Search Results for: World Trade Organisation

BY RICHARD HURST
THE ETHIOPIAN government has announced it is taking action to reduce the flood of gold being smuggled from the country, after revealing that US$30-million worth of the precious metal, weighing approximately three million grams, is smuggled annually out through neighbouring countries.…

BY RICHARD HURST
INDIAN steel producer Tata Steel has launched an environmental impact assessment (EIA) study to determine the ecological feasibility of building a high carbon ferrochrome smelter in Richards Bay, Kwazulu-Natal. The project would attract tax relief from the South African Department of Trade and Industry’s Strategic Industrial Projects budget, with a potential subsidy being worth as much as Rand 480 million, (US$59.45 million).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE SRI Lankan government should work with the country’s leather industry to improve the quality of raw hides, a national industry workshop has concluded. It heard that the trade in finished or semi-finished Sri Lankan leather was suffering because of poor hide standards.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD Bank has approved a US$150 million loan to the Columbian government to help it strengthen its financial institutions – including the insurance sector – against exploitation by criminals and also to boost its capacity to make further investments in the national economy.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AS with many projects inspired by the start of the next 997 years and the last three, the framing of the United Nations’ (UN) Millennium Development Goals was an ambitious enterprise.

Imposing statistically measurable targets for international organisations and national governments in making improvements in global poverty, education, gender equality, health, the environment and education, they have proved tough to attain.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Free Trade Area (EFTA) Surveillance Authority is threatening Iceland with legal action over its alleged failure to implement European Economic Area rules on the sale and production of farmed fish. It has given Reykjavik two months in which to explain how it will write directive 91/67/EEC, as amended in 1993, 1995 and 1998, into its national statutes.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE FRENCH government has proposed a summit of G8 environment ministers, the creation of a strong World Environment Organisation, which would take over the responsibilities of the United Nations Environment Programme as well as those of environmental departments amongst other multilateral agencies.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE IMPENDING enlargement of the European Union, admitting countries that were once part of the communist eastern bloc, poses risks for the western European pharmaceutical sector, as well as benefits from the opening up of new markets, a senior industry figure has warned.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the OPEC Fund are teaming up to lend US$13 million and US$5 million respectively to finance the construction of a knitwear plant in Chirchik, Uzbekistan, to manufacture high-quality knitted cotton garments (underwear, nightgowns and t-shirts) for export.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
SOME four years after they began, negotiations for a deal over a geographical indication register for traditionally made wines and spirits are entering a decisive phase at the World Trade Organisation. The talks have taken so long because there is a fundamental difference in approach between new world producers led by the US who want such a register to amount to no more than a kind of voluntary data-base and the Europeans who see it as a means of ensuring world-wide legal protection for traditional appellations.…