Search Results for: World Trade Organisation

BY KEITH NUTHALL
CHINA is to reserve the right to maintain its state tobacco monopoly under the agreements that it has struck to secure World Trade Organisation membership, which has been approved after 15 years of often intense negotiations. Tobacco is one of only a limited number of sectors, where China has insisted on maintaining exclusive state trading controls, other industries include cereals, fuels and minerals.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
IN the years of the Cultural Revolution, when the bamboo curtain separated the world’s most populous country from the rest of the globe, the idea of sending bulk agricultural exports to China would have seemed laughable. Even today, Chinese export markets buy up a fraction of British farming produce, but in the future, this could change.…

KEITH NUTHALL
INDIA is disputing whether the EU has complied with the WTO ruling that it broke world trading rules when protecting its cotton-type bed linen producers with anti-dumping duties. Brussels has claimed that it has fulfilled instructions from a disputes panel by suspending the duties, but New Delhi has reserved the right to launch a fresh action, especially if moves are made by next March to renew the duties.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE TRADE in clothing between China and the rest of the world is set to grow sharply, with the agreement being forged to allow Chinese membership of the World Trade Organisation, after 15 years of negotiations.

It means that China has acceded to the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing, being subject to its rights and obligations, including the fact that, as for all WTO members, its quotas on textiles should be scrapped by December 31, 2004.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
AFTER 15 years of negotiations, China has reached agreement on the terms of its accession to the World Trade Organisation, thereby opening the way for British accountancy firms to set up shop in the world’s most populous market.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A later briefing paper issued by the European Union also confirmed that the accession deal involved China conceding the right for foreign private firms to import silk directly from China. In the past, this has been subject to a state run export monopoly.…

KEITH NUTHALL
FOREIGN companies will be able to hold 100 per cent ownership in hotels in China, under the trade deal which led to Chinese membership of the World Trade Organisation being approved this week. Smaller tourist businesses will also be able to operate in China in future, because of a promise by Beijing to scrap minimum capital and turnover requirements for overseas travel firms.…

Keith Nuthall
FURTHER details have emerged about the concessions in the textile trade that have been agreed by China to secure accession to the World Trade Organisation. According to an EU briefing paper, the right for foreign private firms to import silk directly from China has been confirmed.…

BY KATE REW
AMERICAN bra manufacturers are responding to growing demand from larger women who are no longer content to wear cumbersome, corset-like structures but would prefer flimsier, sexier bras which are both comfortable and flatter their fuller figures. For a long time this market, which stands at around 40 per cent of intimate wear and is growing all the time, has been overlooked, according to Joyce Baran, Vice President of Merchandising and Design, Liz Claiborne Intimates.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
DEVELOPING countries have banded together at the World Trade Organisation to call for its Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement (TRIPs) to be interpreted as allowing their governments to take any steps “to protect public health,” including the authorisation of generic production of medicines under patent.…