December 2001 Edition
WTO
After 15 years of negotiations, the World Trade Organization is about to welcome China as a member. China is the world's seventh-largest economy and ninth-largest exporter. It is also Canada's fourth-largest trading partner (two-way trade reached C$15 billion in 2000). Upon accession to the WTO, China will immediately institute tariff cuts. Most of these will be in place by 2005, with further cuts to be phased in over nine years. Industrial tariffs will fall from an average of 16.3 per cent to about 9 per cent and agricultural and agrifood tariffs from 21.4 per cent to about 16 per cent.
COMPETITIVE
Finland is the most competitive economy in the world, despite its rigid labour markets, powerful unions and high tax rates, according to the Global Competitiveness Report from the World Economic Forum. It displaces the U.S. from last year's top slot. Canada moved up to third from seventh position. Of the 75 countries included, Zimbabwe, experimenting with a more extreme form of socialism, languishes in last place.
KETCHUP
When they changed the colour and introduced a new container, the H.J. Heinz Co. transferred a mundane food product into a star. Last year, when the company launched green ketchup, consumers grabbed it off the shelves. In less than a year, Heinz boosted its share of the ketchup market by almost 5 percentage points. While most of the press focused on the colour, Heinz officials said that the new container, built to fit the hands of children and encourage extra squeezing, was more important to the product's success.
WATER
Residents of a district in Pakistan were left without running water for 16 years because someone forgot to switch on a set of water-pumping stations. Recently, an engineer discovered six unused pumping stations in the area. One village has never had running water despite being next to a working dam.
WATER
Residents of a district in Pakistan were left without running water for 16 years because someone forgot to switch on a set of water-pumping stations. Recently, an engineer discovered six unused pumping stations in the area. One village has never had running water despite being next to a working dam.
TOMATOES
A preliminary ruling by the U.S. Department of Commerce has placed a 33.9 per cent duty on B.C. hot house tomatoes entering the U.S. B.C. produced C$74 million worth of greenhouse tomatoes in 2000, almost all of which were exported to the U.S., primarily Washington, California, Texas, Connecticut and Florida. This duty is a blow to B.C. greenhouse vegetable growers who also produce peppers and cucumbers
HEALTH
Health Canada is re-evaluating its approval of pressure treated wood for use in play structures amid concern that harmful chemicals could be leaching from it. A study was conducted in the late 1980s but the results were never made public. Most commonly, treated wood contains Chromate Copper Arsenate or CCA, a pesticide that keeps the wood from deteriorating. It also contains arsenic. One piece of tested wood had levels of arsenic that exceeded the current Canadian guideline by more than 10 times.
CITIES
A new United Nations Population Fund report states that roughly 2.8 billion people presently live in cities. By 2005, that number will have risen to 3.9 billion, nearly three-quarters of them in the developing world. In 2015, there will be 23 mega-cities, those with 10 million or more people, compared with only five in 1975. The top five will be: Tokyo, Mumbai (Bombay), Lagos, Dhaka and Sao Paulo
WORTH
A woman seeking renewal of a 25-year licence for a refreshment kiosk near the Tower of London has been offered over US$4 million for it if she is successful. The kiosk's position, near the entrance to the Tower, which attracts more than five million visitors a year, is one of the busiest and most profitable in London.
FREE
For the eighth straight year, Hong Kong has topped the list of the freest economies in the survey compiled by the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal. Singapore ranked second and New Zealand third. The United States tied for fourth with Estonia, Ireland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Canada was 15th and China was 121st. An average tariff rate of 15.7 per cent; quotas; import licensing; import substitution and local content policies; restrictive quarantine and certification standards earned China the most negative rating for protectionist trade policies.
CELLPHONES
China has leapfrogged past the U.S. as the nation with the most cellphone users. China now has 120.6 million mobile phone users, compared with 120.1 million U.S. users. With less than 10 per cent of China's population using a cellphone, the market there is expected to continue to grow by another 80 million by 2002.
BRITAIN
After decades of drinking heavily, Britons are turning their backs on the bottle. New research shows that health-conscious consumers are cutting down on beer, wine and spirits and turning to bottled water and soft drinks. After 20 years of rising alcohol consumption, the number of people drinking regularly fell by almost 5 per cent between 1990 and 2000.
AFRICA
Now that sub-Saharan Africa has passed the threshold of one telephone subscriber per 100 inhabitants, all countries in Africa are connected to the Internet. The U.N. telecommunications agency has said that the number of subscribers more than doubled from 0.51 to 1.2 per 100 people from 1995 to 2000. This followed economic improvements in Africa and expansion of competitive operators on the continent. The agency has predicted that by the end of this year, there would be more mobile than fixed subscribers on the continent.
