Word: important
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...June a "new industrial policy" was added that abolished import quotas and removed bureaucratic red tape, and aims to slash high tariffs over the next five years. The move effectively ended an indulgent era of high tariffs and import quotas, during which duties ranged up to 105% and imports of 1,200 goods were prohibited outright. Still to be tackled is the thorny issue of foreign debt. Since Brazil stopped payments, arrears of $7 billion have accumulated, taxing the patience of creditors...
...House gave speedy 416-0 approval to a pending economic sanctions bill aimed at Iraq. The measure would cut off Iraq's $200 million a year in Export-Import Bank credits and tighten restrictions on U.S. exports that could have military as well as civilian uses...
...Hamad, a Palestinian, the project had special import. Born in Rafat, a now demolished Arab village located in what is Israel today, he says, "I am acutely aware that we Palestinians are misunderstood as a people." He tells of an elegant Palestinian woman, Hanan Bargouthi, who, having undergone a humiliating search at a London airport, observed bitterly, "I am Palestinian by birth, Jordanian by passport, Israeli because of the occupation and a terrorist according to security people...
Arguments like this, however, often fail to distinguish between the religious fanatics who garner headlines with terrorist attacks and the far more numerous Muslims who seek a greater say in their countries' policies. Anti-Islamic attitudes also tend to obscure the import of the fundamentalists' electoral gains. In Jordan's elections last November and now in Algeria, fundamentalist organizations offered the only strong vehicle for voters to register a protest against government policies...
Another problem is that the privatization of Poland's vast state-owned sector, much of it antiquated and unprofitable, is proving much more difficult than most economists imagined. When shares in a profitable import-export company were offered to the public recently, only 20% were purchased. A parliamentary committee is studying other ways of unloading state-owned companies, including a novel plan first discussed in Czechoslovakia that would create a capital market by giving shares to each citizen. The shares could later be traded on a stock exchange. "We have to remember that society has been pauperized," says Andrzej Bratkowski...