The US government is understood to have responded to the call by Google to include Internet Access Freedom (IAF) as an international trade policy of the country. Nicole Wong, Google Vice President and Deputy General Counsel had urged earlier an open internet should be part of the US trade agenda as economic impact of censorship was huge on e-commerce as well as other companies which used Web services.

In January, Google.cn, the China version of the Google search engine announced it was considering pulling out of China after its portal along with some other 20 tech companies including Adobe, Yahoo and Intel was attacked by allegedly state-sponsored hackers. Though China has denied any such interception, but some companies who were victims of these attacks claim they have ample evidence to prove the government’s hand in this deplorable crime.

Google felt betrayed by the attacks, which resulted in the firm losing some intellectual property, despite compromising on internet freedom during the time of launch by signing an agreement with China in 2006. Under the controversial bargain, Google agreed to censor search results by prompting the users at the bottom of censored pages that results were withheld at the request of the Chinese government.

However, approaching the WTO to settle the issues related to the Chinese internet policies does not ensure any speedy outcome as trade disputes before the global trade body normally takes two or more years to litigate and appeal. Incidentally, according to the China Internet Network Information Center, a government agency that registers online domain names, China is the world’s biggest Internet market, with 384mn Web users at the end of 2009.

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The food imports have considerably risen in the last few years in view of the increase in population as well as water scarcity and hostile land conditions. The UAE and Saudi Arabia are already developing arable lands and food processing units in several Asian and African countries in a bid to overcome the snowballing global food shortages.

Harish Rupani, managing director of Equinox Trading, a food products trading company, told the Gulf News that growing food locally was not a viable option for the UAE as it costed three or four times more to grow local crops than it did to import. Dubai, the UAE’s commercial hub is one of the largest re-exporting centres in the world, and it traded in 2008 about $1.2bn worth of food-related items.

In the recent estimates by the Business Monitor International (BMI) indicate that food expenditure in the UAE reached $6.7bn in 2009. And it has been forecasted that it would grow by close to 3 percent in the current year.

The heavy dependence by the GCC on food imports also makes it the most vulnerable to not only price variations but also to increasingly changing food policies of the exporting countries such as blanket ban on exports of certain food commodities which are scarce in those markets.

The Standard Chartered’s most recent food report claims food prices are at a historic high and rising, around 80 percent higher than the low mid-2002 levels. Rupani said that prices of sugar and rice had tripled over the past five years.

The BMI is understood to have learned that the UAE government is making numerous efforts to increase the number of food processing plants in the country. The government has invested about $1.4bn into the food sector since 1994, and there are 150 food processing plants operational in the UAE today.

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In 2004, based on a complaint from Australia, Brazil and Thailand, which argued the EU was dumping its excess sugar into the global market, the WTO enforced a ceiling of 1.374mn tonnes on the EU sugar exports. Then, the WTO’s directive was in line with the world sugar prices which was comparatively far lower than the EU prices. Last month, Brussels had rejected beet growers’ demands to allow more of Europe’s sugar surplus onto the global market.

According to Agrimoney, a website that informs on the agriculture markets, Mariann Fischer Boel, the EU agriculture commissioner has received legal advice on whether, “in these exceptional circumstances”, the region can breach its export limit. Ms Boel told a meeting of European farm ministers this week that she was likely to announce a decision on surplus sugar exports by this month end.

As the sugar producers in France and Germany, Europe’s top producers, reaped the biggest harvest since 2006 are reported to be in favour of surplus export. The CIBE in its latest press release stated while the world was crying for sugar, it was inexplicable why the sector was not allowed to obtain licenses to export more sugar now.

The EU sugar growers argue that since the world sugar prices are high the EU sugar injection to world market would not tantamount to dumping. They also feel the availability of sugar to the global market will remove shortage, help farmers an opportunity to earn more and provide consumers to get sugar at a lower cost.

Severe shortage and price spiraling of sugar has already created serious problems to consumers as well as the ruling party in India, the largest sugar consumer. The price of sugar in India has more than doubled in a period of 12 months.

There are clear indicators that in the coming quarters, several countries will line up for more sugar by increasing their import limits. An estimate from Moscow analysis group, Ikar that Russia will raise imports of raw sugar by 66 percent to 2.45 tonnes in 2010, and Pakistan for 50,000 tonnes of white sugar.

World sugar production is short of demand by over 14mn tonnes this year primarily due to vagaries of weather in Brazil and India, the largest sugar producers. Furthermore, the price of refined sugar is expected to reach a 20-year high of 30 cents per pound on the commodity market.

This year, India faced shortage after several years of excess sugar production due to monsoon failure and growers moving on to other crops. On the contrary, Brazil failed to produce enough owing to excess rain and increase in ethanol use.

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