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The Solomon Islands Government introduced the Mineral Resources Bill 2025 to the National Parliament on 14 July 2025, with the stated objective of replacing the Mines and Minerals Act 1990 with a modern, transparent regulatory framework for exploration, extraction, and processing authorisations. The Bill recognises resource-owner communities as active partners in mining, introduces small-scale mining community reserve permits, and expands ministerial powers over mining decisions; civil society groups and resource owners have raised concerns that some provisions reduce community rights relative to the 1990 Act. The Bills and Legislation Committee (BLC) opened a public inquiry on 1 September 2025 with submissions invited through June 2025; as of June 2026 the BLC inquiry is ongoing and the bill has not yet been enacted into law. Severity is rated 1 given pre-enactment status; passage and assent would raise the rating to 3 given Solomon Islands' role as a seabed-mineral moratorium signatory and its terrestrial critical-mineral potential (cobalt, nickel, gold, bauxite).

FinCEN published an order amending the three June 25, 2025 special-measure orders (FR docs 2025-11991, 2025-11993, 2025-11990; 90 FR 27770 et seq.) prohibiting US covered financial institutions from transmitting funds to or from CIBanco S.A., Intercam Banco S.A., and Vector Casa de Bolsa, S.A. de C.V. — three Mexican institutions designated of primary money-laundering concern in connection with illicit-opioid trafficking under Section 2313a of the Fiscal Year 2024 NDAA. This first extension shifts the effective date of all three prohibitions from July 21, 2025 to September 4, 2025 (a 45-day delay), giving US covered institutions additional time to wind down correspondent exposures. The underlying primary-money-laundering- concern findings remain unchanged — only the implementation deadline shifts.

Vietnam's Government adopted Decree 193/2025/ND-CP on 2 July 2025 (effective retroactively from 1 July 2025) as the primary operational statute elaborating the Law on Geology and Minerals No. 54/2024/QH15. The decree decentralises licensing for most mineral categories to provincial People's Committees while preserving central Ministry of Agriculture and Environment (MAE) authority over strategic and critical minerals, including rare earths, gold, uranium, and thorium. It codifies a three-tier Group I/II/III mineral classification, imposes a 100% financial-capacity bond requirement for exploration licences, sets a 40-working-day processing deadline, and defines the closed-enterprise framework that makes Vietnam's 1 January 2026 raw rare-earth export ban operationally enforceable through a Prime-Minister-designated list of licensed enterprises.

Türkiye's Grand National Assembly adopted Law No. 7552 (İklim Kanunu) on 2 July 2025, published in the Resmî Gazete on 9 July 2025 (Issue 32951) and entering into force immediately. The law is Türkiye's first comprehensive climate statute, establishing the legal framework for a national Emissions Trading System (ETS) — pilot phase from 2026, full implementation from 2028 — and creating the Carbon Market Board (Karbon Piyasası Kurulu) to govern allowance allocation and market operations. The ETS is designed for EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) compatibility, materially affecting Türkiye's steel, cement, aluminium, and fertilizer export sectors, for which the EU is the primary market.

Minister of Trade Regulation No. 20 of 2025, signed by Minister Budi Santoso on 30 June 2025 and effective 29 August 2025 (60 days after promulgation), reorganises Indonesia's import regime for chemicals, Hazardous Materials (B2), and a defined set of mining and energy inputs. The regulation revokes Permendag 8/2024 and requires holders of designated importer status (Importir Terdaftar / Importir Produsen) to secure an Import Approval (Persetujuan Impor) plus a post-arrival Surveyor Report (Laporan Surveyor) for an eleven-cluster commodity bundle including lubricant raw materials, cement clinker and cement, rough diamonds, non-pharmaceutical precursors, crude oil and natural gas, nitrocellulose, commercial-industrial explosives, ozone-depleting substances, hydrofluorocarbons, B2, and certain other chemicals (BKT). It is one of nine commodity-cluster Permendags issued the same day under the Prabowo administration's umbrella import-policy deregulation package.

Canada announced on 29 June 2025 that it would rescind the Digital Services Tax Act (originally enacted 20 June 2024) to revive US-Canada trade negotiations after President Trump suspended talks on 27 June, citing the 3% DST on large digital-services revenues as a discriminatory measure against US technology firms. The Canada Revenue Agency halted collection effective 30 June 2025, and legislation to retroactively repeal the Act back to its June 2024 enactment date is to follow, with refunds — plus interest at the standard corporate tax refund rate — to be paid to affected taxpayers including US technology majors.

