New OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises

OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises. Ministers from OECD and developing economies will today agree new guidelines to promote more responsible business conduct by multinational enterprises, and a second set of guidance to limit the use of conflict minerals. Forty-two countries will commit to new, tougher standards of corporate behaviour in the updated Guidelines for Multinational…

OECD establishes tax and development task force

With developing countries and other key stakeholders – including NGOs and business – as members, the Task Force will develop clear and effective mechanisms to make progress in the field of tax and development. It will convene in early 2010 as an informal group representative of all stakeholders, to develop clear and effective mechanisms for…

ADB Strengthens Business Processes to Boost Quality, Responsiveness of Work

ADB has begun implementing sweeping new changes to the way it does business to improve the quality and responsiveness of its work. Starting this January, business processes are being streamlined to make them more efficient, to lower transaction costs, and to enable ADB to respond swiftly to client needs. The improvements will help ADB realize…

New XING Group: Aid & Development Professionals

Karsten Weitzenegger took over the moderation of the Aid & Development Professionals group on XING (https://www.xing.com/net/aiddevprofs/) and invited all subscribers of this Newsletter. This Group a forum for international development professionals working with different organisations to end poverty world-wide. XING is an online networking tool you can use to manage all of your contacts and…

New Publications

Responsible enterprise, foreign direct investment, and investment promotion http://www.iied.org/pubs/display.php?o=15511IIED Foreign direct investment (FDI) is widely considered to be a key factor in economic development in middle and low income countries. Positively, it can be associated with the introduction of new technologies, job creation, access to new markets and improvements in the competitiveness of host countries.…

Websites of the Month June 2008

Africa Progress Panel http://www.africaprogresspanel.org The aim of the Africa Progress Panel is to focus world leaders’ attention on making the most of the growing number of opportunities for progress in Africa. It will also comment on the challenges African governments, the G8 and other international partners face in meeting the commitments made towards Africa’s development.…

Publications

A Billion to Gain? http://tinyurl.com/68lmym The reports of ING Microfinance Support systematically chart large global financial institutions’ activities and future plans in microfinance. This third edition in the ‘A Billion to Gain?’ series provides an update of the latest report and serves three main objectives: To update global financial institutions’ activities and future plans regarding…

Websites of the Month

>(loband)- http://www.loband.org loband is a service that simplifies web pages, in order to make them download faster over slow Internet connections. The simplified page viewed through loband will contain the same text information as the original. The formatting of the simplified page will be as similar to the original as possible, with colours and images…

Google.org names TechnoServe a Strategic Partner in International Development

Google.org has also awarded TechnoServe a new multi-year grant of $3 million to expand the organization’s private-sector development efforts. The focus of the strategic partnership is to spur the growth of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which are vital to ending the cycle of poverty in developing countries. SMEs create the bulk of new ideas…

EC Vice President Verheugen launches Enterprise Europe Network

European Commission Vice President Gunter Verheugen launched Enterprise Europe Network, a new and powerful European support network for enterprises. All major players of the business support community in Europe have united to offer a one-stop service to assist especially small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) to develop their full potential and innovative capacity. With more…

Moving Toward Competitiveness: A Value-Chain Approach

Developing countries face tremendous opportunities for economic growth given economic liberalization worldwide, and rapid advancement and application of information and communications technologies. However, along with the many opportunities global network trade has to offer, firms in developing countries also face strong competitive pressures for greater efficiency and productivity to maintain market share or even survive.…

Vaccinate your business against bad times

You are an owner of a small or medium-sized enterprise or self-employed. You invest 15 minutes of your time. You gain a preventive screening of your business that might save you a lot of time and money in the future! This really is an official EC site. http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/entrepreneurship/sme2chance/ewt/self_assessment.cfm