The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 1994 has resulted in the GATT Contracting States making a renewed commitment to freer global trade and trade liberalisation. These Contracting States signalled their commitment to GATT policies and principles by undertaking to abolish all those non-tariff barriers which were not converted to tariffs and to decrease all tariffs applied by their domestic economies. The movement away from protectionism is intended to bring contracting states in line with the GATT most-favoured-nation and national treatment principles. The only exceptions to these principles are the regional trade arrangements which can be implemented in accordance with Article XXIV of GATT 1947 and the Understanding on the Implementation of Article XXIV of GATT 1947. Regional trade arrangements such as customs unions and free-trade areas have been allowed by the GATT as they are deemed to promote trade liberalisation through the removal of substantially all trade restrictions between countries party to these trade arrangements. In practice this has not been the case, however, as these regional trade arrangements have been known to apply very protectionist trade policies. This research determines whether regional trade arrangements are inherently protective ie does the nature of these regional trade arrangements encourage protectionism? The external trade policies of the European Union (EU), Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) are analysed to determine whether the contracting parties to regional trade arrangements have corrupted the GATT provisions and so contributed towards the protectionist nature of these regional trade arrangements. The internal trade provisions relating to the implementation of these regional trade arrangements have also been discussed to determine their compliance with Article XXIV of GATT 1947. As all the selected regional trade arrangements have direct or indirect links to South Africa, the implications of the policies chosen by these parties for South Africa have also been discussed. Analysis of the EU, SADC, SACU and ASEAN has shown that prior to the adoption of the GATT 1994, the free-trade areas and customs unions were not implemented in accordance with Article XXIV provisions. These regional trade arrangements have been moulded to fit the economic aspirations of the relevant contracting states. Of the regional trade arrangements accepted by the GATT, free-trade areas have been found to be the least protectionist and are the least likely to be perverted by contracting parties. Customs unions, on the other hand, may encourage contracting parties to protect their economies as they rely on group participation rather than individual participation. Individual Member States become responsible to the group which provides these states with greater economic power. As a result Member States are motivated to protect the new group entity from outside competition. In this way, they are inherently protective. Safeguards are therefore necessary to protect individual non-Member States from such behaviour. The implications of protectionism for South Africa, SADC and SACU have also been discussed.

The Diploma Thesis is focused on description of public transport systems in Prague and Sydney and their final comparison. Theoretical part is describing development of transport, transport infrastructure, public transport priority, system of tariffs, means of transport etc. In practical part both systems are described in detail with focus on organization and functionality. Final comparison is focused on confrontation from many points of view to capture the most of identical or different aspects.

Anti-dumping duties, safeguards and countervailing duties are collectively, within the context of the WTO, referred to as „trade remedies.‟ More specifically, the imposition of anti-dumping duties is a remedial measure for dealing with imports that cause or threatens to cause injury to local producers. Under the WTO framework, Article VI of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1994 and the Agreement on the Implementation of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1994 provides the rules for applying anti-dumping duties by member countries. Nigeria has been a member of the WTO since 1995 and can only apply anti-dumping duties provided it adheres to the rules governing anti-dumping. The purpose of this study is to ascertain whether the proposed Anti-dumping and Countervailing Bill, 2010 is consistent with WTO jurisprudence on anti-dumping. This study also highlights landmark developments in South Africa‟s anti-dumping system with a view to providing direction to Nigeria in order for its proposed national legislation on anti-dumping to be WTO compliant. / Dissertation (LLM)--University of Pretoria, 2014 / gm2015 / Centre for Human Rights / LLM / Unrestricted