On 26 June 2025, the Governing Board of Mexico's National Banking and Securities Commission (CNBV), invoking Article 129 of the Ley de Instituciones de Crédito, decreed the temporary managerial intervention of CI Banco, S.A. and Intercam Banco, S.A., replacing their administrative bodies and legal representatives. The measure came one day after the US Treasury's FinCEN designated both institutions (along with Vector Casa de Bolsa) as foreign financial institutions of primary money-laundering concern tied to opioid-trafficking networks, and prohibited certain US fund transmittals to them. CNBV/SHCP framed the intervention as a depositor- and creditor-protection measure to safeguard the two banks' operations against the fallout of the US action; Vector Casa de Bolsa was not included in the CNBV intervention.

On 26 June 2025 President Bola Ahmed Tinubu signed four acts constituting Nigeria's most comprehensive fiscal overhaul in decades: the Nigeria Tax Act 2025 (NTA), Nigeria Tax Administration Act 2025 (NTAA), Nigeria Revenue Service (Establishment) Act 2025, and Joint Revenue Board (Establishment) Act 2025. The NTA consolidates and repeals six core statutes — CITA, PITA, PPTA, VAT Act, CGT Act, and Stamp Duties Act — into a single unified code effective 1 January 2026, while the NTAA standardises assessment, filing, and enforcement procedures across all federal taxes. The two establishment acts restructure the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) into the Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS) with a broadened mandate and create an empowered Joint Revenue Board to coordinate federal-state fiscal relations.

The National Assembly of Vietnam passed the Personal Data Protection Law (Luật Bảo vệ dữ liệu cá nhân), Law No. 91/2025/QH15, on 26 June 2025; it enters into force on 1 January 2026. The PDPL is Vietnam's first statutory (rather than decree-level) personal-data-protection framework, elevating the prior Decree 13/2023/ND-CP (PDPD) regime into a 5-chapter, 39-article primary statute and adding revenue-based administrative penalties of up to 5% of prior-year annual revenue for cross-border data-transfer violations and up to 10x illegal gains for unlawful data trading. The law is implemented by Decree 356/2025/ND-CP (issued 31 December 2025, effective 1 January 2026) and applies extraterritorially to foreign organisations offering services to or processing the personal data of Vietnam residents.

On 25 June 2025 the European Commission adopted COM(2025) 335 final, a proposed Regulation establishing a single market for space activities — the first EU-level framework harmonising the authorisation, registration and supervision of space activities across Member States, replacing 13 fragmented national regimes. The Act rests on three pillars: safety (mandatory tracking of space objects, space- debris mitigation rules, an EU registry of space objects), resilience (cybersecurity requirements scaled to company size and risk profile) and sustainability (environmental impact assessment and active debris-removal R&D). It applies to both EU and non-EU operators providing space services in Europe, giving it extraterritorial reach over SpaceX/Starlink, Amazon Kuiper, OneWeb, Chinese SatNet/G60 and ISRO. The proposal is being negotiated under the ordinary legislative procedure; the Competitiveness Council of 9 December 2025 broadly endorsed its objectives, and the public consultation closed on 7 November 2025.

Malaysia's Ministry of Finance gazetted the Customs (Prohibition of Imports) (Amendment) (No. 2) Order 2025, amending the Customs (Prohibition of Imports) Order 2023 (P.U. (A) 117/2023) issued under subsection 31(1) of the Customs Act 1967. The order imposes an absolute prohibition, effective 31 December 2025, on importing dummy buckles, seat-belt alarm stoppers, seat-belt clip extenders, or any other accessory or device designed to be inserted into a seat-belt buckle to disable or bypass the seat-belt safety reminder and render the mechanism inoperative. The ban applies to all countries of origin without exception; Global Trade Alert lists Belgium, China and Czechia as principally affected exporters of the trade-catalogue category covering these parts.

Nigeria's Mining Cadastral Office (MCO) revoked 1,263 mineral titles — comprising 584 exploration licences, 65 mining leases, 144 quarry licences, and 470 small-scale mining permits — after holders failed to pay annual service fees. A gazette notice was published on 19 June 2025, opening a 30-day cure period; following Remita-payment reconciliation, final revocations were executed in September 2025. The action brings total mineral titles revoked under the Tinubu–Alake administration to approximately 3,794, signalling systematic enforcement of the compliance framework set out in the 2023 7-Point Agenda.

DGFT Notification No. 19/2025-26, issued 17 June 2025 under sections 3 and 5 of the Foreign Trade (Development and Regulation) Act 1992 and the Foreign Trade Policy 2023, reclassifies all of Customs Tariff Heading (CTH) 2843 — colloidal precious metals, inorganic or organic compounds of precious metals, and amalgams of precious metals, covering gold, silver, platinum, rhodium and palladium forms (ITC-HS codes including 28431010 colloidal gold, 28431020 colloidal silver, 28432100 silver nitrate, 28433000 gold compounds, 28439011 sodium aurous thiosulphate, 28439012 noble-metal solutions, and 28439020 amalgams) — from "Free" to "Restricted" import status. Importers now require DGFT prior authorisation per consignment; the stated purpose is to close a route for importing gold disguised as chemical compounds. Genuine industrial and manufacturing users (electronics, electrical, and specialised chemical industries) remain able to import against an authorisation, so the measure targets bullion arbitrage rather than input-supply continuity. It was issued the same day as, and as a companion measure to, DGFT Notification No. 18/2025-26 (gold-bearing PGM alloys, CTH 7110), filed separately as 2025-06-17-india-dgft-pgm-alloys-import-licensing.

