Search Results for: World Trade Organisation

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission has been attacked for displaying “aggressive and unnecessary behaviour” against the tobacco industry after it announced that it intended to pursue its “smuggling” case against Philip Morris, RJ Reynolds and others in New York after the American court rejected the case on jurisdictional grounds.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union is to update its monitoring systems for its trade in clothing and textiles with the limited number of countries with whom it does not have trade agreements covering the sector, which includes Taiwan.

Notably, the European Commission has asked EU ministers to update rules on surveillance and electronic documentation.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
THE SASKATCHEWAN provincial government in Canada has recently passed a restrictive act that prohibits the advertising and displaying of tobacco products in retail outlets where people under the age of eighteen are allowed on the premises.

Shopkeepers are forced to hide cigarettes from patrons by enclosing them in non- transparent cabinets, behind curtains or blinds or selling them from under the counter.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE INTERNATIONAL Finance Corporation, the private sector arm of the World Bank, is lending US$250,000 to help establish a joint stock company owned by Tajik cotton farmers that will help increase yields and reduce debt. The new company, Sugd Agro Serv, will be unique in Tajikistan and will try to overcome key difficulties, such scarce technical assistance and equipment maintenance.…

Keith Nuthall
CENTRAL American coffee producers are to receive aid worth US$ millions from the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank, who have agreed to re-allocate money from rural development budgets worth US$500 million, at the request of local governments, to help coffee-producing areas.…

BY SWINEETHA DIAS WICKRAMANAYAKA
CHINESE sports footwear giant Yue Yuen (Industrial) Holdings Ltd has said that it expects to score around nine per cent sales growth this year as US consumers, the biggest buyers of athletics shoes, return to the shops in the improving economic climate.…

BY SWINEETHA DIAS WICKRAMANAYAKA
AN INDIAN cobbler wants a place in the Guinness Book of Records, after creating what he claims is the world’s largest pair of shoes. At 3.71 metres and 1.13 metres wide, James Syiemiong is unlikely to find a customer, unless a yeti moves from the Himalayas to his home-district Shillong, in Meghalaya, south of Assam.…

Keith Nuthall
CENTRAL American coffee producers are to receive aid worth US$ millions from the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank, who have agreed to re-allocate money from rural development budgets worth US$500 million, at the request of local governments, to help coffee-producing areas.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UN Food and Agricultural Organisation and the UN Conference on Trade and Development are developing a task force helping developing countries establish administrative regimes guarantee that locally produced organic foods were made without artificial aids. UNCTAD promotes organic production as sustainable, because its labour intensity and lack of expensive chemical inputs matches poor countries’ economic realities.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD Bank’s International Finance Corporation will provide US$30 million to help LASMO Oil Pakistan Ltd, a subsidiary of Lasmo plc, (acquired by Italy’s ENI SpA in 2001), to develop Pakistan’s Bhit natural gas field, 150 km north of Karachi, at a cost of US$283 million.…