa technical advisory team PEP-MENA.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EXPLOITATION of bounteous resources of industrial minerals within Yemen is to be improved through the World Bank modernising and updating the country’s undeveloped mining regulations and taxation systems. The Yemen Geological Survey & Mineral Resources Board has said that "the industrial mineral and rock potential of Yemen is particularly large and the known occurrences and deposits represent a multitude of possible uses."…

BY STEVEN SWINDELLS, in Johannesburg

CHINESE exporters have emerged as winners in an ugly spat between South Africa’s retail industry, the Pretoria government and local unions over quota limits on China-made clothes and textile imports.

Chinese exporters will now be able to sell a full range of clothes and textiles to South Africa until January 1, 2007, avoiding a quota system which was due to go into effect on September 28.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

WITH the cattle and sheep disease Bluetongue spreading north in Europe from its usual southern European base, the European Commission and other specialist agencies are investigating why the pathogen has marched northwards. The European Union’s (EU) reference laboratory, at Pirbright, Surrey, has confirmed this strain of Bluetongue hitting livestock in France, Belgium and the Netherlands, was previously unknown in Europe.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

SPORT is providing a welcome fillip to greening public transport services in developing countries, with Olympics-enthused China overseeing the rollout of hydrogen fuel-cell buses in polluted Beijing. The emissions laden smog that athletes will suck into their lungs in summer 2008 is already causing some concern, but a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) coordinated project will make a small dent in air pollution.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commission has already started considering the potential shape of the eighth framework programme on research (which would start in 2014), even as the final details of its seventh predecessor are still being thrashed out.

Brussels’ directorate general (DG) for research commissioned a study, and it has recommended that the next big EU research programme look well beyond the shores of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.…

BY PAUL COCHRANE, in Damascus and Amman

JORDAN and Syria both have large tobacco markets, with a third of Jordan’s population, and around 60% of Syria’s male population, being smokers. Both markets are growing, spurred on by large young populations and the cultural prevalence of smoking cigarettes and nargileh (water pipes), but not all is rosy in the sector.…

BY STEVEN SWINDELLS, in Johannesburg

SOUTH African retailers have been warned by their government that they could be guilty of "treason" if they try to get around quotas placed on Chinese clothing and textile imports.

The bizarre and disconcerting warning from Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka came after leading retailers warned that an imminent cap on Chinese textile imports would force them to import alternative supplies from other foreign producers – including those in Vietnam, Bangladesh and eastern Europe – whose goods are cheaper than local manufacturers.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EXPLOITATION of bounteous resources of industrial, construction and metallic minerals within Yemen is to be improved through the World Bank modernising and updating the country’s undeveloped mining regulations and taxation systems. The Yemen Geological Survey & Mineral Resources Board has said that "the industrial mineral and rock potential of Yemen is particularly large."…