DGFT Notification No. 18/2025-26, issued 17 June 2025 under the Foreign Trade (Development and Regulation) Act 1992, reclassifies alloys of palladium, rhodium, and iridium containing more than 1% gold by weight (ITC-HS codes 71102100, 71102900, 71103100, 71103900, 71104100, 71104900) from "Free" to "Restricted" import status, requiring DGFT prior authorisation per consignment. Unwrought or powder-form palladium, rhodium, and iridium below the 1% gold threshold remain freely importable. The measure extends an earlier platinum-alloy restriction (Notification No. 60/2024-25, 5 March 2025) to the full Customs Tariff Heading 7110 at the 4-digit level, closing a route for importing gold in disguised alloy form.

On 16 June 2025 the Tribunal de Commerce de Bamako issued an order placing Barrick Mining's Loulo-Gounkoto gold complex — one of the world's top-10 gold producers at ~720 koz/yr — under provisional state administration for six months, appointing expert-comptable Soumana Makadji as provisional administrator and tasking state mining holding SOREM-SA with operational oversight. Barrick immediately filed for ICSID arbitration and provisional measures. Operations restarted under state management in Q3 2025. A negotiated settlement dated 24 November 2025 saw Barrick pay approximately USD 430 million to Mali to resolve all disputes; provisional administration was terminated and full operational control returned to Barrick in December 2025.

On 13 June 2025 the Ministry of Environment (MoE) and the Ministry of Mines and Energy (MME) jointly issued Interministerial Prakas No. 4838, amending Cambodia's environmental-impact-assessment classification rules for all construction and mining business projects. The Prakas mandates that all businesses conducting construction and mining projects — including artisanal enterprises (investment <USD 50,000) and small-scale enterprises (USD 50,000–250,000) previously outside the formal EIA architecture — must sign an environmental-protection letter and file it with the MME prior to commencing operations; no project may operate in areas designated off-limits by the MME. The first joint MoE+MME prakas on environmental compliance extends Cambodia's EIA architecture to the full spectrum of mining-sector operators, building on the Environmental and Natural Resources Code (June 2023) and Prakas No. 8 (February 2024, EIA consulting-firm accreditation standards), and cross-references Prakas No. 3591 (May 2025) for the investment-size classification thresholds.

On 11 June 2025 the Peruvian government published Decreto Supremo N° 003-2025-IN in El Peruano, approving the Estrategia Nacional para la Reducción e Interdicción de la Minería Ilegal en el Perú al 2030. Issued by the Ministerio del Interior (MININTER) and coordinating 17 public institutions, the strategy establishes six specific objectives to dismantle the full criminal chain of illegal mining — from unauthorised extraction through commercialisation of illegally-sourced minerals — across four critical intervention phases. It is institutionally distinct from the parallel MINEM-administered REINFO formalisation track (DS 009-2025-EM + Ley 32537), targeting unregistered illegal operations via PNP, Fiscalía, SUNAT, MINAM, and regional governments, with PCM as the strategy-steering body and a 2030 horizon.

On 4 June 2025 the Verkhovna Rada adopted Law No. 4473-IX, amending the Customs Code of Ukraine to exempt from import (customs) duty goods brought into Ukraine's customs territory for security and defence needs. The law entered into force on 15 June 2025. Coverage includes optical fibre and fibre-optic cable imported by enterprises for the manufacture or repair of unmanned aerial systems (drones) and other defence equipment, as well as materials supplied to the Armed Forces of Ukraine and other authorised defence entities, removing a cost input for Ukraine's wartime domestic drone-manufacturing base. A companion law, No. 4474-IX, grants a parallel VAT exemption for the same import category.

On 4 June 2025 the Verkhovna Rada adopted Law No. 4474-IX, amending subsection 2 of section XX ("Transitional Provisions") of the Tax Code of Ukraine to exempt from value-added tax the import into Ukraine's customs territory of goods for security and defence needs, including optical fibre and fibre-optic cable used in the manufacture and repair of unmanned aerial systems (drones). The law entered into force on 15 June 2025. It is the VAT-side companion to Law No. 4473-IX (filed separately), which grants the equivalent customs-duty exemption for the same import category — the Rada split duty relief and VAT relief into two parallel statutory amendments passed the same day.

