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Would better enforced Intellectual Property rights benefit Kyrgyz wearing apparel sector?

Kyrgyz Republic has its IP system since 1993 and the competent authority for it, is a State Service of IP and Innovation under the Government of the Kyrgyz Republic (Kyrgyzpatent). The country is a member of 70 multilateral international agreements in the area of IP, that are Paris and Berne Conventions, Madrid Agreement concerning the International Registration Marks, Patent Cooperation Treaty, TRIPS, Singapore Treaty on the Law of Trademark and others. After the collapse in 1991, production of textiles haven’t recovered fully. The need in huge investment in capital in this area and high competition of lower priced textiles from China did not allow the country to recover its textile industry after KR gained its independence and pursued a market economy. Thus, textiles and thread are now mainly supplied by importers, mainly from China. Despite the dying textile industry in Kyrgyzstan, the production of garment has been increasing for the past decade. While small portion of garme

Basic principles of Tariff Classification

Tariff Classification is one of the main areas of Customs Law and is crucial when imposing customs duties. Specific rules on classification can be found in HS Convention to which almost all the WTO Members (except Taipei) are party. HS consists of over 5000 commodity groups with a six-digit code. HS consists of: (1) Chapter, Heading and Sub-heading Notes; and (2) General Rules for the Interpretation (GIR) of the Harmonized System. The first one which is Chapter, Heading and Subheading Notes is the main step to identify the product classification. The second part, GIR provide certain principles to classify goods: (i) incomplete or unfinished goods if they don’t have a proper line are classified as finished goods; (ii) when goods are prima facie classifiable under two or more headings, classification shall be effected as follows. (a) A heading that provides a more specific description is to preferred to the more general description; (b) mixtures, composite goods consistin

What is Trade Facilitation?

Trade facilitation (TF)* deals with issues such as border infrastructure, customs procedures, non-tariff measures and other. In particular, the shipment process faces four types of procedures: commercial, transport, regulatory and financial. Each process can in turn increase the overall trade cost as it is delayed due to complicated non-transparent and sometimes costly procedures. Even worse is when such delays on every step happen chronically. This increases the costs so much that the firms become less competitive and may decide to slow down the trade flows. How does trade facilitation work in practice? Well, long delays at the border cause extra costs for the business in terms of losing a customer for future orders. The products might not arrive on time and the customer might not need it anymore or will reduce the price for the goods. If the goods being shipped are agricultural and/or perishable, they simply might not stay as fresh as they are and their value in terms of price pa

World Trade Organization

Today I will start a series of articles about the World Trade Organization (WTO) based on my notes. I hope this will shed some light to those readers who know little about this particular organization and the world trade as a whole. The history of WTO starts after the World War II when along with other organizations, such as International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB), International Trade Organization was about to be created, but instead a General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was signed. So, GATT was signed by 23 nations in Geneva in 1947 and came in force on 1 January 1948. GATT was a de facto International Organization. WTO came into force on 1 January 1995. The WTO Secretariat is in Geneva, Switzerland and is headed by Director General. In total GATT/WTO held 9 negotiation rounds from 1947 to 1994. The main objective of negotiation rounds is to decrease trade barriers among the WTO Members. In chronological order those rounds are: 1) Geneva - April 1947

Armenia and Eurasian Economic Union

Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan is an emerging union that is gaining more actuality and relevance in the post-Soviet territory with joining of additional countries as Armenia and Kyrgyz Republic. While it was seen as another not effective project of post-Soviet Union, it appeared to be a new-style project bringing tangible gain to its members and becoming a center of attention in the neighborhood and a viable alternative to the EU (Dragneva and Wolczuk, 2015). While some Central Asian countries as Kazakhstan and Kyrgyz Republic have been analyzing their costs and benefits by joining the EAEU, Caucasian countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia) have been planning to join the EU. Armenia is a small landlocked former Soviet Union country with population of around 3 million people. With an estimated per-capita GDP of US$ 3,619, Armenia is a lower middle-income country. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Armenia experienced a difficult tra

Mapping data - Kyrgyzstan Spatial

Recently Institute of Public Policy and Administration of University of Central Asia (IPPA-UCA) and International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) launched the online mapping tool named Kyrgyzstan Spatial (www.kyrgyzstanspatial.org). This application tool is a good way to see the socio-economic and food security situation in Kyrgyzstan. One may view the data on the map and see the regional differences in different sectors on national and sub-national level across time.