Search Results for: World Trade Organisation

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A SIMPLIFICATION of European Union life insurance legislation has been approved by the European Parliament and will now come into force, rolling the many EU rules and regulations affecting the industry into one single code.

Part of an ongoing effort to streamline Brussels’ often baffling and Byzantine strands of legislation, MEP’s agreed with ministers to delay final approval of a united life directive, so that recent changes on solvency margins could be incorporated.…

BY SWINEETHA DIAS WICKRAMANAYAKA
A TRADE deal smoothing Poland’s planned 2004 entry into the European Union has been agreed, where the EU introduces duty free quotas for products including chocolate, biscuits and confectionery and Poland cuts its import duties for chocolate, biscuits and confectionery by 30 per cent.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Union has hit out at developing countries trying to force a “rebalancing” of the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing at the World Trade Organisation, claiming that commerce within the sector “should not be a one-way affair.”

Speaking at a WTO general council meeting, an EU delegate claimed that Brussels should not speed up its timetable abolish its quotas because so far, it had stuck to its ATC commitments.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE OECD has claimed that world agricultural prices should gradually rise from current weak levels into 2003, with faster hikes for certain meats and dairy products.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
INFORMATION technology and telecommunications companies should build security from hackers, virus spreaders and cyber-terrorists into the design of their networks from the outset, rather than tacking it on later as a result of painful experience, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has advised.…

BY PHILIP FINE

THE UNITED States Environmental Protection Agency is expected to soon reclassify the fine powder that cement companies collect in their manufacturing process as a non-hazardous waste. It says it will temporarily suspend listing cement kiln dust (CKD) as a hazardous waste under federal environmental regulations, and will wait and see if state government regulatory programmes evolve over the next three to five years as a result.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD Bank is lending El Salvador US$18.2 million to improve the effectiveness, efficiency and accessibility of its judicial system. The central American country is emerging from a long civil war, which was marked by human rights abuses and a lack of due process.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE ERECTION of EU temporary protective duties on cereals from Russia and the Ukraine is being considered by the European Commission. A production boom is lowering prices on world markets, threatening the financial health of EU producers.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A WTO disputes panel, formed for the US and New Zealand, has ruled that Canada has failed to comply with an earlier ruling ordering it to reform its collective dairy marketing systems, so that its exporters do not benefit from unfair national subsidies on world markets.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AN INDIAN hire-purchase company has been lent IND Rupees 840, (US$17 million), by the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation, so it can widen the financial services it offers India’s rural and semi-urban communities, notably to sell insurance policies.…