Bangladesh's National Board of Revenue gazetted SRO 225-Ain/2025/48/Customs and SRO 226-Ain/2025/48/Customs on 29 May 2025, revising the minimum customs valuation (tariff-value) floors used to assess duty on a range of imported consumer and industrial goods, effective 2 June 2025. The amendment raised minimum import values for chocolate and cocoa-containing food preparations, removed the minimum-value floor for base oil used by petroleum processing/blending industries, and adjusted floors — mostly downward — for soap and other cleaning preparations and a handful of additional product lines. Minimum-value schemes set a customs-assessable price floor per unit regardless of the invoiced transaction value, so a higher floor functions as a de facto increase in the duty base (and hence landed cost) for under-invoicing-prone product categories, while a removed or lowered floor eases the duty base for the affected goods.

Hong Kong enacted the Inland Revenue (Amendment) (Minimum Tax for Multinational Enterprise Groups) Ordinance 2025 (Ordinance No. 21 of 2025), gazetted on 6 June 2025 after the Legislative Council passed the Bill on 28 May 2025. The Ordinance inserts Part 4AA and Schedules 61–64 into the Inland Revenue Ordinance (Cap. 112), implementing the OECD/G20 Pillar Two GloBE rules for MNE groups with consolidated annual revenue ≥ EUR 750 million in at least two of the four preceding fiscal years. It introduces a 15% Income Inclusion Rule (IIR) and the Hong Kong Minimum Top-up Tax (HKMTT) — a Qualified Domestic Minimum Top-up Tax (QDMTT) — effective for fiscal years beginning on or after 1 January 2025; the Undertaxed Profits Rule (UTPR) is deliberately deferred to a date to be specified by gazette notice, completing a structurally phased Pillar Two architecture. IRD estimates additional revenue of approximately HKD 15 billion per year from 2027–28.

Law n° 014/2025 of 27 May 2025 amends Rwanda's Income Tax Law (Law n° 027/2022) by doubling the capital gains tax (CGT) applicable to transfers of securities — explicitly including mining licences — from 5% to 10%, effective upon gazette publication on 29 May 2025 (some provisions from 1 July 2025). The amendment expands CGT coverage beyond share transfers to encompass direct mining licence transfers, debt instruments, options, and guarantees. By raising the exit-tax on mineral-asset disposals, the law increases financial friction on speculative licence flipping and reinforces Rwanda's beneficiation-first framework across its 3T (tin, tantalum, tungsten) and gold mining sectors.

Guinea's Mines Minister Bouna Sylla announced on 26 May 2025 the cancellation of 129 exploration permits for gold, bauxite, and diamonds that had expired between 2012 and 2024 and were held by non-compliant companies that had not fulfilled their statutory obligations. The measure is the fourth wave of post-coup mining cadastre cleanup under the CNRD/Doumbouya administration and follows two presidential decrees and a prior ministerial ordinance. Major affected operators include AngloGold Ashanti's Siguiri gold-mine exploration blocks, four gold permits held by Endeavour Mining, and Guinea Alumina Corporation's Nomba bauxite block; Axis International separately filed a USD 28.9 billion ICSID arbitration claim over bauxite-permit revocation in the same wave.

The Hong Kong Legislative Council passed the Stablecoins Ordinance (Cap. 656) on 21 May 2025 (third reading), brought into operation by the Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury on 1 August 2025. The Ordinance introduces a mandatory licensing regime administered by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) for any person who issues a fiat-referenced stablecoin (FRS) in Hong Kong, issues an HKD-pegged stablecoin anywhere in the world, or actively markets such issuance to the Hong Kong public. Key requirements include minimum HK$25 million paid-up capital, segregated pools of high-quality liquid reserve assets fully backing circulating supply, mandatory redemption-at-par rights for holders, AML/CFT controls, and broad HKMA enforcement powers including licence suspension, revocation, and financial penalties. A six-month transitional period for existing operators expires 31 January 2026.

Japan's National Diet passed a partial amendment to the Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Act (PMD Act / 薬機法) on May 14, 2025, promulgated as Law No. 37 of 2025 on May 21. The amendment requires every Marketing Authorization Holder (MAH) to designate a Supply System Manager responsible for reporting supply disruptions to MHLW, and grants MHLW authority to order replacement of key quality personnel when systemic deficiencies are found. It also reforms GMP oversight to a risk-based inspection model and expands the conditional-approval pathway for rare disease and paediatric drugs. Enforcement is staggered across three tranches: November 2025, May 2026, and final full implementation by May 2027.

Peru's Ministry of Energy and Mines published Decreto Supremo N° 009-2025-EM in El Peruano on 18 May 2025, approving the implementing regulation for Law 32213 (Dec 2024). The decree operationalises the extension of the REINFO mining-formalisation registry deadline through 30 June 2025 (extendable +6 months), reaffirms MINEM as the rector authority over the small-scale and artisanal mining (MAPE) formalisation process, and creates SIPMMA — the Sistema Interoperable de Pequeña Minería y Minería Artesanal — as a state interoperable system for operational traceability of minerals, explosives, chemical inputs and controlled products. A controversial Article 10 had also opened a "REINFO hereditario" path allowing succession transfer of registry inscriptions; that provision was derogated two weeks later by DS 010-2025-EM (1 Jun 2025) under domestic and international anti-illegal-mining pressure.

