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| New Caledonia Is Going To Strengthen Regulations For Exports Of Nickel Ores |
| = Aiming To Enforce Regulations From April 2007, To Discuss With French Ministry Of Territory |
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The regulations for exports of nickel ores produced in New Caledonia are in the direction to strengthen. The Government of France and the Government of New Caledonia are aiming to enforce the above regulation from April of 2007 and will prepare necessary legal procedure accordingly. The regulations, called as new value-added law for exports of nickel ores, are a powerful act, having belonged to the category of the Noumea Agreement enacted in May of 1998, and the enforcement of the above regulations is expected to control fully the exports of nickel ores from New Caledonia. The characteristics of new value-added law in relation to exports of nickel ores are (1) the sources to export nickel ores from New Caledonia, excluding those which already exported nickel ores, are controlled and (2) the grade of nickel ores to be exported has to be 2.1% of nickel content. Nickel ores produced in New Caledonia have been so far exporting to Japan, Australia and Ukraine and the exports for other countries than these three destinations will be controlled. Also, the nickel ore ( garnierite ore ) currently exported from New Caledonia to Japan has contained 2.35% of nickel as the standard to comply with the request from shippers, while Japanese side has required to be 2.4% of nickel content. ( For a reference, the requests of nickel content from both sides of supply and demand are opposite and, therefore, a differential of nickel contents is compensated by a premium of 3.5 US-Cents per lb. ) However, some of the exporters of nickel ores ( producers of nickel ores ) in New Caledonia has established joint venture companies with enterprises in South Korea and China by capital investment of 51% and, accordingly, nickel ores to be delivered to these joint venture companies are not applied to this new law. As a matter of fact, the producers of nickel ores in New Caledonia ( SMSP ) has established in January of 2006 a joint venture company with Posco of South Korea to produce ferro-nickel and also established in 2006 another joint venture company with Xin'anjiang Ferro-Alloy Works of China to produce ferro-nickel. For a reference, this new valued-added law in relation to exports of nickel ores from New Caledonia aimed to enforce from April of 2007 is connected with the Noumea Agreement and, therefore, it is required to discuss with the Government of France on this enforcement. After that, it is also requested to discuss with the Government of New Caledonia on this new law. In France, it is scheduled to hold the election of New President and also the election of National Assembly and, therefore, many complicated battles between government party and nongovernment party are anticipated . Accordingly, new regulations for exports of nickel ores from New Caledonia are supposed to have turns and twists but the parties concerned have viewed that a tide to regulate exports of New Caledonian nickel ores will be unlikely to have a substantial change. |
| last modified : Fri 12 Jan, 2007 [14:13] |
