Search Results for: japan

BY KEITH NUTHALL

WITH the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) seven-year-old Doha Development Round maybe drawing towards a close, the pharmaceutical industry might start to consider that a final deal could lead to the elimination of most import duties on drugs and medicines, traded worldwide.…

BY MARK GODFREY, in Beijing

LONGYAN Cigarette Factory reflects the kind of good fortune and ambition which characterised China’s tobacco industry in 2007. Located in the city of the same name in southeastern Fujian province, the factory’s almost US$1 billion revenues for 2007 are a 24.5% increase on figures for the previous year.…

BY MARK GODFREY, in Beijing

A WALK down the supermarket aisles in a Beijing residential area reveals much about the state of China’s cosmetics scene. Pick up a bottle of shampoo at the Jingkelong (NOTE – SPELLING IS CORRECT) store on Gongti Bei Lu street (NOTE – SPELLING IS CORRECT) and chances are the blue-aproned assistants will shuffle over to recommend another.…

BY MARK GODFREY, in Beijing

A YEAR after China began enforcing its Law of the People’s Republic of China on Anti-Money Laundering – effective from January 2007 – observers are wary about the ability of the country’s understaffed enforcement agencies to keep pace with huge inflows of questionable funds into China’s booming economy.…

BY PAUL COCHRANE, in Tripoli and Beirut

THE OPENING up of Libya’s economy could not have come at a better time for international oil companies, which have been beset in recent years by dwindling easily accessible oil reserves, tighter controls over exploration rights and extraction, and heightened security concerns.…

BY PAUL COCHRANE, in Kuwait City

THE KUWAIT National Petroleum Company is pushing ahead with multi-billion dollar energy projects, recently green lighting a US$14 billion budget for the 615,000 bpd Al Zour refinery, the world’s largest purpose built facility of its kind.…

BY NICK HOLDSWORTH, in Moscow

RUSSIA’S outgoing president Vladimir Putin put the fight against corruption and money laundering top of the agenda September 2007 when in a surprise move he appointed Viktor Zubkov as prime minister, following the resignation of a government lead by technocrat Mikhail Fradkov.…

BY JULIAN RYALL, in Tokyo

WITH the start of production at its new automotive plant in the Shushary district of St. Petersburg on December 21, Toyota will become the latest Japanese car manufacturer to set up shop in a market it says has "tremendous potential" and is looking forward to the roll-out of the first Russian-built Camry.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commission will press next year (2008) for major tobacco companies to actively participate in an anti-smuggling protocol to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. The unlikely alliance was floated by EU anti-fraud Commissioner Siim Kallas at a Uruguay conference on oncoming talks about the protocol.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

DIPLOMATIC grumbles have started to emerge about the European Union’s (EU) REACH chemical control system, with claims being made at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) its complexity could break EU commitments under the WTO’s technical barriers to trade agreement.…