Switzerland's State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) and the US Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) signed a Memorandum of Understanding on 9 May 2025 (jointly published 16 May 2025) establishing a framework for information-sharing, coordinated investigations, designated points of contact, regular bilateral meetings, joint training, and exchange of technical expertise on sanctions enforcement. The MoU is not legally binding and neither side is obliged to share information, but it formalises an enforcement-cooperation channel that previously operated only ad-hoc. It is the first sanctions-enforcement MoU Switzerland has concluded with a third country (the US has a comparable arrangement with the UK's OFSI), and SECO has indicated more such MoUs will follow.

Vietnam's Ministry of Industry and Trade (MOIT) issued Decision 1231/QĐ-BCT on 5 May 2025, setting a maximum price of USD 0.093/kWh (approx. VND 2,430/kWh) for electricity imported from China through Vietnam's national grid. The decision implements the price-framework procedure established by MOIT Circular 09/2025/TT-BCT (effective 1 February 2025), which set out the process for building and approving generation and import price frameworks. Vietnam Electricity (EVN) must negotiate purchase contracts with Chinese suppliers within this ceiling "to economize on electricity purchase costs" (Article 2 of Decision 1231).

The Bureau of Industry and Security issued an interim final rule ("Adoption and Procedures of the Section 232 Steel and Aluminum Tariff Inclusions Process," 90 FR 18780, RIN 0694-AK13) adopting the procedural framework directed by Proclamations 10895 and 10896 of 10 February 2025 for adding derivative steel and aluminum articles to the scope of the 25% Section 232 duties. Eligible US producers and industry associations may submit inclusion requests during three two-week windows per year (opening in May, September and January); BIS evaluates each request on a sixty-day clock and publishes a determination memorandum granting or denying inclusion. The rule replaces the legacy product-exclusions architecture with a domestic-producer-driven inclusions architecture, structurally expanding the perimeter of covered tariff lines over time.

Bangladesh Bank's Foreign Exchange Policy Department issued Circular No. 14 of 20 April 2025, amending paragraph 26, Chapter 7 of the Guidelines for Foreign Exchange Transactions, 2018 (GFET-2018) to liberalise import-LC discrepancy-handling procedures. Authorised Dealers (AD banks) may now settle discrepant import bills against importer-issued indemnity-and-waiver letters without prior Bangladesh Bank approval, provided discrepancies do not contravene UCP-600 or constitute material changes as defined in GFET-2018 para 31(c). The same treatment is extended to back-to-back import LCs under the export-oriented bonded-warehouse and EPZ regime, directly benefiting Bangladesh's garment-manufacturing sector in settling raw-material import payments against export-LC proceeds.

On 11 April 2025 President Javier Milei signed Decreto de Necesidad y Urgencia 269/2025, published in the Boletín Oficial on 14 April 2025 (edición Nº 35.647). The decree repealed Decreto 28/2023, formally lifting the cepo cambiario — the foreign-exchange restrictions that had been in continuous operation in some form since November 2011. Operative provisions include elimination of the 80/20 export-proceeds-channelling mandate, removal of individual USD purchase and wire-transfer caps, permission for companies to repatriate post-1-January-2025 dividend profits, and replacement of the daily crawling-peg with a band float within a $1,000–$1,400 ARS/USD corridor with BCRA floor/ceiling intervention rules. The measure was coordinated with the IMF Extended Fund Facility (USD 20bn total; USD 15bn 2025 free-availability tranche) approved 11 April 2025, and operationalises the currency-stability guarantee embedded in the RIGI large- investment regime (Law 27.742, July 2024).

Ghana's Parliament passed the Ghana Gold Board Act, 2025 (Act 1140) on 29 March 2025; presidential assent followed on 2 April 2025, with full operational effect from 1 May 2025. The Act repeals PNDCL 219 (1989) and establishes the Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod) as the sole statutory licensor and exclusive primary buyer, seller, assayer, grader, weigher and exporter of all gold produced by the country's licensed Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining (ASM) sector. Large-scale mining operations remain outside the monopsony. Effective 1 May 2025, no person other than GoldBod may export ASM gold from Ghana, and all gold trading and marketing businesses must hold a GoldBod licence (application window for Ghanaian-owned firms opened 22 April 2025). Proceeds from all ASM gold exports settle through the Bank of Ghana, channelling foreign-exchange flows from roughly 30% of national gold output — Ghana is the world's #6 producer and Africa's largest — into formal central-bank reserves. The stated objectives are to combat smuggling, capture the smuggling-loss premium for the state, support Bank of Ghana gold-reserves accumulation, and generate foreign exchange. The Act sits alongside the Bank of Ghana's Domestic Gold Purchase Programme as the legal infrastructure for Ghana's gold-as-reserve-asset strategy.