Thesis (MTech (Business Administration))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2019 / Financial sustainability of water and sewerage provision is undermined by consumers’ inability and reluctance to pay service fees. Consequently, the escalation of operational and maintenance costs of water and sewerage provision is a major challenge facing South African municipalities. This study examines the provision of water and sewerage services and presents a strategic framework to manage revenue collection to achieve water and sewerage provision financial sustainability. The study applied interpretive epistemology research method. Content analysis was used to collect and analyse data for an improved understanding of service provision and revenue collection mantra. Unlike the other method such as the exploratory research method that provides a description of the observed phenomenon, an interpretive epistemology methodology provides deeper insights into management strategies that are required in order to achieve sustainable water and sewerage provision. The main objective of this study was to investigate factors affecting financial sustainability of water and sewerage provision in Cape Town. The qualitative data were analysed using content method of analysis to gain better meaning of the phenomenon being studied. The results show that although the water and sanitation department of the participating organisation is making efforts to generate revenue through implementing water and sanitation services payments, there are some residents who refuse to pay for services, resulting in revenue loss. The other reason for loss of revenue is unaccounted water which is the focus of the water and sewerage, demand management and strategy section; this is as a result of leaks, illegal connections, unregistered car wash bays, unmetered connections and informal settlement areas which do not get enough subsidies. The reasons advanced for unwillingness to pay for water and sanitation services by consumers were unemployment, poverty, unequal distribution of services and general ignorance. This study has found evidence of a reluctance toward service payment by participating consumers – requiring strategies to encourage rates payments.

No description available.

No description available.

Parking is an old concept, which fundamentally involves leaving a vehicle at a place. Parking has been considered as a subsidiary activity to owning a car. However, these days owning a car has become the norm, which leads to a greater demand for parking. Unregulated parking demand often leads to increased traffic congestion, when there are not enough parking spaces to keep up with the demand. Congestion itself has a negative impact on the environment and causes safety issues. A common solution to reduce congestion have been by influencing the demand for parking spaces through parking prices. During recent years, the existing pricing strategies have not been able to keep up with the daily changes in demand. Therefore, stakeholders in the parking industry have started to shift towards working for dynamic pricing. Dynamic pricing utilizes a pricing strategy that sets the price according to the current demand and occupancy. However, the parking industry is missing a key feature to fully enable dynamic pricing. There is no communication standard in the parking industry. Thus, there is no efficient communication mean for the stakeholders to share their parking-related information (such as location, occupancy, and tariff data). This thesis has developed and proposes a protocol for sharing such parking-related information. The aim is that the protocol will be used as a communication standard in the parking industry. Due to limited time, the most focus was put on completing the protocol for tariff data. However, the developed protocol can be considered as a partial solution towards dynamic pricing. Because the protocol can still be used to properly share tariff data. Based on the evaluation, the protocol could express a variety of tariffs. The tariffs that are expressible have use cases such as early bird, residential, or on-street parking. To make integration easier, for the parking industry, the protocol includes tools to aid integrations of the protocol. A future work will be to complete the support of location and occupancy related data. Additionally, it has been discussed that the protocol will onwards be developed as open-source. / Parkering har sedan länge varit ett stort område, vilket enkelt innebär att ett fordon lämnas på en plats. Parkering har för det mesta haft ett sekundärt syfte från att äga en bil. Men eftersom antalet bilägare ökar, ökar även parkeringsbehovet. Om det inte finns tillräckligt med parkeringar för att kunna tillfredsställa behovet, leder det till en ökad trafikträngsel. Trafikträngsel skapar både miljöproblem och säkerhetsproblem. Den huvudsakliga metoden för att påverka parkeringsbehovet har varit genom att skapa lägre en efterfrågan. Efterfrågan har sänkts genom att justeringar av parkeringsavgifter. Då efterfrågan på senaste tiden har ökat markant, räcker de traditionella parkeringsavgifterna inte längre till. För att lösa problemen, har många bolag och organisationer börjat jobba mot en dynamisk prissättning. Dynamisk prissättning använder sig av en prisstrategi som sätter parkeringsavgifterna i realtid baserat på den nuvarande efterfrågan och tillgång. Däremot har parkeringsindustrin i nuläget inte de nödvändiga kommunikationskanalerna som krävs för att anta en dynamisk prissättning. Examensarbetets huvudsyfte har varit att utveckla ett protokoll som gör det möjligt att dela parkeringsrelaterade data så som: plats-, ockuperings- och tariffdata. Huvudmålet med protokollet är att det senare ska kunna bli en standard i parkeringsindustrin. På grund av tidsbegränsningar, har den största fokusen av utvecklingen lagt på stöd för tariffdata. Därmed kan inte protokollet antas som den fullständiga lösningen för dynamisk prissättning. Dock, kan protokollet ses som en delvis lösning, då det med protokollet är möjligt att korrekt dela med sig av tariffdata. Evalueringen visade att det gick, med hjälp av det utvecklade protokollet, att beskriva flera sorters tariffer utan att förlora någon viktig information. Tariffer som gick att beskriva används för bland annat: gatu-, infarts- och boendeparkeringar. Ett framtida projekt blir att utveckla och färdigställa protokollet för fullt stöd av plats- och ockuperingsdata. Ytterligare har det diskuterats om att den fortsatta utvecklingen av protokollet, ske som öppen källkod (open-source).

