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Afrocenter Glossary of Business Terms | |
| ACP COUNTRIES Context is: trade term. African, Caribbean, and Pacific countries associated with the European Community under the Lomé Convention. See also Developing Countries; European Community; European Union; Lomé Convention; Reverse Preferences; Tropical Products. | |
| AGREEMENT ON GOVERNMENT PROCUREMENT (GPA) Context is: trade term. A WTO agreement that went into effect on January 1, 1996, replacing the 1979 GATT Government Procurement Code. The GPA is one of four plurilateral nontariff barrier agreements concluded during the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations. As a plurilateral, rather than a multilateral, WTO agreement, the GPA is binding only on members that have acceded to it, not on WTO members generally. The 26 signatories are: Aruba; Canada; European Union Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, and the United Kingdom; Hong Kong; Israel; Japan; South Korea; Liechtenstein; Norway; Singapore; Switzerland; and the United States. South Korea did not assume obligations until January 1997. The purpose of this agreement is to further open up government procurement markets to international competition. Among other things, GPA signatories are required to waive all discriminatory government procurement policies for GPA-covered purchases unless otherwise set out in their respective schedules. The GPA also requires each signatory to provide nondiscriminatory, timely, transparent, and effective bid challenge procedures to allow interested suppliers to challenge alleged violations of the GPA's procedures. The GPA prohibits the use of offsets in the qualification or selection of suppliers or the evaluation of tenders or the award of contracts unless a signatory specifically negotiates an exception in its schedule. See also Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade; Codes of Conduct; Conditional Most-Favored-Nation Treatment; Discrimination; General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade; General Agreement on Trade in Services; Government Procurement Policies and Practices; Multilateral Agreement; Nontariff Barriers; Tokyo Round; Trade Agreements Act of 1979; Targeting; Transparency; Uruguay Round; World Trade Organization. | |
| AIRCRAFT AGREEMENT Context is: trade term. The Agreement on Trade in Civil Aircraft, sometimes referred to as the Aircraft Code, was signed in Geneva in December 1979 and entered into force on January 1, 1980. This was the only multilateral sectoral agreement designed to expand trade in manufactured products that was negotiated during the 1973-79 Tokyo Round of GATT negotiations. It is intended to provide a new international framework for free trade in civil aircraft. It uniquely addresses tariff and nontariff issues in a single sectoral context. It eliminates tariffs on civil aircraft, engines, most components, and ground flight simulators. On nontariff issues, the agreement establishes new international commitments concerning government intervention in aircraft, aircraft component, and simulator procurement, including disciplines on technical or standards barriers with respect to certification requirements and specifications on operations and maintenance procedures; government-directed procurement actions and mandatory subcontracts; sales-related inducements; quantitative trade restrictions; and government supports. Subsequent negotiations have resulted in modifications to the agreement and additions to its annex of duty-free items in 1982, 1983, 1985, and 1986. The original signatories to the agreement were Austria, Canada, the member states of the European Economic Community, the European Community, Japan, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States. Romania and Egypt acceded to the agreement later, as did Greece, Portugal, and Spain when they joined the EC. Currently there are 22 signatories to the agreement. While the Uruguay Round did not result in changes to the Agreement on Trade in Civil Aircraft, the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), a WTO agreement negotiated in the Uruguay Round, implements rules and obligations designed to liberalize trade in services generally, including air transport services. See also Codes of Conduct; Free Trade; General Agreement on Trade in Services; Nontariff Barriers; Tariff; Tokyo Round; Uruguay Round; World Trade Organization. | |
| BRETTON WOODS CONFERENCE Context is: trade term. A meeting of central bank economists and other government officials, formally known as the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, that took place in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in July 1944. The conference was convened to consider alternative proposals put forward by British and American financial experts relating to international payments problems, the economic reconstruction needs of Europe upon the conclusion of World War II, and the need to ensure stable exchange rates and free convertibility of currencies. The compromise solution negotiated at Bretton Woods led to the establishment of an International Monetary Fund and an International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (the World Bank). The presumed need for an International Trade Organization was also informally considered at Bretton Woods. See also General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade; International Monetary Fund; World Bank. | |
