Search Results for: South Africa

BY KEITH NUTHALL AND MONICA DOBIE
CONSIDERING the high value of many cargos shipped around the world, a rational observer might assume that pirates would ignore fishing boats in favour of vessels carrying spices, cigarettes, alcohol, metals or electrical goods. Not so.…

BY RICHARD HURST, in Johannesburg
BIDDERS for the new international airport north of Durban South Africa have begun to stake claims in the project with interest being drawn from Swiss technology group ABB and the investment arm of Australia’s Macquarie Bank.…

BY RICHARD HURST, in Johannesburg
More than 3,000 workers at the Nissan SA factory near Pretoria, South Africa, are on strike over the generation of a surplus of SARand 245 million (US$22.7 million) in Nissan SA’s retirement funds.

A spokesman for the National Union of Metal Workers (Numsa) Dumsa Ntuli said that the workers had downed tools quickly while the company had urgently sought a court order to stop workers from participating in industrial action.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
*Finland is the world’s most “honest” country according to Transparency International;

*New British laws will ban payments made to people just for performing their official duties;

*In countries where bribery of foreign officials is a crime, penalties range from a one-year jail sentence (Norway) to life imprisonment (South Africa);

*Half the countries replying to the UN said their legal systems did not make it impossible to obtain tax benefits for foreign payments that would constitute bribery;

*Under American law companies can make payments for “routine government action” such as obtaining licences and permits abroad.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Investment Bank (EIB) has approved the lending of Euro 300,000 to help finance a Euro 1.8 million feasibility study into the viability of extracting strontianite ore at Kangankunde, in Malawi, southern Africa, and then processing it into marketable strontium carbonate.…

BY MATTHEW BRACE
TWO key mining research facilities in Australia are collaborating to devise a standard set of accounting practices for the industry. The international industry research association AMIRA, and the Julius Kruttschnitt Mineral Research Centre (JKMRC), at the University of Queensland, are establishing a practical and user-friendly system to suit all operations irrespective of the size, scale and type of ore involved.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE PRACTICE of allowing companies to deduct bribes paid to secure contracts overseas from their domestic tax bills is still widespread, with a United Nations report saying it was allowed in 50 per cent of countries surveyed. The paper on how the organisation’s 1996 declaration against Corruption and Bribery in International Commercial Transactions said that it was however banned in Bulgaria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Germany, Iceland, Nigeria, Norway, Slovenia, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK.…

BY RICHARD HURST
THE SOUTH African construction company Grinaker LTA has announced that it has won a SA Rand 1.7 billion contract to design, engineer, build and mange the 865 km natural gas pipeline running from Mozambique to South Africa.

It has been commissioned by SA chemicals giant Sasol and Empresa Nacional de Hidrocarbonetos de Mocambique to have the pipeline operational by 2004.…

BY RICHARD HURST, in Johannesburg
Motor manufacturer Daimler-Chrysler South Africa has announced that its franchised dealers are to introduce so-called black empowerment partners into their businesses.

The company’s dealer development manger Theo Swanepoel said that his group’s dealers have agreed to take on black African controlled business partners, commanding significant shareholdings.…

Keith Nuthall
THE VOLUNTARY strategy on pedestrian safety design standards for motor vehicles adopted by the European Commission with the European, Japanese and South Korean auto manufacturers has been undermined by a key European Parliament committee, which has called for EU legislation on the subject.…