Stortinget adopted Norway's new Minerals Act (Lov om mineralvirksomhet og forvaltning av mineralressurser) on 12 June 2025, replacing the 2009 Minerals Act and entering into force 1 July 2026. The statute introduces a national-security review pillar enabling authorities to deny or condition projects that threaten national preparedness, reduces exploration-licence duration from seven to three years to accelerate project initiation, expands Sámi consultation protections from Finnmark to all traditional Sámi areas (Sápmi), and mandates explicit alignment with the EU Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA, Regulation (EU) 2024/1252). The Act covers Norway's most strategically significant mineral assets including the Fen carbonatite REE field (Europe's largest known REE deposit) and major copper-zinc deposits.

Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2025/532, adopted 24 March 2025 and published in the Official Journal on 2 July 2025, supplements DORA (Regulation (EU) 2022/2554) with binding Regulatory Technical Standards governing ICT subcontracting of critical or important functions. It requires all EU-regulated financial entities to establish a subcontracting policy, conduct due-diligence and concentration-risk assessments at each tier of the ICT supply chain (including nth-party providers), impose equivalent resilience standards on sub-ICT-providers, and maintain enforceable termination and information-access rights. The RTS entered into force on 22 July 2025, completing the second-batch DORA implementing acts on outsourcing chains.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued a final rule on 21 March 2025 adopting without change its 13 September 2024 interim final rule that doubled the recordkeeping retention requirement for transactions subject to OFAC regulations from five years to ten years. The extension aligns 31 CFR 501.601, paragraph IV.B of appendix A to part 501, and 31 CFR 515.572 with the 10-year statute of limitations for IEEPA and TWEA violations enacted by the 21st Century Peace through Strength Act of 24 April 2024. The interim final rule's 10-year retention obligation became effective 12 March 2025; the final rule confirmed the IFR text without modification.

FinCEN issued an interim final rule (FR Doc 2025-05199, 90 FR 13688, published March 26, 2025) revising the definition of "reporting company" under the Corporate Transparency Act to mean only entities formed under the law of a foreign country that have registered to do business in a U.S. State or tribal jurisdiction. All entities created in the United States — previously known as "domestic reporting companies" — and U.S. persons are exempted from BOI reporting. Foreign reporting companies registered before March 26, 2025 must file by April 25, 2025; those registered on or after that date have 30 days from registration. Foreign reporting companies are not required to report any U.S. persons as beneficial owners. The IFR is effective immediately; FinCEN is accepting comments and intends to finalize the rule.

The Nigeria Data Protection Commission issued the General Application and Implementation Directive (GAID) 2025 on 20 March 2025, the principal implementing directive of the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023 (NDPA). The GAID came fully into force on 19 September 2025, replacing the Nigeria Data Protection Regulation (NDPR) 2019 as the operative enforcement instrument. It applies extraterritorially to any data controller or processor established outside Nigeria that processes personal data of Nigerian data subjects, imposes a tripartite cross-border transfer framework (adequacy decisions, Transfer Instruments, and statutory exceptions), mandates Data Protection Impact Assessments for AI and high-risk technologies, and carries a civil-penalty ceiling of 2% of annual gross revenue or NGN 10 million for designated data controllers and processors of major importance (DCPMIs), whichever is greater.

Indonesia's Ministry of Communications and Digital Affairs (Kemkomdigi) promulgated Permenkomdigi No. 5/2025 on 25 March 2025 as the implementing regulation under Government Regulation PP 71/2019 governing Public-Scope Electronic System Operators (PSE Lingkup Publik), defined as operators running electronic systems for government institutions or critical public services. The regulation mandates registration, data classification by risk level (low/medium/ high/strategic) with corresponding domestic storage and processing requirements, content- moderation governance, and access-blocking mechanisms for prohibited electronic information. All public-scope PSEs must achieve compliance by 25 March 2026, with non-compliant operators subject to progressive administrative sanctions under Articles 100-series ranging from written warnings to access disconnection (pemutusan akses) and removal from official registries.

Papua New Guinea's National Parliament passed the National Petroleum Authority Act 2025 on 12 March 2025 (vote 84–0), establishing the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) as a new statutory regulator replacing the Department of Petroleum and Energy. The companion Oil and Gas (Amendment) Act 2025 was passed the same week, realigning the Oil and Gas Act 1998 licensing framework with NPA oversight. Both Acts commenced on 9 April 2025 via Notice in the National Gazette. A new 0.5% gross-revenue levy on crude oil, natural gas, LNG, condensates, and LPG applies to all Petroleum Production Licence holders, directly affecting ExxonMobil's PNG LNG (8.3 Mtpa), TotalEnergies' Papua LNG (4 Mtpa, FID expected 2026–27), and Santos' legacy Oil Search holdings.