| COMMISSION OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITY Context is: trade term. See European Commission. | |
| COMMON AGRICULTURAL POLICY (CAP) Context is: trade term. A comprehensive system of production targets and market regulations adopted by the European Community covering most agricultural goods produced within the EC. Its purposes are to achieve fair and rising standards of living for the farm populations of member states, stable agricultural markets, and increased farm productivity and food security within the EC. To achieve these objectives, the CAP relies on uniform prices and the free circulation of agricultural goods among member states; preferences for agricultural products produced within the EC; the imposition of variable levies on imported goods to bring their prices to the level of EC prices; and subsidization of exports to countries outside the EC. (In practice, agricultural prices sometimes vary from one member state to another, principally because exchange rates applied to goods moving from one country to another do not always reflect market exchange rates.) The European Community finances the CAP through receipts from customs duties, including variable levies, and the value-added tax. See also Conversion Product; Deficiency Payments; Domestic Subsidy; European Community; Export Subsidy; Restitutions; Threshold Price; Value-Added Tax; Variable Levy. | |
| COMMON EXTERNAL TARIFF (CET or sometimes CXT) Context is: trade term. A tariff rate uniformly applied by a common market or customs union, such as the European Community, to imports from countries outside the union. For example, the European internal market is based on the principle of a free internal trade area with a common external tariff [sometimes referred to in French as the Tariff Extérieur Commun (TEC)] applied to products imported from non-member countries. "Free trade areas" do not necessarily have common external tariffs, and free trade agreements seldom have common external tariffs. See also Customs; Customs Area; Customs Union; European Community; Free Trade Area Agreement; Free Trade Area of the Americas; Free Zone; General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade; Kyoto Convention; MERCOSUR; North American Free Trade Agreement; Tariff; Tariff Schedules; Trade Diversion; U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement. | |
| COMMON MARKET Context is: trade term. See Customs Union; European Coal and Steel Community; European Community. | |
| COUNCIL OF MINISTERS Context is: trade term. See Council of the European Union. | |
| COUNCIL OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITY Context is: trade term. See European Community. | |
| COUNCIL OF THE EUROPEAN UNION Context is: trade term. Usually referred to as the Council of Ministers, one of the official institutions of the European Union. (It should not be confused with the European Council of the European Union.) While the European Commission is charged with proposing legislation, the Council of Ministers has the power to adopt it, although in certain cases only with the approval of the European Parliament. Depending on the matter at issue, the Council of Ministers must take decisions either by qualified majority voting or by unanimity. The Council of Ministers is made up of representatives usually government ministers from all EU member states. As a result, the council is a forum in which EU member states attempt to assert their interests. The Council of Ministers, which is based in Brussels, Belgium, addresses the major areas of EU policy, including agriculture, economy, environment, foreign affairs, finance, industry, and transport. See also European Community; European Commission; European Council; European Parliament; European Union. | |
| COUNTERTRADE (CT) Context is: trade term. Arrangements under which the sale of goods or services from one country to another are linked to sales in the opposite direction. Countertrade arrangements frequently characterize East-West trade. Such transactions include: Counterpurchase contracts that stipulate that the vendor must purchase goods from the importer equivalent in value to a specified percentage of the value of the exported goods; Reverse countertrade contracts that require an importer (a U.S. buyer of machine tools from Eastern Europe, for example) to export goods equivalent in value to a specified percentage of the value of the imported goods an obligation that can be sold to an exporter in a third country; Buy-back (or compensation) arrangements through which a company selling equipment, licenses, technology, or a turnkey plant agrees to accept in full or partial payment products manufactured with such equipment, licenses, technology, or plant; Clearing agreements between two countries that agree to purchase specific amounts of each other's products over a certain period of time, using a designated "clearing currency" in the transactions; Switch arrangements that permit the sale of unpaid balances in a clearing account to be sold to a third party, usually at a discount, that may be used for producing goods in the country holding the balance; Swap schemes through which products from different locations are traded to save transportation costs (for example, Russian oil may be swapped for oil from a Latin American producer, so the Russian oil is shipped to a country in South Asia, while the Latin American oil is shipped to Cuba); Barter arrangements through which two parties directly exchange goods deemed to be of approximately equivalent value without any flow of money taking place. See also Barter; East-West Trade; Nonmarket Economy; Offset Requirements; Tied Loan; Turnkey Contract. | |
