Singapore tightens controls on strategic trade with North Korea and Iran

The Singapore Customs said on Friday that it is tightening its strategic trade controls with new prohibitions on transactions with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and Iran.
At present, the prohibitions to the two countries include arms or related materials, certain vacuum systems and pumps, compressors and gas blowers, as well as luxury goods such as cigars, wines and spirits and plasma televisions. In the revised list, there will be new prohibitions on any arms as defined by the United Nations Register of Conventional Arms, and related materials.

Effective November 1, 2010, the revisions by Singapore Customs are “timely in light of the recent increasing global attention on curbing illicit diversions of strategic controlled goods and technology to sanctioned countries and rogue entities,” the Singapore Customs said in a statement.

The Singapore Customs added that the latest amendments to the list of prohibited imports, exports and goods to/from the North Korea and Iran are “in line with the recent United Nations Security Council Resolutions’ sanctions imposed on North Korea and Iran as well as Singapore’s continuous commitment to its international obligations. ”

Singapore’s trade with the DPRK and Iran accounted for less than 0.4% of the total trade value of 747B Singapore dollars (US$575B) in Y 2009. The goods transacted with the 2 countries include commodities as well as agricultural, tobacco and consumer products.—Paul A. Ebeling, Jnr. www.livetradingnews.com

Posted by Shayne Heffernan on Oct 29th, 2010and filed underAnalysis, Latest News.You can follow any responses to this entry through theRSS 2.0You can leave a response by filling following comment form or trackback to this entry from your site