Search Results for: International business

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD Bank’s Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) has signalled a retreat from commercial reinsurance by allowing the Netherlands to offer annual state guarantees of Euro 150 million for its international development projects, the first time a member state has reinsured MIGA for projects involving its national companies.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is lending US$35 million to the Ukraine’s only modern mini steel mill, to help it expand. Donbass-based ISTIL will improve production and energy-efficiency, supporting its growing cast billets and speciality steel production for rolling steel mills, seamless pipe manufacturers and machine-building plants.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
THE CANADIAN tobacco industry is poised on the brink of major change, with the country’s manufacturers considering comprehensive leaf import programmes that could undermine the sustainability of the country’s domestic growing sector.

This change is being lead by the country’s largest cigarette manufacturer, Imperial Tobacco Canada, which outlined a proposal in the spring of 2004 that would alter the current two-tiered pricing system for domestic and exported tobacco leaf in the 2005/2006 season.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission is taking Greece to the European Court of Justice asking judges to order a separation of the Greek Public Power Corporation’s accounts for its lignite mining and its electricity generation. Brussels says Greece is breaking the European Union electricity directive, which outlaws common accounts possibly masking illegal cross-subsidies between two separate business activities.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has issued a journal focusing on the reforms required to improve the judicial systems of eastern Europe and central Asia’s poorest countries. It says Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzia, Moldova, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan need to improve the ability of their legal systems to guarantee local private property rights.…

BY KENCHO WANGDI
THE BUDDHIST Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan has imposed a nationwide ban on the sale of tobacco products starting December 17, 2004, making it the first country in the world to do so. Ban violators will be fined US$227 equivalent and shops and hotels engaged in tobacco sales will lose their business licenses.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
INTERPOL is to stage an international meeting of police and experts to discuss ways of fighting the growing international traffic in illegal sports performance-enhancing drugs. The agency is particularly keen to collate more information about the problem for its databases, which can be accessed by police forces worldwide.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INTERNATIONAL Finance Corporation (IFC), of the World Bank, has launched an ‘HIV/AIDS Guide for the Mining Sector’ on minimising workers’ exposure, saying it is useful also for other developing country industries. The manual provides clinical information, management advice and transmission prevention strategies.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE LAST people most farmers would like controlling European agricultural policy are glib public relations experts, armed with palm-top digital personal organisers and a sheaf of focus group studies. Such complaints have often been levelled at the Blair government, accused of bending with the wind of public opinion.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN Union (EU) anti-fraud unit OLAF has released more information showing it is improving its efficiency, with its latest annual report saying the time spent investigating cases had fallen over the last five years from an average of 33 to about 22 months.…