The Suez Canal Authority Chairman Ahmed Fadel announced at a press conference Canal’s revenue in the 2008-09 fiscal year which ended on June 30, crimped to $4.74bn from its all-time high of $5.1bn of the previous year. However, Fadel claimed it was the downturn that had resulted in lower revenues rather than the piracy as piracy remained a bane to many other parts of the world.

Fadel also indicated that the impact on shipping from piracy in the Gulf of Aden off the Horn of Africa had been exaggerated. The pirate attacks in the Gulf of Aden, a key route to the canal, had scared off many ship owners to divert their vessels through the old route of Cape of Good Hope.

The Canal’s revenue loss is cited has the major reason for the slower 4.7 GDP growth of Egypt as compared to 7 percent of the past three years. This fiscal, 19,354 ships passed through the waterway which connects the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea with regards to 21,080 in 2007-08. About 811.4mn tons of goods passed the canal during the same period, down 8.9 percent from 890mn tons of the previous year.

Fadel stated that the government had taken number of steps to attract higher traffic including keeping the toll unchanged and infrastructural improvements to accommodate all kinds of ships. The authority had almost completed work on dredging and deepening of the Canal which when finished would allow to handle ships over 240,000 tons, up from the current 200,000 ton limit. Besides, the deepening of the Canal from 62 feet to 66 feet is expected to pave way for 64 percent of the world’s oil tanks and 99 percent of the cargo ships to transit through the water way by this year end.

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The ITC found children or siblings of the people involved in the organic farming activities were better fed, better clothed and performed better at school than others. The workers of this sector were better informed about the ill-effects of dangerous diseases such as, HIV/AIDS. They also enjoyed better human resources development practices including employee safety, free transport and so on.

Lately, the growing concern over climate change has tagged ‘Food miles’ to airfreighted products threatening livelihoods of many people in Kenya and other African countries involved in this trade. Various organic certifiers from Europe have even withdrawn organic certification to airfreighted products by branding them as products of high carbon footprint.

However, due to the concerted effort by the ITC and the DFID, the UK government department which works for human development and poverty alleviation, the Soil Association certifier has assured that they would continue to certify airfreighted organic products from Africa. ITC strongly argued that despite the UK beef production generated many times more greenhouse gases than other forms of animal protein production it passed similar certification test. Interestingly findings of a research showed a 10km car trip to a supermarket generated more carbon emissions than airfreighting a kilogram of beans from Kenya.

The leading airfreight export countries are Kenya, Egypt, Morocco, Zambia and the US. There are also other African nations involved in this trade including South Africa, Cameroon, Gambia and Ghana. ITC feels a sustained growth in the organic market without any hiccups like that of the certification issue could help many farmers and workers in Africa to lead a quality life.

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Turkey has also imposed similar duties on Indian goods during the same period. Indian governmental agencies involved in the exercise of getting the tariff rolled back appeared confident as Egypt’s decision was likely to prompt Turkey to follow the same steps to avoid any confrontation with India in this regard.

Ever since Egypt and Turkey imposed these additional duties, India had taken up the cause to both governments to have a relook at the issue and warned that they would challenge this at the WTO. The imposition of such tariffs is in direct violation to the WTO rules unless it proved that the imports are causing serious damage to its domestic industry.

Egypt’s move is likely to act as a disincentive to other countries that are planning to slap such duties on Indian goods. However, The Confederation of Indian Textile Industry (CITI) said the tariff roll back would have only marginal impact on the exports since the global economy had not recovered yet.

The tariff imposed by Egypt in January on Indian goods was for a period of one year which included half a dollar on every kilogramme of cotton textile, and every kilogramme of processed sugar attracted $1. India is the largest exporter of cotton yarn to Egypt and the exports stood at about $115mn in 2007-08 fiscal. The two-way overall trade during the same period between both countries was about $3.5bn.

Indian exports have recorded a negative growth for the past five months, and the country is leaving no stone unturned to get them back on track. According to the Ministry of Commerce of India the talks are progressing to get a similar decision from the Turkish government.

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