DRUGS
Canada's four Atlantic provinces want to set up a joint panel to review drugs for the entire region. They believe that a joint approach to drug review could eliminate duplication as well as increase Atlantic Canada's buying power when it signs contracts with drug manufacturers. Right now, each province reviews prescription drugs to decide which one should be covered by publicly funded plans.
MEXICO
The industrial corridor between Linares and Allende in the State of Neuvo Leon is becoming increasingly dedicated to providing food to the U.S. market. The zone is strategically important for the duty-free transport of food, originating in Europe, to the U.S. market. European foods that arrive as finished products in the U.S. are subject to duties, but producers are taking advantage of the NAFTA to send their products to the U.S. via Mexico.
THE ENVIRONMENT
A plastic golf tee has been developed that dissolves after five hours under a golf-course sprinkler system.
BUGS
About 150 experts recently gathered in London at the first international conference on bugs in books. From Nigeria to New Zealand, museums and libraries are taking pest control very seriously. No collection is safe from bookworms, beetles, booklice and even termites. Central heating in libraries gives tropical bugs a place to spend the winter and cutting back on cleaning staff brings the beetles marching in.
EUROPEAN UNION
The EU may, within three or four years, let in ten more countries all at once. Thirteen countries have asked to join the 15 that are already members. Most are from Central Europe and have been applying since the fall of communism in 1989. Negotiations with ten countries may well be concluded by the end of next year, paving the way for them to enter the Union as early as 2004. The ten new members would add some 75 million people to the EU's present population of 375 million.
TEXTILES
The textile and apparel industry employs more than 500,000 workers in the U.S. but it has lost 600,000 jobs since 1994, and almost 70,000 this year. Sales of U.S. cotton to textile companies in the U.S. have gone from about 11. 5 million bales in 1997 and 1998 to about 7.8 million bales this year.
MARRIAGE
The average Canadian bride and groom were well over 30 years old in 1998, according to new Statistics Canada data on marriages. The average age of a bride, including first-time brides as well as previously divorced women and widows, was 31.1 in 1998, up from 28.6 in 1988. The average man was wed at 33.7 years old in 1998, compared with 31.2 a decade earlier. In total, 152,821 couples were married in 1998, virtually unchanged from 1997.
EMPLOYMENT
In 2000, the percentage of employment in the service sector in Canada was 74.1 per cent. In the U.S. it was 74.5 per cent, France 74 per cent, U.K. 72.8 per cent and Japan 63.1 per cent.
CURRENCY
Vietnam has declared its numismatic independence with a 50-dong souvenir note crafted from polymer substrate--the first home-grown note after decades of dependence on Russian, Chinese and Swiss assistance in engraving and printing Vietnamese currency. It is worth only cents but has become a hot collectors item. Bank officials say the new note represents a trial run in using polymer substrate, which costs about one-and-a-half times as much as ordinary paper but is more durable and counterfeit-resistant.
PRODUCTIVITY
Boosted by new technology advances, labour productivity in the U.S. between 1995 and 2000, increased by an average of 2.6 per cent, up from 0.8 per cent between 1990-1995, and outpaced the European Union and Japan, according to the International Labour Organization. Labour productivity is considered a key indicator of economic performance and is influenced by factors such as accumulation of machinery and equipment, improvements in organization and transportation, workers skills, or human capital, and new technology.
VIEWING
More Canadians are tuning into pay-television and specialty channels at the expense of conventional Canadian and foreign stations. Of all television viewing, pay and specialty channels took 30 per cent of the audience during the fall of 2000 up from less than one per cent in 1992. The percentage of those watching Canadian channels only was down to 53 per cent in 2000 from 75 per cent in 1982.
RAGE
Japanese designers and engineers have developed a speaking car, called the Pod, that avoids road rage by telling drivers when they are overreacting and praises them for good manners.
OSAKA
The City of Osaka has introduced a subsidy programme for foreign-affiliated firms setting up business in Osaka. The programme applies to firms that establish a new base in the city between April 1, 2001 and March 31, 2002. Eligible expenses include commission fees for market research and other purposes, interpretation and licensing fees, registration and other legal formalities and non-refundable deposits for the rental of offices or other facilities. The amount of the grant is not to exceed half of the sum of applicable expenses.
PARROTS
At (www.parrotmountain.com), the Parrot Mountain company is selling rollerskates for parrots in three different sizes.
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