Search Results for: World Trade Organisation

Tobacco manufacturers and retailers have expressed concerns about a crackdown on cigarette advertising in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, which has been well-known for an unusually liberal approach towards tobacco marketing. However, it remains unclear whether the policy, launched last September (2021) has had any impact on sales.   …

INTRODUCTION 

Customisation is a key trend for a clothing and textile industry that looking to harness new technology to deliver consumer choice and flexibility over supply chains, including reshoring. The advent of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, in addition to widespread automation of processes throughout the garment supply chain, has been hailed as a game changer.…

The global Islamic microfinance market has room to grow significantly if it can overcome social and regulatory barriers that have so far curbed its expansion, say experts. Given microfinance is a poverty-alleviation mechanism that provides credit and other financial resources to poor and low-income households and small-and-medium-sized businesses, it fits well with the charitable traditions of Islam.…

A lack of common international Islamic financial regulatory system is hindering the development of Islamic social finance instruments, causing a dearth of good practice solutions that could effectively fight poverty, say experts.

In the February 2021 issue of the ISRA (International Shari’ah Research Academy) International Journal of Islamic Finance, Abdulsalam Ahmed Sawmar and his co-authors say one key element of Muslim charity – zakat (obligatory charity) – historically, “has been an integral part of the Islamic economic system because of its sizable impact in achieving social harmony and preserving decent living standard for the needy segments of Muslim communities.”…

With Islamic finance strengthening and diversifying, service providers are increasingly targeting non-Islamic markets, competing directly with non-Islamic services. While demand in non-Islamic markets has historically been tied to factors spanning from real estate investment in GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) economies to wealth management of non-Islamic countries’ Muslim minority populations, additional tailwinds are now deriving from Islamic finance’s closeness to the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria used by socially conscious investors.…

Indonesia, which holds the presidency of the G20 group of major economies this year, wants to us this position to increase the role of Islamic finance worldwide, to boost consumer access to affordable financial products and services.

Financial inclusion is one of the goals of the G20, made more important by the Covid-19 pandemic widening inequality for the most financially vulnerable and underserved groups, said Dian Triansyah Djani, Indonesia’s ‘co-sherpa’ (diplomatic coordinator) for the G20.…

India’s predominant vegetarianism, religious complexities and a recent spurt in Islamophobic politics has stalled the development of a halal segment in a food and drink sector that serves a country of 1.38 billion people.

Despite serving the world’s second largest Muslim population of more than 210 million, according to the US-based Pew Research Center, Indian food manufacturers do not generally display ‘halal’ on any food labels, except meat.…

As the Italian economy recovers from the particularly hard two-year coronavirus pandemic, Italy’s paints and varnishes sector is among the few to have weathered the storm well. “Our sector has probably never seen such a jump in growth like that of the past two years,” said Gianni Martinetti, president of the Paints and Varnishes Group of AVISA (1), which is part of Italy’s national chemicals industry association, Federchimica.  …

China’s textile industry has been under intense pressure during the first half of this year (2022) to deal with the country’s continuing struggle to contain Covid-19, imposing tough lockdowns, even as much of the rest of the world eases social distancing rules.…

Observers of the global Islamic finance industry are predicting significant imminent growth in sharia-compliant environmental and social governance (ESG) investment, as demand for financial institutions to deploy funds in ethical ways expands, along with awareness of climate change and social justice.…