Search Results for: Thai

BY MARK ROWE
THAILAND is to make it compulsory for poultry owners to buy insurance to cover the spread of several critical diseases on their livestock. The insurance will be required in order for farmers to obtain loans to rebuild or upgrade their chicken farms as a result of the bird flu crisis that has spread across Asia.…

BY MARK ROWE
THE THAI steel industry has called for the country’s domestic ceiling price of finished steel products to be lifted to ease threats of a shortage. Local manufacturers fear that a shortage of locally made steel products is possible because the price of imported steel slab used as raw material has jumped by 75 per cent to US$450 per tonne, from US$250 a year ago.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
FRAUD is centre stage again in European Union (EU) news, following a series of high profile scandals, for instance in Eurostat. Now OLAF, the EU’s anti-fraud agency has produced an annual report showing that it is detecting more irregularities.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union’s anti-fraud agency OLAF has revealed a lucrative scam involving the illicit import into Europe of millions of Chinese ring-binders. These were falsely labelled as having been made in Thailand, enabling their manufacturers to evade 78.8 per cent anti-dumping duties imposed on Chinese manufacturers who have been exporting cut-priced ring-binders to Europe, harming local manufacturers.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
RULES will be lifted that require 20 per cent of Thai poultry meat exported into the European Union (EU) to be tested for residues of banned anti-microbial substances such as nitrofurans. The EU standing committee on the food chain and animal health has ordered an end to (initially 100 per cent) checks imposed in March 2002.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE THAI government has formally requested that a World Trade Organisation disputes panel rules over the whether European Union’s customs coding for Thai frozen boneless salted chicken cuts is legal. They had been classified as salted meat (duty 15.4 per cent), now they are classed as frozen chicken, higher duty of Euro102.4/100 kg.…

BY MARK ROWE
RUSSIA has called on Thailand to cut import tariffs on non-ferrous and ferrous metals to help boost trade between the two countries. Alexei Kudrin, Russian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance said that if tariffs were lowered, Russia would increase imports, particularly of non-ferrous metals, steel and iron, which constitute the lion’s share of Thai imports from Russia.…

BY MARK ROWE
THAILAND is planning to amend its copyright act in a crack down on counterfeiters who plague the textile and clothing industry. Under the plan, violators of Thai copyright laws will no longer be able to negotiate out-of-court settlements.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL in Paris, ALAN OSBORN in London, MARK ROWE in Singapore, ED PETERS and DON GASPER in Hong Kong, RICHARD HURST in Johannesburg, MONICA DOBIE and PHILIP FINE in Montreal, MATTHEW BRACE in Brisbane and ALEX SMAILES in Port of Spain.…

BY MARK ROWE
THAILAND’S leather goods exports have slipped for the third consecutive year, as manufacturers of international brands of leather goods move away from the country to tap cheaper labour costs in China. Exports are expected to fall below last year’s total value of Baht 70 billion (US$1.6 billion), according to the Thai Leather Goods Association, which said that the SARS virus and the Iraq war had further added pressure to the market.…