Additional electricity meters behind the grid access point can improve understanding of energy consumption patterns and thus, adjust consumption behavior. For this study, smart meters were installed in three hostels, out of which two are analyzed further in this paper. Starting from an onsite inspection, all appliances were assigned to reasonable groups for sub-metering. Based on data for the year 2021, the sites are characterized according to the sub-metering concept. In addition, load profiles for type-days are derived, which allows to establish a baseload during COVID lockdown and compare it to consumption patterns for normal occupation. In the prescriptive part, the demand profiles are analyzed regarding their economic potential for load shifting. Consumption data for one week with normal occupation is used as input for techno-economic modeling. The mixed-integer model minimizes electricity purchasing costs for different scenarios including dynamic tariffs and onsite generation from photovoltaics.

The Southern Africa Customs Union was first established in 1889 between the Cape of Good Hope and the Orange Free State. It has since undergone extensive change resulting in the current 2002 Agreement which includes an institutional framework. SACU’s member states comprise of Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa and Swaziland. The Agreement thrives on the principle of free trade within the customs union and common external tariffs on goods entering the customs area. However, as an exception to free trade, article 25(1) of the 2002 Agreement recognises the right of a member state to prohibit the importation or exportation of any goods from its area. This may be done for economic, social, cultural or other reasons as may be agreed upon by the Council. However, article 25(3) prohibits the use of article 25(1) as a means to protect infant industries. As a further exception to free trade, article 26 of the 2002 Agreement recognises the right of all other member states, except South Africa, to protect their infant industries. The protection offered in this article is limited, because the definition of infant industry is not clear as to when the inception of such an industry must be. This causes problems with the application of article 26, especially where an industry was established, but only became operational after the expiry of eight years, or has been established for over eight years on a small scale and needs protection in order to enlarge and intensify its operations. Due to this shortfall, Namibia used its Import and Export Control Act 30 of 1994 to protect a key industry in Namibia, the poultry industry. However, according to article 25(3), this may be considered a violation, because Namibia has used its national legislation to protect an infant industry. The key finding of this study is that the protection of infant industries in SACU is not sufficient to cater for the economic needs of the member states. To this end, SACU must consider allowing national legislation to supplement and monitor infant industry protection in the member states’ areas. In addition, SACUs institutional framework, which is not fully operational at present, must be established to function fully, as this may help address some of the issues in SACU. / LLM (Import and Export Law), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

The Southern Africa Customs Union was first established in 1889 between the Cape of Good Hope and the Orange Free State. It has since undergone extensive change resulting in the current 2002 Agreement which includes an institutional framework. SACU’s member states comprise of Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa and Swaziland. The Agreement thrives on the principle of free trade within the customs union and common external tariffs on goods entering the customs area. However, as an exception to free trade, article 25(1) of the 2002 Agreement recognises the right of a member state to prohibit the importation or exportation of any goods from its area. This may be done for economic, social, cultural or other reasons as may be agreed upon by the Council. However, article 25(3) prohibits the use of article 25(1) as a means to protect infant industries. As a further exception to free trade, article 26 of the 2002 Agreement recognises the right of all other member states, except South Africa, to protect their infant industries. The protection offered in this article is limited, because the definition of infant industry is not clear as to when the inception of such an industry must be. This causes problems with the application of article 26, especially where an industry was established, but only became operational after the expiry of eight years, or has been established for over eight years on a small scale and needs protection in order to enlarge and intensify its operations. Due to this shortfall, Namibia used its Import and Export Control Act 30 of 1994 to protect a key industry in Namibia, the poultry industry. However, according to article 25(3), this may be considered a violation, because Namibia has used its national legislation to protect an infant industry. The key finding of this study is that the protection of infant industries in SACU is not sufficient to cater for the economic needs of the member states. To this end, SACU must consider allowing national legislation to supplement and monitor infant industry protection in the member states’ areas. In addition, SACUs institutional framework, which is not fully operational at present, must be established to function fully, as this may help address some of the issues in SACU. / LLM (Import and Export Law), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014