Key issues in trade facilitation : summary of World Bank/European Union workshops in Dhaka and Shanghai in 2004

Trade facilitation is the ability of countries to deliver goods and services on time at the lowest possible cost. It has emerged as an important issue in unilateral, bilateral, and multilateral trade liberalization. Most countries have embarked on heroic reforms aimed at reducing transaction costs of trade. Thus, among the four new Singapore issues, there was least resistance from World Trade Organization (WTO) member countries to include trade facilitation in the Doha Round discussions. However, all countries are not equally placed in initiating reforms in the complex areas of customs procedures, transport and port logistics, harmonization of standards, and simplification of procedures. Trade facilitation reforms require a large volume of technical assistance for national capacity building. To facilitate what these reforms entail and what can be learned from cross-country experiences, the EU and the World Bank organized two workshops in Dhaka (South Asian countries) and Shanghai (East Asian countries) in 2004. Jointly they succeeded in bringing together renowned experts from multilateral organizations, selected bilateral donor community, the private sector, ex civil servants, and scholars. The participants were largely drawn from the relevant government departments and chambers of commerce and industry. This paper summarizes the main presentations in the workshops. It also indicates the areas that need more focus in future events. The paper should serve as a reference document for national policymakers and for future seminars and workshops on trade facilitation. It has also linked the presentations to the ongoing research work on trade facilitation.Common Carriers Industry,Transport and Trade Logistics,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Trade Policy

Why isn’t India a major global player? : the political economy of trade liberalization

The policy reforms initiated in India in the mid-1980s and expanded in 1991 helped support an expansion in India’s trade. Trade reforms since the mid-1990s have been piecemeal. This paper argues that without significant further reform and adoption of a focused trade strategy, the competitiveness of India’s industry will suffer, including in areas such as information technology and related services in which India has established a strong global niche. Critical building blocks of such strategic reforms include further reductions in tariffs, opening services sectors to foreign competition, serious initiatives to reduce trade transaction costs that prioritize integration into international supply-chains, and a greater focus on regional integration

Nanotechnology in Industrial Wastewater Treatment

Nanotechnology in Industrial Wastewater Treatment is a state of the art reference book. The book is particularly useful for wastewater technology development laboratories and organizations. All professional and academic areas connected with environmental engineering, nanotechnology based wastewater treatment and related product design are incorporated and provide an essential resource. The book describes the application and synthesis of Ca-based and magnetic nano-materials and their potential application for removal/treatment of heavy metals from wastewater

LINEAR DIFFERENTIAL POLYNOMIALS WEIGHTED-SHARING A SET OF ROOTS OF UNITY

In this paper, we study the uniqueness of linear diFFerential polynomials of meromorphic functions when they share a set of roots of unity. Our results shall generalize recent results