A round-up of today's other news stories in brief
Irish electricity prices above most in Europe
The Republic has experienced double-digit growth in electricity prices in 2005, well above most other European states, a report from Cap Gemini shows.
Ireland, the Netherlands and Italy suffered from some of the highest electricity price rises in 2005, the survey shows. Irish and Dutch consumers paid €10 per 100 kilowatt hours, whereas Finnish and French consumers paid only €5 per kilowatt hour. One of the cheapest markets was Austria, where it cost €3.30 per kilowatt hour.
Ministers warn on trade deals
Poor countries will reject trade deals being offered by the European Union unless they are revised, plunging the global trading system into further uncertainty, ministers warned yesterday.
Led by Dame Billie Miller of Barbados, several representatives of the 77 countries negotiating new deals told a conference in Brussels yesterday that they were loaded in favour of the EU.
Dame Billie criticised Peter Mandelson, EU trade commissioner, for treating talks on "economic partnership agreements" (EPAs) as pure trade negotiations. Dame Billie chairs a group of 77 countries in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, mostly former European colonies.
The EPAs they are being offered will replace existing preferential trade deals first agreed more than 30 years ago, but now ruled illegal by the World Trade Organisation.
Dame Billie said the proposed EPAs were unbalanced as they did not accept that the EU should concede far greater market access than developing countries. - (Financial Times service)
Co-operation urged in dispute
The National Implementation Body (NIB) last night urged both sides in a dispute at Bank of Ireland to co-operate with the Labour Court.
The NIB said in a statement that it had considered the dispute between the bank and the Irish Bank Officials' Association (IBOA) over the company's proposal to amend pension arrangements for future employees.
Accountants seek simpler tax rules
Accountants have called on the Minister for Finance Brian Cowen to simplify tax compliance rules for both individual and companies in his upcoming budget.
The Consultative Committee of Accountancy Bodies - Ireland has also called for incentives in the budget to incentivise research and development in Ireland. The group, an umbrella body for Irish accountants, says improving the tax regime for R&D activities will help promote Ireland as a centre for high technology innovation.
The group's pre-Budget submission also suggests changes to tax rules to promote the use of biofuels and to encourage investment in renewable energy projects.
"Tax policy has an enormous influence on the economic life of our county," said Martin Wilson, president of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland and chairman of the umbrella group.
Moody's to issue stability scorecard
Moody's, the US ratings agency, is to issue banks with a financial stability scorecard to give investors a clearer view of the risk of defaults in the financial system in the event of a slowdown in the world economy.
The scorecard, which will rank the strongest banks A and the weakest E, will look at each bank's market share, geographical spread, earnings stability and diversification, as well as vulnerability to "event risk", or the chances that one or more large debts turning bad suddenly could affect the viability of a bank.