On March 11, 2025 FinCEN issued a Geographic Targeting Order (GTO) under 31 USC 5326 — published in the Federal Register on March 14, 2025 (FR Doc. 2025-04099) and effective April 14, 2025 — requiring every money services business (MSB) located in 30 designated ZIP codes across seven counties in California (Imperial, San Diego) and Texas (Cameron, El Paso, Hidalgo, Maverick, Webb) to file a Currency Transaction Report (CTR) on cash transactions of more than $200 but not more than $10,000, far below the Bank Secrecy Act's standard $10,000 CTR floor. The order also imposed customer-identification recordkeeping and, per the FinCEN order text, gave covered MSBs thirty (30) days to file CTRs (vs. the standard fifteen). It was framed by Treasury as part of the post-January-2025 cartel-targeting policy stack (Trump Executive Order 14157 designating Mexican drug cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations / SDGTs) and was intended to surface low-value cash flows used by Mexico-based cartels and related criminal actors. The GTO was a 180-day order set to expire September 9, 2025; it was subsequently superseded on September 10, 2025 by a modified GTO that raised the threshold to $1,000 in response to MSB-industry feedback on burden, expanded geography to Arizona, and was itself replaced/expanded again on March 10, 2026.

Prime Minister Sonexay Siphandon issued Order No. 06/PM on 7 March 2025 introducing two headline measures: (i) a permanent nationwide ban on all alluvial gold extraction, including gravel- and sand-suction methods, and (ii) a moratorium on approval of any new metallic-mineral projects for the remainder of the current government term. The Order also mandates enhanced monitoring and inspection of existing licensed mining operations, with particular focus on environmental compliance and remediation. Rationale cited by the PM includes recurring landslide and water-contamination incidents attributed to unregulated artisanal and semi-industrial extraction. This is the first instrument issued under the post-2024-Investment-Promotion-Law framework that directly constrains new-mine pipeline development in Laos, reversing the outward-FDI-friendly signal that Law 62/NA had sent to Chinese-backed project sponsors.

Indonesia issued Government Regulation (Peraturan Pemerintah) No. 8 of 2025 on Foreign-Exchange Proceeds from Natural-Resource Exports (DHE SDA), amending PP No. 36/2023. President Prabowo Subianto announced the policy at Merdeka Palace on 17–18 February 2025 and the regulation takes effect on 1 March 2025. It mandates that exporters of non-oil- and-gas mining, plantation, forestry, and fisheries products with export-proceeds value of USD 250,000 or more per shipment retain 100 percent of those foreign-exchange proceeds inside Indonesia's financial system for 12 months — sharply up from the prior 30 percent for 3 months under PP 36/2023. Oil-and-gas exporters remain on the earlier 30 percent / 3-month regime. Permitted in-period uses include rupiah conversion at the holding bank, payment of state obligations in foreign currency, dividend distribution, payment for imported raw materials and capital goods unavailable domestically, and servicing of foreign-currency capital-expenditure loans. Non-compliance carries administrative sanctions including suspension of export services. The government has projected the measure could lift retained foreign- exchange proceeds by USD 80 billion in 2025 and over USD 100 billion on a full 12-month basis.

On 12 February 2025, DRC Minister of Mines Kizito Pakabomba signed an arrêté classifying 38 mining concessions in Masisi (North Kivu) and Kalehe (South Kivu) territories as "red zones," imposing a total prohibition on artisanal extraction, transport, and commercialization of coltan (tantalite-columbite), cassiterite (tin ore), and wolframite (tungsten ore). The measure responded directly to the December 2024 UN Group of Experts report documenting that M23/AFC armed groups were controlling and taxing coltan extraction at Rubaya — at least 150 tonnes/month fraudulently exported to Rwanda and blended with legitimate Rwandan production, constituting what the UN described as the largest contamination ever recorded of mineral supply chains in the Great Lakes region. The initial six-month ban (12 February – 11 August 2025) was extended for a further six months by Minister Louis Watum Kabamba's prorogation arrêté of 3 November 2025 (retroactive from 12 August 2025). DRC accounts for approximately 60–70% of global tantalum mine supply; Rubaya alone is one of the world's highest-density artisanal coltan producing zones.

Kuwait promulgated Decree-Law No. 7 of 2025 on 10 February 2025, amending Decree-Law No. 74 of 1979 on real estate ownership by non-Kuwaitis. The reform grants investment entities licensed under the Direct Investment Promotion Law (Decree-Law No. 116 of 2013, administered by KDIPA) the right to own real property necessary for carrying out and managing their licensed activities, or for housing their investors or employees — with an explicit prohibition on ownership for speculation purposes. A further Amiri decree will specify the implementing rules and the areas in which such property may be owned. The law is part of a coherent 2024–2025 KDIPA-regime modernisation package alongside the January 2024 branch-office-without-local-agent reform and KDIPA Decision No. 388 of 2024 on investment incentives and exemptions.

