Icelands Business Laws - Essay Example

With the exemption to particular agricultural products, Iceland practices a liberal trade policy. Since being reviewed back in the year 2000, there has been no major changes made to Iceland's import system in spite of the entry into force of a new customs law on January 1, 2006. MFN (Most Favored-Nation) applied tariff in Iceland is 5.9% with a high percentage of tariff lines profit from duty free treatment. In agricultural products, average MFN applied tariffs is 18.3% according to WTO definition in comparison to other goods that is only 2.5%. The trade and investment relations in Iceland occur under preferential rules.

Under various free-trade agreements, Iceland offers preferential tariffs on imports from its 37 WTO Member Nations. Despite the fact that Iceland's growing number of preferential agreements may be lessened by the nation's application of the Pan-European Cumulation System for rules of origin, this has increased the complexity of its trade system. Other outside factors affecting imports in Iceland include a value-added tax, excise taxes, and some other specific charges. Generally, such charges is considered a burden to small economies like Iceland and is significantly heavier than that of the tariffs themselves falling mostly on imports as Iceland depends on imported products in meeting most of its domestic needs.

Export restrictions are practiced by Iceland with the purpose of protecting human and animal health. One specific example is the requirement that should be met by producers of lamb meat to export a percentage of their production in regulating the domestic supply. As a result, export goods made from agricultural raw materials gain from a refund equal to the difference between the cost of raw materials in the international and domestic markets. Iceland's law permits the establishment of free zones.

Apart from agriculture, aid coming from the state is low and is generally of a horizontal nature due to the fact that it is focused mainly on research and development, support of small and medium-sized businesses, training, and job creation.Iceland's Environmental Protection Iceland had learned a lesson from the 1783 volcanic eruption and just how much it cost to the environment. The environmental disaster has been described as an amazing and portentous one and full of horrible phenomena (White 1789).

The article of Brayshay and Grattan (1995) indicated that the emissions from Icelandic volcanic eruptions are capable of causing serious environmental damage, prompting alarm and panic among the population in locations far from the source. Grattan and Charman (1994) added that the palaeoenvironmental implications of this episode have been considered elsewhere, however the full impact on Britain was clearly profound and more work is needed to examine the wider European picture. The question being thrown for the future will be to seek more systematic evidence of crop damage and the impact of adverse weather on food prices.

Nevertheless, valuable information that greatly extend our knowledge not only of the impact of volcanic eruptions on distant societies and ecosystems have been made available on contemporary newspaper and journal accounts that also provide some new light on the character of the responses of those communities