| CUSTOMS AREA Context is: trade term. A geographic area, usually but not necessarily identical to one or several contiguous national political jurisdictions, applying a particular tariff schedule on goods entering or leaving the area. See also Common External Tariff; Customs; Customs Union; European Community; Free Trade Area Agreement; Free Trade Area of the Americas; Free Zone; General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade; Kyoto Convention; MERCOSUR; North American Free Trade Agreement; Tariff; Tariff Schedules; Trade Diversion; U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement. | |
| CUSTOMS UNION Context is: trade term. A group of nations that have eliminated tariffs and sometimes other barriers that impede trade with each other, while maintaining a common external tariff on goods imported from outside the union. GATT Article XXIV defines the meaning of a customs union in GATT and the application of other GATT provisions to customs unions. See also Common External Tariff; Customs Area; Customs; European Community; Free Trade Area Agreement; Free Trade Area of the Americas; Free Zone; General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade; Kyoto Convention; MERCOSUR; North American Free Trade Agreement; Tariff; Tariff Schedules; Trade Diversion; U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement; Welfare. | |
| DEVELOPING COUNTRIES Context is: trade term. A broad range of countries that generally lack a high degree of industrialization, infrastructure, and other capital investment, sophisticated technology, widespread literacy, and advanced living standards among their populations as a whole. The developing countries are sometimes collectively designated as the Third World and sometimes as the South, because a large number of them are in the Southern Hemisphere. All of the countries of Africa (except South Africa), Asia (except Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan), and Oceania (except Australia, Japan, and New Zealand), Latin America, and the Middle East are generally considered developing countries, as are a few European countries (Cyprus, Malta, Turkey, Poland, and Hungary, for example). Some experts have identified four subcategories of developing countries as having different economic needs and interests: A few relatively wealthy OPEC countries sometimes referred to as oil-exporting developing countries share a particular interest in a financially sound international economy and open capital markets. Newly Industrializing Economies (NIEs) have a growing stake in an open international trading system. A number of middle-income countries principally commodity exporters have shown a particular interest in commodity stabilization schemes. Some 48 very poor countries (least developed countries) are predominantly agricultural, have sharply limited development prospects during the near future, and tend to be heavily dependent on official development assistance. See also ACP Countries; Additionality; Agency for International Development; Bilateral Aid; Caribbean Basin Initiative; Development Assistance Committee; Economic Cooperation Among Developing Countries; Economic Development; Enabling Clause; Enterprise for the Americas Initiative; Framework Agreement; Generalized System of Preferences; Global System of Trade Preferences; Graduation; Group of 77; International Finance Corporation; International Trade Center UNCTAD/WTO; Least Developed Countries; Lomé Convention; Multilateral Aid; Newly Industrializing Countries; Non-Aligned Movement; North-South Trade; Official Development Assistance; Paris Club; Part IV of the GATT; Public Law 480; Reciprocity; Reverse Preferences; Soft Loan; South-South Trade; Special and Differential Treatment; Structural Change; Substantial New Program of Action; Textiles; Transfer Payments; Tropical Products; United Nations Conference on Trade and Development; United Nations Development Program. | |
| DOMESTIC SYSTEM OF PRODUCTION Context is: trade term. The system of economic production that prevailed in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries, prior to the Industrial Revolution, under which merchants supplied materials and sometimes tools and machines to workers who produced finished goods in their homes and turned them over to the merchants. See also Industrial Revolution; Production. | |
| EAST-WEST TRADE Context is: trade term. Referred to trade between the former Soviet Union and the socialist countries of Eastern Europe (East) on the one hand, and the developed market economy countries of Western Europe, North America, and Japan on the other (West). See also Countertrade; Nonmarket Economy. | |
| EBRD Context is: trade term. See European Bank. | |
| EC Context is: trade term. See European Community. | |
| ECSC Context is: trade term. See European Coal and Steel Community. | |
| EEC Context is: trade term. See European Community. | |
| EFTA Context is: trade term. See European Free Trade Association. | |
| EPO Context is: business term. European Patent Office | |
| EU Context is: business term. European Union | |
| EU Context is: trade term. See European Union. | |