Japan's National Diet enacted the Cyber Response Capability Enhancement Act (重要電子計算機に対する不正な行為による被害の防止に関する法律, Law No. 42 of 2025) on 16 May 2025, together with companion arrangement legislation. Commonly known as the Active Cyber Defense (ACD) Law, the statute authorises (i) government monitoring of foreign-origin internet traffic transiting designated Japanese communication infrastructure for national-security threat indicators, (ii) pre-emptive access and neutralisation operations against attacker infrastructure abroad by the National Police Agency and the Self-Defense Forces under unified command, and (iii) mandatory cyber-incident reporting and government cooperation duties on critical-infrastructure operators. Implementation is phased through November 2027, with the NISC reorganised into the National Cybersecurity Office (NCO) under the Cabinet Secretariat from July 2025.

The Iraqi Council of Representatives adopted Law No. 4 of 2025 on 2 February 2025 (176 deputies present, majority vote), amending Article 12 of the Federal General Budget Law for Fiscal Years 2023-2024-2025 (Law No. 13 of 2023). The amendment mandates that the federal government pay international oil companies (IOCs) operating in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) USD 16 per barrel in advance for crude production and transportation costs — more than doubling the USD 6/bbl rate in the original budget law — with all KRI crude to be delivered to and marketed exclusively through the State Organization for Marketing of Oil (SOMO). An international consulting firm, jointly appointed by Baghdad and Erbil within 60 days, is mandated to audit field-level production and transportation costs, with cost-recovery adjustments applied retroactively from the date pipeline flows resume. The law was published in the Iraqi Official Gazette (Al-Waqai al-Iraqiyya) Issue No. 4814 on 17 February 2025.

El Salvador's Legislative Assembly adopted Decreto Legislativo No. 199 on 29 January 2025 with 55 of 60 votes, reforming six articles and repealing three articles of the original Ley Bitcoin (Decreto 57, June 2021). The reform downgrades Bitcoin from compulsory legal tender to voluntary acceptance only — private parties are no longer obliged to accept BTC payments, and Bitcoin can no longer be used to pay taxes or settle public-sector debts. The State also withdraws from operational involvement in the Chivo Wallet platform. The reform is an explicit prior action under the IMF's US$1.4 billion Extended Fund Facility (EFF) programme (IMF Country Report 25/58), published in the Diario Oficial on 30 January 2025 and entering into force 90 days later on 30 April 2025.

BIS (acting through its Office of Information and Communications Technology and Services, OICTS) published a final rule under Executive Order 13873's ICTS authority prohibiting certain connected-vehicle (CV) transactions involving hardware and software designed, developed, manufactured, or supplied by persons owned by, controlled by, or subject to the jurisdiction of the People's Republic of China or the Russian Federation. The rule reaches the Vehicle Connectivity System (VCS — hardware/software enabling external RF connectivity above 450 MHz) and the Automated Driving System (ADS) software stack. Effective 17 March 2025, with phased prohibitions: import/sale of CVs incorporating covered software prohibited from model year 2027; import of covered VCS hardware prohibited from model year 2030 (or 1 January 2029 for hardware not associated with a model year). Importers and connected-vehicle manufacturers must file annual Declarations of Conformity.

Bolivia's Decreto Supremo 5309, signed by President Luis Arce on 8 January 2025, mandates that all public-sector entities migrate their information systems to Free Software and Open Standards by 12 January 2030. The decree includes a data-localization provision barring storage of non-public state data on servers outside Bolivian territory; government cloud workloads must run either on public-entity infrastructure or on state-operated cloud services within the country. AGETIC (Bolivia's ICT agency) is responsible for overseeing compliance and developing the implementation plan (approved via the companion Decreto Supremo 5322 on 23 January 2025).

The Republic of Korea's National Assembly passed the Framework Act on the Development of Artificial Intelligence and the Establishment of a Foundation for Trustworthiness ("AI Basic Act") in plenary session on 26 December 2024, consolidating 19 separate AI bills tabled in the 22nd National Assembly. The statute was promulgated on 21 January 2025 and takes effect on 22 January 2026 after a one-year preparation period. Korea becomes the second jurisdiction worldwide — after the EU AI Act — to enact a comprehensive horizontal AI law, and the first in the Asia-Pacific. The Act establishes a risk-tiered regime targeting "high-impact" AI in healthcare, energy, public services, employment decisions, and generative-AI labelling, with extraterritorial reach over foreign providers whose systems affect the Korean market or users (mandatory local representative). It creates an AI Safety Institute, a national AI policy "control tower," and R&D / standardisation programmes under MSIT. Penalties are modest by international comparison — fines up to KRW 30 million plus a one-year grace period before full enforcement.