Search Results for: World Trade Organisation

BY KEITH NUTHALL
BRITAIN remained an averagely taxed economy compared with its competitor rich nations in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), according to a new report from this international think-tank. It says that the share of Britain’s GDP represented by tax take remained at 37.4 per cent in 2001, the same as in 2000.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AN ATTEMPT by German garden equipment group Viking-Umwelttechnik to have a symbol composed of two rectangles – one green, one grey – registered as an exclusive European Union (EU) trademark has been lost.

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled that consumers would have difficulty associating the shapes with the company’s products, which include garden choppers and shredders; rotary cultivators; lawn mowers; front mowers; ride-on mowers; lawn aerators; lawn trimmers; hedge clippers; sweeping machines; motor saws; and brush cutters.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) Council of Ministers has given the European Commission a mandate to open negotiations on the renewal of two Agreements on Trade in Textile Products, between the EU and the Cambodian and Nepali governments.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Parliament’s legal affairs committee has proposed amendments to the European Commission’s latest proposed tobacco advertising directive, liberalising its effect. MEPs want to limit the directive to cases with ‘significant trans-border effects’ and to permit advertising indirectly related to tobacco.…

BY PHILIP FINE

HEINZ did something this year that its rival large USA-based food producers seem to be shying away from. They put their own name on an organic product.

One would think other US companies would have, by now, employed the same strategy as Heinz: use organic-friendly Europe as a test-market for an eventual US launch of an organic product, but the idea seems to be slow in catching on.…

BY PHILIP FINE

THE CHICAGO Board of Trade is being sued in the US District Court in Chicago for a 1989 decision that forced the owners of large amounts of soybean futures contracts to sell their positions. Farmer Harvey Joe Sanner is alleging that the Board knew its order would cause prices to drop, thereby benefiting the trading firm of one of its directors.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union’s (EU) anti-fraud unit OLAF has claimed that EU treasuries were cheated of Euro 6 million because of a rules of origin scam involving steel wire, which has now been uncovered.

In its 2001-2002 annual report on the fight against fraud in the EU, OLAF tells of inquiries into information provided by British customs officers about an apparent increase in trade between India and the United Arab Emirates in steel wire.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD Trade Organisation has inaugurated new training facilities for developing country trade officials, a result of the Doha summit that led to the current so-called development trade round. There, governments agreed that officials from poorer countries needed assistance in grappling with complicated trade law talks, so they could play a full part in negotiations.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED Nations’ (UN) Food and Agriculture Organisation has welcomed the development of a privately funded fish farming sector in Saudi Arabia, following 20 years of research to identify the ideal fish for local aquaculture.

A note published by the FAO says that the Saudi Fish Company, at Al-Shaqiq near the southern Red Sea, is already producing 1,500 tonnes of fish-a-year; the National Shrimp Company, in the Al-Laith area, also on the Red Sea, is expecting to produce 10,000 tonnes annually soon; and the Gizan Agricultural Company is building farming facilities for 1,000 tonnes-a-year.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
FINANCIAL restrictions should be imposed on companies, businessmen, ministers and soldiers charged with involvement in the shameless plundering of the mineral resources of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a United Nations (UN) committee established to investigate the problem has concluded.…